Wanna Hear Your Track on iTunes? Three Steps to Making it Werk.

As an independent artist, you may believe music distributors such as iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody and other top digital music websites only upload tracks from A-list artists who can promise instant revenue. I have a sunny start to your day, YOU too can have your track published and sold on these sites as well! The wonderful world of online mass distribution isn’t hard to jump into, as long as you know which way to swim.



STEP 1: Make sure your package is complete. Your CD (or single) must be mastered and mixed to perfection before most distributors will even listen to 10 seconds of the song. You may consider hiring a professional engineer to do this part for you. Don’t have an engineer? Meet one at the next I dO MUSIC! Also, it’s important that your commercial marketing is finished as well. This being artwork for the album or single cover. A lot of major distribution websites require artwork to even be considered for the track to be sold.

STEP 2: UPC Coding is to your album as your social security number is to you. It keeps track of any type of manual or digital sale of the CD. Usually you can find a good deal for UPC Coding from anywhere between $20-$50 online. I know a lot of the online distribution websites offer them in their packages as incentives.

STEP 3: Find your soul mate, better known as your Digital Distributor. What do digital distributors do, you might ask? They are the people who set up contracts with iTunes and other brand name music markets to actually SELL your music for independent artists. A very well known distributor is CD Baby (www.cdbaby.com). After I reviewed CD Baby’s website, I was very impressed with their motto. They believe in listening to every one of the albums submitted before signing any contracts with artists. They believe in quality of music, not so much quantity. From here, you’ll probably be asked to sign a contract that states that they’ll receive a small cut of what you make from sales. Considering the download is $1.00, the average payout is 40 cents to the music downloading site, 9-10 cents to the distributor, and 50 cents to the artists per song. Whatever you do, make sure that you will continue to own all rights to your own music. This means don’t sign anything if it takes the rights away from your material. It’s your masterpiece, not theirs. Other known digital distributors are SongCast & TuneCore.

Three (somewhat) simple steps to making it WERK.

Good luck!

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