Tunecore Review

TUNE CORE REVIEW:

Tune Core is a music distribution website for artists to get their work out to the masses and earn some cash. There is many other options so a critique of some of the differences between them all may be helpful. This entry is focused on Tunecore specifically. What exactly is Tunecore? Are they right for me as a producer? Why are they better then the other aggregates out there? These are some of the most common questions you may be asking yourself when you learn about music distribution. With the electronic scene growing more and more as a part of pop culture in America, this is a must have piece of knowledge for most artists that love to make music.

Why does this matter?

Winter Music Conference dates are popping up fast now! There is music to push if your hungry for growth as the rest of the industry! There is one week in a year that has 100’s of events each day for electronic music with great appeal! There are panels, seminars, workshops and many networking opportunities. Or you can just go for the pool parties, hotel events, beach and yacht parties and network that way! If you don’t now about WMC here is a link to more of an explanation. 

WMC - Sell your music here too!

So the money is coming soon with music distribution! Is your track on Itunes or amazon yet? Can you capitalize on this time of year as an artist and push your music at WMC? Make announcements during your set, have QR codes on your shirt, be the one who is more prepared! Some musicians have many goals and are looking for more then just the discount aggregate known as “Pump Audio”. Although it has lots of purpose to make some extra cash. Read about the perks of Pump in anearlier blog post. 

What is Tunecore?

Tunecore gets your music out there to places where people decide to buy music. Whether your signed or unsigned Tunecore can release your music if you want to make some cash. They keep track of your royalties when downloading and streaming take place and pay you the mechanical royalties as the writer. When you sign up fill in the song writer registration form, pay them, then put in your splits. If you wrote the whole thing it is 100% you. A split relates to how much of the song you own. The singer, lyric writer, other band members, etc. may change your decision on how to split the royalty. Once you realize the split it goes out around the world. Tunecore releases to Spotify, Amazon, Itunes, Deezer, and Myspace Music, just to name a few. They offer you weekly stats on your sales and show you what’s moving and what’s not. Keep in mind that reports show up 2 months after the actual sale is complete. Many customer reviews can be discarded based on the knowledge that they don’t have a tune being sold at all or simply have not found a way to promote properly. Tunecore isn’t making the music themselves… if your bad it doesn’t sell! They also have a Tunecore player if you plan to promote your music on Twitter or Facebook. Share your music with a YouTube video, build buzz, create a following, get likes, share links, be active and it will pay off!

How is Tunecore Different?

Some of the things can be done independently without Tunecore but will cost you a lot as an artist to register with publishing societies around the world. There are dues and fees and minimums to many networks that would be easier to simply join up with a service rather then build on your own from scratch (its costly and time consuming). They are also different because they have been more transparent then some other competitors. Tunecore will show you the ways to make money and want you to do the checking yourself. They state the obvious like how to promote your stuff! It’s not a game of hide and seek! They know what works and you follow the steps. You can also list with other distributors, $30 for two songs and get 100% of your music sales. There’s another option to pay $75 one time and list other songs at no charge as they keep a 10% of the publishing royalties on the music.

Tunecore REVIEWS

So the reviews are mixed and it would make sense to brush up on as many reviews as possible with a few review searches prior to purchasing. There is a decent amount of negative reviews on nearly all-aggregate distributors though. Not many like these companies and yet they are so helpful and lucrative for musicians! To save time I’ll let you know that Itunes has recently (June 2012) changed their review process according to Tunecore. There is a Tunecore message board, which you can check out on your own and see these updates for your own research. Without Tunecore Itunes is known to take anywhere up to 6 months to approve a song with no aggregate behind them. This is one of the perks of distributors like Tunecore or others with a reputation! As of June Itunes now decided to now review content manually prior to your release date. If there is no content issues it posts. Itunes suggests that it can now take 7-14 days to be approved with this process. Many negative reviews are specific to this topic, and Tunecore seems to be handling the issue to the best of their ability by educating their customers. They have little control over how Itunes does business and it is still much better then 'not using' an aggregate and taking 6 months (or possibly longer now) because you have no relationship with Itunes. Use the link provided to see details and make some judgments on the matter.