Release Time! Ep 02: Digital Distribution-Tunecore

Tunecore is another digital distribution service that gets your music onto various streaming and digital platforms. They’re somewhat of a legacy provider at this point.

Tunecore was/is a competitor with CD Baby, where instead of taking a cut of every sale, they offered a flat rate per release. This was considered innovative in the early 2000s.

The problem is, that flat rate is pretty high, and if you’re releasing more than about twice a year it can easily cost hundreds of dollars a year to digitally release your music.

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Not really the most compelling sales pitch when compared to Distrokid, which is as low as $20/year for unlimited releases. Remember, any digital distribution service is offering a commodity product and doing most the work only one time-when you click that upload button. So, large upfront costs and/or cuts of sales, are really not a strong value proposition when it comes to these types of services.

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If you look at the Tunecore marketing, you can see that they’re trying to sell themselves as a more “premium” provider-their website is flashier, and their services might offer some more flexibility in certain very specific situations.

Distrokid, for example, does have some restrictions when it comes to track names.

So, if you like to name your tracks something like “FH_*sd (#1)”, some of the more expensive services may give you more options in this regard. Be sure to check into this!

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Being DIY in the music scene is all about placing high value on the things that get you the most bang for your buck: studios, engineers, producers, instruments, time off to write in an inspiring location, regular band rehearsals, etc. Where you can save money is on the things that don’t get you as much bang for the buck, and a digital distribution service is one of those items. I don’t think most DIY musicians are looking for a “premium” digital distributor-they’re perfectly happy to use a more bare-bones service that works well and is affordable. That’s why Distrokid is usually my first recommendation.

The bigger picture lesson here is, do your research and consider both your present and future needs when deciding where to spend money on services!

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