How can I get my music listed on iTunes for free?
Ranked #953 in Music, #25,312 overall
How an unsigned artist, or a small independent record label, can register albums with iTunes & other mp3 download sites
But iTunes is such a behemoth - eg in 2008 it accounted for over 82% of CDBaby digital revenues - it doesn't deal with little independent music producers like me. It has a smallish set of gate-keeper distributors and deals only with them. If you are successful already, then one of the distributors like The Orchard may want to represent you. Or if you're willing to spend a fair hunk of cash, places like CDBaby, Reverbnation and Tunecore will deliver your indie, self-produced music to iTunes.
My label's music has been available for mp3 download at Amazon for a long time now, via the very efficient CreateSpace program. They are available for mp3 download, they show up in searches and we sell some every month. That was the extent of our digital distribution until recently - since I don't have an Apple computer or an iPod, I had been reluctant to download the iTunes software - the one time I tried it, it seemed kind of virus-like so I uninstalled it.
But iPods are bigger than ever, and so iTunes represents an important opportunity to sell music. I now see I've been missing a huge potential audience by not having our songs available on the iTunes site.
The majority of independently produced albums will not sell enough tracks or whole albums to pay for the cost of Reverbnation, Tunecore, or CDBaby uploads to Apple. Luckily, if you are able to do a substantial amount of the prep work yourself, there is a much cheaper alternative, via the Routenote website.
How many online music distribution stores are critically important for my mp3 downloads?
Routenote: "eMusic has sold 250 million tracks since 2004; Amazon's been going for about a year now, 300 million tracks let's say - which pales beside iTunes' 6 billion total sales... A conservative 15% market share between Amazon and eMusic, along with iTunes' >80% doesn't leave more than 5% for any other players in the USA: with just those three selling your music for you online, you've got 95% of the market covered.
How long does it take for music to get listed on iTunes?
Routenote approved my albums in 3-4 days and then wrote "Distribution to all selected retail partners normally takes between 4 and 6 weeks." They say that's how long it used to take - but the first album I listed went live within a week of being uploaded to their service!!
Here it is! New Hope Harmony a cappella gospel - available on iTunes!
It took about a week from the time I uploaded it to Routenote
I am thrilled! This is quite an old recording but I think it's very beautiful. Click on the picture, or the iTunes logo, to visit this album at the iTunes site! Note that iTunes may reject your music even if it's properly delivered by your chosen distributor.
From Reverbnation
No. Each retailer has the right to refuse your release. Common reasons for refusal include the quality of the recording or cover art, or a pre-existing release with the same UPC/ISRC.
Is my music guaranteed to get played on Pandora?
No. Delivery of music to Pandora is simply that-delivery to their servers, for their convenient access, should they want to access it and include it on their radio station. This delivery does not place your music into Pandora's proprietary indie music submission process and does not mean that your music will ever be reviewed by, or played on, Pandora. Be aware, Pandora may have other requirements before they will consider your music, like having a physical CD for sale on Amazon, so be sure to check on their current policies.
If you are able to do most of the work yourself - if you know how to rip your cds into high-quality mp3s, size your album art to 600px square, and list your tunes correctly - then you can save a lot of money by using Routenote. The directions are below.
How to use Routenote to register your music with iTunes, Rhapsody, emusic, etc.
No upfront costs: they take 10% of all revenues. For the little guy, this is the best deal.
- Visit Routenote.com - have a look around and then register and confirm your registration through the email response.
- Download the Desktop Upload Tool. Although theoretically you can upload your tunes and track information and cd cover via the website, I found that to be buggy and slow. Also, it's a total mess if you don't add all the tracks in one sitting. Better to use the upload tool - then you don't have to send until everything is ready.
- Open the upload tool. Click "playlists" and then click the plus sign under the left-hand column. Enter the name of the new project and then click OK.
- Now click on your new project (till it turns blue) and enter the info.
Your language
The title (if it's different from the project name)
The artist(s)
The genres (the list doesn't have things I needed but what can you do?)
The label (I guess if you don't have a label, make one up and give it a page on your website)
The copyright year
UPC code - if you don't have one leave it blank and Routenote will give you one for free!
