Ah, but surely it *is* worth starting up your own download only MP3 label.. umm, right?

and there's a big enough gap in the market for a site selling higher-than-192 and FLAC by a wide range of chart acts past and present. Amazon or whoever should probably be doing it already.

i'm torn b/w even bothering to shop my own album around to any more labels; pressed cds seem like such an environmental waste.

What do you say? "Hello, iTunes website, I'd like to add my self-financed album to your racks?"

Or do you have to be EMI and sign a high-profile 'agreement' etc?

iTunes carries some tiny labels, but they don't deal with them directly. Usually labels sign up with aggregators, a popular one is Ioda:

http://www.iodalliance.com/

Small labels sign up with the aggregator who becomes like a digital distributor.

You can also deal direct with other services, or offer downloads yourself, though to do that requires setting up a website and taking credit card orders and those hassles.

Also see:

http://www.snocap.com/

We hope to act as an aggregator ourselves to some degree, hooking up with likeminded reissue labels. You'd be adding another middleman, but idealy one with a vested interest i promoting your music, and thus selling it. A service like Ioda may get your music on iTunes, but you still have to find the ways to get people to go there and download it.

Yeah, pretty much. If you use Tunecore, you can get any recording you have the rights to on iTunes (as well as eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody etc). It's cheap, easy and you will in fact get paid.

Also, 50% split, while being more favourable than the standard 'hard product' record deal, still seems quite high. If that's a good split, what are the 'bad' ones like?

(perjorative terms there, I know. Still trying to get a handle on what's involved there)

You have to pay an initial set up fee of around $25 per album (depending on the number of tracks you have and the number of digital stores you subscribe to) and then $7.98 flat fee per year every year after that to maintain the album in the database. The rates for eMusic and Napster etc are more byzantine, but go to the FAQ on Tunecore for details. It's a pretty good deal over all. I have a couple albums on iTunes via Tunecore and have been happy with the service so far.

Also, apparently Cordless, http://www.cordless.com/, is one of your new-fangled interweb-only labels--but with a twist! (It's run by a major. It's too late, run for the hills!) That said, I'm going to skip one more generation of technology--I'm going to go straight to wireless distribution. Hellsyeah baby! Me and my boombox and 1-block radius FM broadcaster, driving around Manhattan 'til everyone's heard the word. Tune your radios to 88.1 or whatever frequency hasn't been taken up by the man.

Sorry for the rambling post, I'm all hopped up on sugar.

Yeah, but it's nominal. .99 per store--and that's just for the initial upload of the album. You're not charged per store after that--just the 8 bucks per year to maintain. They do count iTunes Japan, EU, Australia as separate stores, which is annoying, but understandable, I think. They don't have all the stores Dan lists above, so I guess if you want max exposure, another service might be better.

I can only speak to my experience with Tunecore, which has been very good, but you don't have to form a label to get a CD into iTunes. You just have to be 18 years old or older and have the rights to the recordings. Apparently you can even upload cover songs, if you've already properly secured the rights through Harry Fox or whoever.

Koopa : "Beg Steal and Borrow"

or you could just listen to it!

shame. 20 years it is...

if you shop at Albertsons, you might already be the unwitting victim of my strains. And now i feel so much shame that I don't want to continue this line of discussion.

Anyway, we tried and failed to get it onto itunes and people were kind of resistant to buying it from our site. I guess the kind of people who come to the shows and so on are used to getting stuff FREE on myspace or whatever. I think being on itunes would have given us the veneer of properness that might have persuaded more people to part with their 79p. Maybe.

So ta for those links. May try again later in the year with a download only thing.