There are now many ways to get your music on to the iTunes and Amazon MP3 shops. If you’re signed to a label they do the dirty work for you. As an independent artist you can sign your catalog to one of many aggregator services such The Orchard for example. They take a cut and put your tunes in many places for sale including ring-tone sites. Tunecore has been a popular DIY option and it’s the one I have been using for my own albums here in the USA (I have a separate record deal in Europe with Out of Line Music, outofline.de). Because I sell a decent amount on iTunes I easily make back the upfront fees Tunecore charges to get my tunes online.
However, I have a older few releases on my record label that I’m not sure would generate much income. So up until now I haven’t posted them using services that had upfront or maintenance fee’s attached to them in fear I wouldn’t make the cash back. I do sell the old releases on my own website using the Easybe store and I also have them online with my Beatport and Junodownload deals. I’ve been on the look out for a fair service to get the rest of the old catalog onto iTunes. I was pleased to recently discover Routenote. Routenote’s service is dead simple to understand. You upload your music to them and they take 10% of any music you sell after you sell it. They offer online stats and payments come via PayPal. Routenote is non-exclusive.
So is Routenote the best route for you to take? It’s not always a clear cut answer. For some further insight look at this chart and article on the Routenote blog: Digital Music Distributors Compared
This entry was written by , posted on March 5, 2009 at 7:17 am, filed under business and tagged Amazon, business, distribution, iTunes, Routenote, Tunecore. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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Wow, great quick post on some digital distribution options … Thanks for taking the time to write this up!
Nice one. I was just discussing this with a friend the other day, specifically wondering if there was a way to get tunes uploaded without having to plunk down money we don’t have. On a related note, how has your experience with Beatport been, Oliver? I’ve heard mixed reviews from other producers.
I’ve been pleased with Beatport in general. If your selling dance music you have to be there.
Great info on digital distribution options. I wish there was a service like RouteNote or Tunecore that specifically dealt with Beatport and other dance music marketplaces.
“If your selling dance music you have to be there.”
No doubt, just wondering how they treat you. Good to know that things are going well with them, though.
Hey man, that’s awesome. I’m thinking about ditching our aggregator that we use for iTunes because they’re content management system is so damn awful! This could be a great alternative.
I’ve sent ‘em an email asking if they supply barcodes, at the moment that’s the only thing keeping me going with this other place
Hey – Thanks for the mention, hope we do well for you!
Regards,
Dash@RouteNote
Great spot Chesler. Thanks.
There’s also a decent article in Futue Music this month about distributors and getting your music out there.
do i need to register to the orchard before i upload my tracks on routenote?
All you need to do is sign up to RouteNote.
update, just uploaded our first release with these guys and the comntent management system is a dream.
Also worth a note they also provide UPC (Universal producs codes) for free, this is a big deal as these are manditory for almost all digital stores and some distributors will charge you up to $50 for one.
Fast turnaround and real time stat reporting to boot!
Great service and also great people
Thanks Oliver
@Blinky thanks for the nice comments about our service. We are trying to increase our offering in terms of partners and product as we grow.
@Dominic You dont have to use the Orchard at all to use RouteNote. Just head to RouteNote.com and you can sign up for our service for free.
But where are the actual terms and conditions of the distro agreement? I want to use this service, but there is no way I would do that without seeing the actual fine print. I e-mailed asking for this info, but two days later nobody has sent it to me. There should be a clear link to this on the site, not just to the terms and conditions of using the site itself. This has nothing to do with the actual legal relationship between the artist and the distributor.
One BIG problem with Routenote is it’s poor service. After waiting months and months for my song to be released on iTunes through Routenote I discovered that they had actually MISSPELLED MY BAND NAME. They where, however, pretty quick as fixing the problem once I contacted them. After that, I assumed everything was going to be fine from then on. Unfortunately, although my song has been on iTunes since August or September, not a single song sale has yet to show up on my Routenote sales info in my account. Either Routenote is terribly inefficient at posting sales on time, or they are hiding sales of my song from me. I know that my song has been purchased because as a test to see this, I purchased my own song on iTunes. I am not going to assume or accuse routenote is hiding sales of my own song from me at this time, but it is disappointing to see how inefficient this company is.
I have heard the same horror stories off several people now unfortunately.
Looking from their other reviews, Routenote’s CEO is in financial difficulty over his other company where they have still not paid anyone.
And there is a lot of talk about them not even having an office. Something they deny, but from what i can see, their people skills are appalling.
It seems that they are mostly reviewing their service themselves and hyping it up through Crenk.com which is owned by the same person and is their Number 1 fan!
I would be interested to hear any “real” reviews of Routenote. Ones that aren’t obviously fabricated by themselves.
@Barnsey Im CEO over at RouteNote and I have never been in any issues with any company I have been involved with.
RouteNote runs from an office in Redruth, Cornwall. We are always open for artists to come and say hello and have a coffee with us.
RouteNote is the largest UK digital music distributor and we have staff that have worked in the industry for many years. Additionally, RouteNote offers unbeatable customer service, in which any artist can just give us a call anytime.
We dont fabricate any reviews. Over 3,200 artists are happy with the RouteNote service and we are growing rapidly ever month.