I just leave "sales start date" blank
Year: I put current year
Explicit content: choose "clean" or "explicit"
Choose the stores: your choices are iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, Spotify, Napster, Thumbplay, and Deezer. Choose "all" unless, like me, you want to deal separately with Amazon or one of the others. - Upload your cover art, which has to be 600 x 600 pixels (You can use irfanview to resize/resample your picture if necessary
- You're done with this screen, so now click the "tracks" tab.
- You'll see two gray boxes. Click "add" under the import heading and find your tracks on your hard drive. You can select them and add them all at once. If they are in more than one folder, you can click "add" again and find the next batch.
- When you've added all the tracks, click "Import." Now you should see them all in the next box.
- Click the "Tracks" tab where you'll see nothing UNTIL you click on your new project in the left-most column! Then the tracks you just imported should appear.
- Fill in the info about the first track and press NEXT. Continue until all have been completed.
If you have ISRC numbers for your tracks, enter them - otherwise, leave the bottom space blank and Routenote will assign ISRC numbers. When you've filled in the blanks for all the tracks... - Click on the "Send" tab.
- Click your new project (it will turn blue) and then click "Add to Queue."
- Click the "agree to terms" box and then hit send. You're done!
Confirm that you succeeded by going to the Routenote site, click on "My content" and your new project should be there. It will say "pending moderation" - for my first project it took four days for them to get around to moderating it, and it now says "Approved." I'll let you know when it shows up on iTunes!
Now you can take the UPC code they've provided (it's actually an EAN) and go to the Soundscan site and register your album.
Here's what my dashboard at Routenote looks like right now.
Will these two albums get listed on iTunes? I'll let you know if/when they do.
How long will it take for my album to stop being in "pending moderation" mode?
Routenote writes me: In Moderation we have a brief quality control of the actual content, we make sure all metadata and content files are formatted correctly etc.
As you suspect there is a lot to get through and only a few guys here to do it. Hopefully the moderation times will decrease as staffing increases but we are still relatively new and small company.
After Moderation, releases join the queue for distribution. So speed of distribution ultimately
How can I tell if my music has made it onto iTunes?
The iTunes Linkmaker will show you
Below, a comparison - review of the various online digital music distributors. If you'd like me to add another, let me know.
Ditto Music made this chart comparing their service to other digital distribution services
It may be a little self-serving, but I found it helpful
What it made me see was that ALL these services are charging you a lot of money! What they are is gatekeepers - since iTunes is too big and important to deal with us little pipsqueak music producers, they've anointed some of these companies and the companies are taking advantage of their privileged access to iTunes.
CDBaby - cost of uploading your music
CDBaby has a good reputation and is a reasonable choice in many ways. You'll see some online sites suggesting that CDBaby - which is the home of many independent and unsigned musicians - will get your music listed at iTunes for free. That is only the case if you have your album manufactured with Oasis or Diskmakers or some other facility that offers a sweetheart deal with CDBaby. For instance, my recent albums, cabaret Warsaw and I Can't Complain - but sometimes I still do (Yiddish songs), were pressed by Oasis Mfg. so they are listed at CDBaby for free, and CDBaby got them listed at iTunes, etc.But if you have not pressed your cd with one of these businessman, CDBaby will charge you $39 a year to list EACH album.
So I can't afford to put my back catalog up on CDBaby (see the costs below).
taintedcanvas.com writes:
Costs: $35 one time cost
Number of Stores: 13 (includes all majors)
Percentage You Get From Each Sale: 91%
Physical Product Sales Option: Yes
Payout: Weekly
Credit Card Machine: Available for purchase - conveniently linked directly to your PayPal account ($36 one time fee).
Webpage with account: Yes
Barcode price: $20 (you can't avoid this fee)
Time it Takes to Go Live: 2-5 weeks to send to retailers, then 3 weeks to 4 months for it to go live on the digital retailer site.
Support: Phone and email
Overall CD Baby Notes: With CD Baby, you have to send 5 CD's to start and approximate your inventory for them. It is nice because both your physical and digital product are together, but it can be annoying to try to know how much inventory to give them. If they have too much, they send it back to you and you pay that shipping expense. CD Baby keeps $4 from every physical sale, though! That is the kicker. If you are selling an EP, you normally sell that for around $5, so it definitely is not worth it. Heck, many full albums will be available on iTunes in a few weeks for $7.99.
