Posted by truecreek on May 22, 2009 under More Dam News | 
By Eliot Van Buskirk
TuneCore is poised to partner with Amazon’s on-demand CD-printing-and-distribution service, Wired.com has learned. It’s a deal that could put powerful new physical publishing options in the hands of musicians, even as the world goes increasingly digital.
The service is expected to be announced Thursday, linking Amazon with TuneCore, a novel digital distribution startup that’s made waves signing the likes of Trent Reznor, Keith Richards and other stars seeking a way out of the label system, as well as slews of garage bands and hopefuls on their way up.
Tunecore will charge just $31 a year in upfront fees to handle a 10-track CD from pressing to delivery, passing all other costs through to the buyer. In other words, the service promises to remove nearly all of the risks of short-run CD manufacturing, which can cost musicians hundreds or even thousands of dollars for discs that rarely sell enough to cover expenses.
“As an artist, you have unlimited physical inventory, made on demand, with no upfront costs and worldwide distribution to anyone who orders it at Amazon.com,” said TuneCore CEO Jeff Price, formerly of indie label SpinArt Records (Pixies, KaitO, Apollo Sunshine).
The deal comes as physical music sales are tanking and as major CD distributors like Amazon seek to evolve to a digital model. Yet Price suggests that there may be life left in good old physical storage media, with a slight twist. Why would people buy music on CD if it’s also available in iTunes, Amazon MP3 and other digital stores?
“Why not?” responds Price, who says he believes the costs are so low it will makes sense for lots of bands to try it out. “Let the music fan decide how they want the music.”
In addition to competing with downloads and streaming, one obvious drawback to this model is that you can’t sell an on-demand CD at shows, where enthusiastic fans are most likely to pick one up. But Price says labels wondering why artists still need them now have yet another thing to worry about. When you can sell CDs on Amazon for 30 bucks, who needs a label? Certainly not Reznor, an early TuneCore adopter who once paid the service 38 bucks to distribute a quadruple-length album through Amazon MP3.
Amazon already offered on-demand CD printing through its CreateSpace acquisition, for a flat fee of $5 per disc. TuneCore’s massive footprint means far more bands will use that service, because it’s now just another checkbox in the system they already use.
For TuneCore, the deal expands its primary business helping indie artists get digital distribution through online outlets such as iTunes, Napster and Amazon MP3. TuneCore will now compete directly with CDBaby, the current leader in low-volume CD manufacturing and distribution. CDBaby charges $278 for 100 discs, although it recently lowered its minimum order to just five copies.
Brooklyn-based TuneCore gave us a peek inside its accounting system, which shows the most successful artists on the service regularly earning upwards of $20,000 per month. Chump change this is not.
As with its digital distribution service, TuneCore passes 100 percent of Amazon’s payout to the artist — about 40 percent of the retail price. If one of Amazon’s 80 million customers buys your 10-song CD on Amazon for $8.98, you’ll receive $3.59. After selling just nine discs, you’re in the black. TuneCore takes care of the UPC code, artwork, bar code, CD label design and so on, so that artists can concentrate on writing songs — and cashing checks.
The on-demand CD partnership with Amazon is just the latest in a long string of successes for the 2006 startup, whose distribution catalog dwarfs those of the labels.
“There’s more music released in one day on TuneCore than there is on a major [label] in the course of a year — in three days, more than all the majors combined, and within a month, all the majors and indies combined,” explained Price. “TuneCore artists have generated over $32 million in revenue from music sales over the past 22 months.
“Some of the artists, frankly, have been selling more than the Billboard Top 40 artists,” he added. “It’s just not being picked up by the mainstream places [like SoundScan] that track sales.”
As their label contracts expire, some fairly heavy hitters are signing up for TuneCore. In addition to Reznor and Richards, the service now handles distribution duties for Joan Jett and other luminaries. But unsigned bands are always found among TuneCore’s top sellers. For instance, Never Shout Never sold over 250,000 songs in 60 days, as well as 30,000 T-shirts (also handled by TuneCore).
