Tips for Selling Music Online

originally published May 14, 2008

Editor's Note: Since Flagpole published Fletcher Williams' intial rebuttal to the Do It Illegally Liner Notes (Apr. 30), Williams and Gilzenrat have maintained a healthy debate/exchange via e-mail. As further insistence that bands don't have to give it all away for free, he offers these pointers on how to sell music online. Williams is a local musician who has researched these outlets for his own band's records.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America's sales tally from last year, CD shipments were down 17.5 percent in 2007, but 42.5 million digital albums were sold, up 54 percent from 2006. This isn't a trend. This is forever. You need to know the ins and outs of selling online.

Since your new album isn't going to be promoted and distributed by Geffen Records, it's all up to you. Where do you start? How are you going to get on iTunes? How will you sell enough albums to pay for your next tour through Augusta, Swainsboro and Tifton?

As of this press time (and likely until the end of days) your music will be shared freely through services like Crimewire [sic] and SoulSteal [sic]. Code monkeys will always be one step ahead of the corporations. To increase your online sales, many bands assume they can offer incentives like a free shirt or a ticket to a show. These ancillary incentives don't usually happen when the time comes to make the offer, since you will typically make $7 per album at most in the online sales market, which isn't enough to cover a shirt or a ticket.

Some bands fight fire with fire, uploading fake files of their music into the sharing services. A reasonable alternative for up-and-coming artists would be to upload one- to two-minute samples as if they are whole songs. Again, there's no way to stop people from getting your music for free, but you can give yourself a fighting chance to increase your sales by injecting your own promotional material into the mayhem.

YouTube is another great way to use free media to promote your sales. While many use the filesharing services to "sample" music, many others use YouTube to the stream tunes. Make a video or two, or seven - they don't have to be fancy, you just want to be found on the site. You can even just use an image of your album cover or a slideshow of concert photos behind the songs - or display your website and contact information on the video.

As for actually selling your music online, check out these services.

CDBaby

CDBaby has been around for years. If you want to sell your record on iTunes, all you have to do is go to CDBaby.com, create an account and upload your music. It's very simple. Here's how the payment breaks down: iTunes pays $7 per album, regardless of how much the record is sold for through the online store (usually $9.99). This money goes to CDBaby. CDBaby takes 9 percent commission on each sale, so you end up with $6.47 per record sold. There are no additional costs for you to sign up and create your CDBaby account. Unfortunately, you have zero say-so on the price iTunes sells your music for, but atleast you are guaranteed the $7 for an album sale.

Tunecore

You might know about Tunecore from Nine Inch Nails' latest album. They released it independently and distributed it independently through Tunecore.

Tunecore works just like CDBaby, but instead of paying a commission on each sale, you pay a flat fee and keep all your revenue. Using the same example:

iTunes sells your album for $9.99. iTunes pays Tunecore $7. Tunecore pays you $7. You have to pay: $20 annual fee + $20 upload fee for one album + $0.99 cents for each store you want to be distributed in. If you upload your new album to Tunecore and you want it on iTunes, Napster and Rhapsody, you pay $20 + $20 + $0.99 + $0.99 + $0.99= $42.97. The only recurring fee is the annual fee of $20. There also a $30 charge if you take the album down within six months of putting it up.

Indistr.com

Unlike CDBaby and Tunecore, indistr.com is an actual vendor, not a distributor. You can upload your album for free and set your own price, unlike iTunes and other vendors, and you get 75 percent of the purchase price, about 5 percent higher than iTunes and the other corporate vendors. Another benefit is that your money from sales is calculated and paid to your account daily. With the large corporate vendors, sales are only calculated monthly so you can expect to be paid at a 60 day lag from the date of actual sale. Downside: it's easier to say "Go to iTunes!" than "Go to indistr.com" when encouraging fans to buy your music. In talking with the founder of indistr.com, I found myself thinking of that Dana Carvey bit about the "judishul system."

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There are many other online distribution methods, but hopefully these three examples will provide a good scope of whats available. If you are unsure if you'll sell many albums, but are seeking a "vanity release," CDBaby and indistr.com are good places to start. If you are pretty sure you can sell a hundred or more albums, you'll want to stay out of CDBaby and just pay that 9 percent commission. Tunecore will get you into the big online retailers like iTunes, whereas and indistr.com will let you set your price, and pays you a higher percentage of the sale.

For online selling of actual CDs, both Tunecore and CDBaby have methods you can use through their services that handle credit cards, postage, warehousing and some marketing for a cut. All the info is on their websites. Good luck! When Rolling Stone asks you how you did it all yourself, you tell them Fletcher Williams and Flagpole made it happen.

Fletcher Williams

Liner Notes is Flagpole's music opinion column.