Cost of using Reverbnation to get your music listed online
I like and use Reverbnation artist webpages, but for peripheral services they are quite expensive - for instance, when I put a t-shirt for sale at the Reverbnation "merch" online store, if I set the price to the consumer at $16.50, I receive an amazingly puny $0.64 (that's 64 CENTS) of the deal.Their deal to get you on iTunes is pretty darn expensive. From taintedcanvas.com:
Costs: $34.95 one time cost
Number of Stores: 10 (includes all majors)
Percentage You Get From Each Sale: 100%
Physical Product Sales Option: No
Payout: Same as tunecore. Some stores payout quarterly, most are monthly, and RN will payout within 45 days
Credit Card Machine: No - just digital sales.
Webpage with account: Yes.
Barcode Price: Included
Time it Takes to Go Live: RN uploads within days, usually takes 6-8 weeks after that from the digital distributor.
Support: Email.
Pricing structure of Tunecore
TuneCore was, I think, the earliest gatekeeper for Indie musicians. It is still very big - and very expensive.from TaintedCanvas.com: Costs: $19.98 per album, per year! An ongoing cost, plus they charge the first $0.99 from each store (and iTunes is divided up by country, so that could be a lot).
From themusicsnob.com: "If you stop paying TuneCore's annual "Maintenance" fee, they will have your music taken down from the services. Which is lame. Allegedly the maintenance fee pays for their servers to store your music projects, but if your music is already on iTunes, etc. and you have no desire to add them to additional services, you are basically paying them NOT to take your music off iTunes, which is like a bribe. Or ransom."
From dittomusic.com wrote:
- Tunecore customers can upload an album for $47 per album - but this is an introductory offer ... your next release will to cost you $78 to get 10 tracks on online.
- Tunecore split their iTunes territories up into 6 so that you have to pay six times for delivering 1 track to iTunes.
- If you want to remove your music in the first 6 months you will have to pay a takedown fee of $30. There is also a $9.99 yearly charge on their $9.99 single offer, something not mentioned on the front page."
Catapult
Info from taintedcanvas.com
Number of Stores: around 100 stores! (includes all majors and they break up iTunes EU into separate categories to make it sound better). Also includes Best Buy's digital store, which is really only beneficial because you can use their logo. They don't have large digital sales obviously.
Percentage You Get From Each Sale: 91-95% (tiered system, basically 91%)
Physical Product Sales Option: No
Payout: Once a month from when the digital distributor sends through PayPal.
Credit Card Machine: No - just digital sales.
Webpage with account:
Barcode Price: $20
Time it Takes to Go Live:
Support: Email.
You don't have to have a physical CD like you do for the other distributors (but you do need artwork and a barcode still).
Crunching the numbers, Routenote says it offers the best deal until your track sales reach about 5,000 track sales, at which point TuneCore and Musicadium offer more money to the artist; at 30,000, CD Baby begins to show a slight advantage.
Other lenses for independent musicians and small record labels
Any comments for me? Have you had experience with any of these companies?
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ChapelHillFiddler
May 3, 2012 @ 3:56 am | delete
- Lostindigital, the reason for my emphasis on routenote is that it is the only free method I know of. If you know of another, please let me know.
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LostInDigital
May 3, 2012 @ 3:38 am | delete
- great article and review of digital distributors, but a bit too oriented "pro-routenote"
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hinazille
Mar 2, 2012 @ 7:48 am | delete
- great lens - routenote is opening too much doors...
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ocarver
Feb 9, 2012 @ 4:14 am | delete
- Right on man, bands need help so badly. The music industry is upside down and we need more people like you helping to show artists how to get better exposure. Amen!
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MicCheck
Aug 4, 2011 @ 4:16 pm | delete
- Thanks for sharing. This is great information.
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javrsmith
Apr 1, 2011 @ 12:18 pm | delete
- You have given artists great information showing them how to get listed on iTunes. Good job! Blessed by a Squid Angel.
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Distrx
Oct 10, 2010 @ 5:31 pm | delete
- As an independent artist, this information is extremely valuable. For a long time I have been looking to get my bands music on iTunes without the high price tag attached by some of the distributors. Great lens, thank-you!
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by ChapelHillFiddler
Musician in Chapel Hill with two bands: Mappamundi, a world music - klezmer - swing band, and the Pratie Heads, a Celtic - British Isles - early music... more »
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