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Cheapest way of hosting music on iTunes?
- Thread starter TwoBytes
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for simplicity, consider using an existing aggregator. my band uses Reverbnation. Tunecore was another we were considering.
for a fee, they'll get your music on iTunes and a ton of other places. they'll deal with payment for you, and offer you a bunch of other stuff.
e.g. RN gives my band a homepage, a FB widget, streaming widgets for our website, the ability for someone to order a physical cd, and of course people can purchase downloads directly from the RN site (for a smaller % than what apple takes).
for a fee, they'll get your music on iTunes and a ton of other places. they'll deal with payment for you, and offer you a bunch of other stuff.
e.g. RN gives my band a homepage, a FB widget, streaming widgets for our website, the ability for someone to order a physical cd, and of course people can purchase downloads directly from the RN site (for a smaller % than what apple takes).
Here is one my friend uses. - http://bandcamp.com/
I would push for iTunes and even Amazon or Google Play. You'll receive a lot more recognition there.
I would push for iTunes and even Amazon or Google Play. You'll receive a lot more recognition there.
Well, with Band Camp, you can allow the people to decide what they want to pay for it. Whether it be for free or for $20. It would be up to the person purchasing your music and determine what it's worth.
Nice idea but this thread is about getting it free on iTunes. So far I haven't found a company that can do this for you. I wanted iTunes as the means of distribution being the biggest retailer of music
From the bandcamp site;
Does Bandcamp place my music into iTunes, Amazon, etc?
No, we're not a digital distributor. Bandcamp is a service for selling your music through your own site, directly to your fans. If you're looking for digital distribution, check out TuneCore.
From the bandcamp site;
Does Bandcamp place my music into iTunes, Amazon, etc?
No, we're not a digital distributor. Bandcamp is a service for selling your music through your own site, directly to your fans. If you're looking for digital distribution, check out TuneCore.
In answer to your question: you can't.
As a record label owner myself with several artists up on the iTunes Music Store, I can tell you that you will NOT be able to have "free" music on the iTunes Music Store; it's not a service, it's a store. Doesn't matter if you are an indie distributor or a major label, there are set prices for songs and albums for everyone and that's all there is to it (it's not like the App Store were developers can chose what to price their apps at, including free.)
Only Apple can choose a particular song from a [usually well known or emerging] artist and select that as the "free single of the week". Otherwise, you are stuck with the prices that are set for all artists.
Hope this info helps.
As for getting your music up on iTunes in general, that has been answered by several others already; get signed to a label, sign up to Tunecore, etc. You said it yourself, "iTunes... being the biggest retailer of music" retailer being the keyword here, not shareware or freeware...
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Thanks for the definitive answer! That answers the 'why' part - very helpful indeed.
Might put them up cheaply opposed to free. Podcasts seem the only way to distribute freely if you were to do it but you loose out on the music store category.
Might put them up cheaply opposed to free. Podcasts seem the only way to distribute freely if you were to do it but you loose out on the music store category.
You're welcome. And yes, that is one way of doing it; one of my albums that I didn't think was worth "selling" I turned into a Podcast and released it for free that way, and it actually got pretty good downloads, so that is definitely I viable means of distributing your music.