Universal Music Group — the biggest record label in the world — has also partnered with TuneCore to offer additional services to its indie artists. For $50, Universal’s Grammy-winning producers will master your music for CD before it gets distributed. And for another as-yet undisclosed fee, Universal’s art department will also design the high-resolution PDF that iTunes now requires with each album submission — all they need is four images and the names of your songs.
Posted by truecreek on under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Maki
I’ve signed up for a Twitter account a long time ago and used it sporadically because it never really did appeal to me. Last week I decided to give it another chance and installed Snitter, a desktop application for Twitter.
I started using it actively and gradually developed an avid interest. I think Twitter is a manageable process that can be adopted for all types of lifestyles, busy or inactive. You’ll just need to integrate it within your normal workflow. It’s addictive but once you understand how to use it, it’ll be a very effective tool indeed.
Having read a great deal of other articles on Twitter, I decided a do a quick summary of all the ways you can use Twitter for both your professional or personal life. Some of these methods go beyond the use of Twitter as a lifestreaming device:
1. Personal Branding. Twitter is a social media platform you can use to build your personal brand. It has the primary benefit of developing a casual persona and establishes you as a social personality that is connected and approachable. As Twitter adoption increases, new users will be drawn towards well established Twitter personas.
2. Get Feedback. Need an alternative perspective on how a website looks or the right course of action to take? Blast out a message asking for advice and you’ll receive replies from other users. This collective intelligence can be used as fodder for articles or projects.
3. Hire People. Need a good logo designer, marketer or programmer? Send out a message asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.
4. Direct traffic. Twitter can be used to get traffic to your websites or the sites of friends. If you ask your friends to tweet about it, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up. There is a viral nature to all types of news, even on a site like Twitter.
5. Read News. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news. You can also subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific websites/conferences, which allows you to receive and view content quickly. This is very useful for active social news participants.
6. Make New Friends. Like any other social network, Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is an easy way for you connect with people outside of your usual circle. Make an effort to add active users you find interesting. A Twitter acquaintance can be developed into a long lasting friendship.
7. Network for benefits. Twitter can be used as a socializing platform for you to interact with other like-minded people, especially those in the same industry. It can be used to establish consistent and deeper relationships for future benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.
8. Use it as a ToDo list. Use Twitter to record down what you need to do while you are away from the computer. Mark the tweet as a favorite to file it for referencing. Another alternative is to use an Online task management service that is synced with Twitter. One example is Remember The Milk.
9. Business Management. Twitter can be used as a company intranet that connects employees to one another. Workers can liaise with each other when working on group projects. Particularly useful when certain workers go out often in the field. Updates could be set to private for security reasons.
10. Notify Your Customers. Set up a Twitter feed for the specific purpose of notifying customers when new products come in. Customers can subscribe via mobile or RSS for instant notification. Twitter can also be used to provide mini-updates for one-on-one clients.
11. Take Notes. Twitter provides you with an easy way to record important ideas or concepts you want to explore further. Include links relevant to ideas you want to explore. Note taking can also be done offline via mobile applications.
12. Event Updates. Businesses can use Twitter as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes. This is a hassle-free way of disseminating information, especially when you don’t have the means to set up a direct mobile link between you and the audience
13. Find Prospects. Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users. Tweet about topics parallel to your product and close prospects away from public channels by using direct messages or offline communications. Discretion and skill is needed in this area.
14. Provide Live coverage. Twitter’s message size limit prevents detailed coverage of events but it can allow you to provide real-time commentary which may help to spark further discussion or interest on the event as other Twitter users spread the message. Very useful for citizen journalism.
15. Time Management and Analysis. Twitter can simply be used to keep a detailed record of what you are doing every daily. This might be boring for others but this type of usage is useful when you want to analyze how you spend and manage your time.
16. Set Up Meetings. Twitter can help you organize impromptu meetups. For example, you can twitter a message while at a cafe, event or art gallery and arrange to meet fellow users at a specific spot. It’s an informal and casual way of arranging a meeting.
17. Acquire Votes. Send a link to your stories you’ve submitted in other social news sites like Digg. Sometimes your followers will vote up the stories because they agree with it. This allows you to acquire more support for your efforts on other social media websites.
