It’s essential that as an independent musician that you make your music as readily available to your fans through as many outlets as possible. This is important for convenience as well as for achieving maximum exposure of your music. There are dozens and hundreds of music stores AND streaming sites. What’s the difference?
The music store is where someone actually can purchase your music. The streaming site is simply where someone can stream your music remotely from their computer without having the music on their computer. You the musician obviously get paid for digital sales of your music but at the same time you get paid (a very negligible amount) for every stream of your music on most streaming sites, as well.
The point to be made again is that whether your music is for sale or just for listening/streaming, you need to make sure it’s available in as many online locations as possible because you don’t have the luxury of directing your listeners and fans to precisely where you’d like.
More importantly, you don’t have the luxury of directing curious listeners where you want them to go. Curious listeners are those who will maybe hear of you from a music blog or news site and will go to their application for finding music
Unfortunately, it costs money to upload and get your music on these sites. Fortunately, there is one convenient service which will get your music uploaded on the big players of both online music stores and streaming sites with just a couple of clicks. Enter TuneCore (and this TuneCore review).
TuneCore is a service which gets your music uploaded to notable and heavily trafficked online music stores like iTunes and online streaming sites like Spotify and Rhapsody. They have a number of different packages to get your music up on these sites including one which hits 19 of the biggest services for just $49.99 per album of yours which you are uploading.
After that initial cost, TuneCore doesn’t take a cut of any of sales of your albums on iTunes or other music stores, for example. iTunes will take their cut, of course, but with TuneCore you’re just paying that initial listing fee plus a yearly fee to keep your album on these stores. You can pay monthly for $5 but that obviously adds up to $60 annually, making the yearly option a better deal.
Through TuneCore, the artist retains all rights to their music which is very important and something you should always be sure of no matter which provider you go with.
On a personal note, I especially like and can attest to TuneCore for their customer service, swiftness, and reliability. Normally I’m not one to air my dirty laundry but seeing as this is relevant to this review I’ll share. I originally tried to use Ditto Music to upload my own music to the various music stores and streaming sites. They do pretty much everything else which TuneCore does for roughly the same price and on a whim I choose them over TuneCore initially.
I waited literally 8 weeks after payment had been sent and received on their end with only a couple of YouTube knock off sites having received my music (I searched every day). I had just released my music on BandCamp so wanted these stores to upload and feature my music around the same time and I checked every single day for my music on these sites with no luck.
I tried 3-4 times through emailing and finally calling and receiving little/perfunctory responses from Ditto’s support. Eventually I just told them I wanted my money back and fortunately got my money back relatively quickly. The point of telling that story was that in the aftermath, as I was sick of not having my music online, I contacted TuneCore, explained to them my situation and asked if my music’s upload through their service could be expedited.
In an immediate reply they said they didn’t “rush upload” for any artists and it would take the normal time frame (24-72 hours for most stores). That was good enough for me after waiting 8 weeks through Ditto, assuming TuneCore could deliver, and sure enough my music was on iTunes in about 24 hours and on Spotify in about 72 hours.
Long story short and the ultimate point I want you to gather from this TuneCore review, if you want your music uploaded quickly and without issue with great customer support to boot, TuneCore is your answer.
