Did anyone test Tunecore, CD Baby etc.? vs. Bandcamp?

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Caine123
KVRAF
Topic Starter
8070 posts since 5 Aug, 2009

Post Sun Oct 16, 2022 12:52 pm

hi, im wondering when you put some songs up or an ep there is a lot of possibilities now, Bandcamp seems best but do you/did you also put your music on a distributor like Tunecore, Distrokid etc.?
there are various differences but what is/was your experience?

can you also calculate the income on spotify when e.g. a song is played 1000x for 1 month what is it worth?

i wanna check what the current market is right now :).
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chk071
KVRAF
33873 posts since 11 Apr, 2010 from Germany

Post Sun Oct 16, 2022 12:56 pm

From what I always saw, the more known artists always release multi platform. I think, if you want to expand your horizon, in terms of reaching more people, it's a good idea to use more than one platform for distributing your music.

Of course, depends on your budget, and how big of a market you are aiming for.

Winstontaneous
KVRAF
2315 posts since 15 Feb, 2006 from Berkeley, CA

Post Sun Oct 16, 2022 2:04 pm

Last releases I did, CD Baby handled physical sales and also pushed it out to all the major streaming services. That said, if you can only focus on one venue I'd recommend Bandcamp, even after they were bought or VC'd lately they are one of the few remaining artist-focused services out there.

Read the fine print of whatever service you use; IIRC DistroKid when I was looking at it only kept your stuff up for a year on Apple Music, Spotify, etc. unless you re-up your subscription.

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Propellerhands
KVRist
138 posts since 9 Apr, 2020

Post Sun Oct 16, 2022 2:10 pm

Always put on Bandcamp, and ALSO PUT on DistroKid or TuneCore or any other aggregator (never both). That's the way. Bandcamp is completely separate thing from those. Bandcamp does NOT put your tracks on iTunes or Spotify. But TuneCore, DistroKid, CDBaby etc. DO PUT YOUR TRACK on iTunes and Spotify and gazzilion other streaming services. So be smart.
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Rastkovic
KVRian
692 posts since 26 Jul, 2018 from Germany

Post Sun Oct 16, 2022 10:41 pm

Caine123 wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 12:52 pmcan you also calculate the income on spotify when e.g. a song is played 1000x for 1 month what is it worth?
Spotify pays $0.04 per 10 streams. I guess full streams, not when the song is half played.

https://soundcamps.com/spotify-royalties-calculator

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foosnark
KVRAF
7004 posts since 9 Jan, 2003 from Saint Louis MO

Post Mon Oct 17, 2022 3:36 am

My experience with CDBaby was several years ago. It was... OK, less hassle and generally better than getting CD packaging printed and burning my own CDs. I would not try to compare that to the very different market and economy that we're in now though.

Bandcamp is way better than streaming IMHO -- unless you have a pretty large, young and/or broke audience who are more likely to stream your music many times over than they are to buy music. I know Andrew Huang does much better with streaming than Bandcamp, for instance.

Being someone who makes music far outside the mainstream and puts almost zero effort into promotion, Bandcamp does ***a lot*** better for me than streaming. I'm not really in it for the money and put up all my albums for pay-what-you-want, but the occasional true fan or fellow musician who was impressed will put money in the hat.

Whereas with DistroKid, I never actually earned back the yearly fees and wound up cancelling. And Pandora never did put up anything of mine for some reason.

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Boy Wonder
KVRian
577 posts since 30 Jan, 2021

Post Mon Oct 17, 2022 3:59 am

CD Baby is running a limited special - $4.99 for a single or album, and your music is kept forever on Spotify, etc, not for just one year. Also, to piggyback on what @Propellerhands said, Bandcamp is a site to list your music, but it doesn't assign ISRC or EAC codes that are necessary for retail sales, chart positions, etc.
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.

Caine123
KVRAF
Topic Starter
8070 posts since 5 Aug, 2009

Post Sat Jun 03, 2023 12:58 am

oh my! i didnt get notifications here... just switched on. thx for the replies!!! totally missed them...

i read that DISTROKID seems shady with their payments? when i google them a lot of reports are shown, i dunno what'S true and what not.

Tunecore seems to be kinda better? they seem to have changed their offers.
i thought about using an annual fee for 1 release and see how it goes, they say 100% payout minus the youtube comminissions etc. but i think main shop is spotify and if you dont get more than 10k streams it doesnt matter anyway?

CD Baby seems also interesting cause of the 1 time fee but yeah i dunno how many streams the release will get, so if it doesnt get much cd baby is better cause i dont have to pay every year the fee otherwise if the release gets many streams they take 9% fees and if you get for example in a year $400 and have to pay $40 fees (let's say every year) then tunecore is better cause in this annual fee you can release more under 1 name.

Ditto has a lot of bad feebdack, Amuse.io seems interesting though but i JUST CANNOT believe that free distributors are better? cause how do they earn money or what's their profit, nothing is free... ?
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Caine123
KVRAF
Topic Starter
8070 posts since 5 Aug, 2009

Post Sun Jun 04, 2023 11:43 pm

i just found out that it you LIVE OUTSIDE THE USA you need to pay 30% TAX with Tunecore, Distrokid and CDbaby? i dunno if this is correct like this but i wanted to try Tunecore now but then i stumbled upon this and now i got confused even more, cause im outside the USA..... oh man.....
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EdwardGivens
KVRist
189 posts since 4 May, 2022 from drippy, rainy wet western Oregon, USA.

Post Sat Jun 10, 2023 7:10 am

CD baby
released my album worldwide.
With a giant smudge on the cover and missing a song.
After nearly 6 months of complaining at them they fixed the cover. And deleted another song. I demanded they take everything down. It took me nearly 10 years to track down and delete all the messes they made. My release still shows on Spotify - with no tracks. NOT recommended.

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