How to get your music on iTunes

Following several weeks researching which questions musicians really want the answers to, I noticed that one of the most frequently searched music queries on Google is ‘How to get music on iTunes’, so for the 2000 of you who searched this last month, I present you with the answer!

How to get on iTunes – The DDIY approach (Don’t do it yourself)

If you are lucky enough to find yourself a record deal, the distribution of music to iTunes is almost definitely going to be the duty of your record label, they will have a deal with a distributor, who has a deal directly with iTunes and other online music stores such as Amazon. When you send your music to your record label manager or A&R person, they will forward it onto their distributor.

How to get on iTunes – The DIY approach (Do it yourself)

For the rest, and the majority of musicians in the independent and unsigned boats, you are probably wondering how you can get your music for sale on iTunes without a record label, well thanks to a few innovating distributors this is now possible.

 Websites such as Tunecore, and Ditto offer music distribution services to unsigned and independent artists for a ‘per track fee’, current prices for Tunecore are approximately £0.99 / song / store / year; so a standard single release to iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, E music, Lala, shockhound, and IMVU, costs approximately £8 per year. A standard album costs approximately £20 to distribute per year, there are however a range of optional extras such as distributing to the Nokia music store for an extra fee.

 So I suppose your next question would logically be ‘Which stores should I submit to?’ or ‘Why submit to all of these stores I’ve never heard of when almost everyone will buy my songs from iTunes?’, there is a lot of strength in these arguments, and while I wouldn’t recommend distributing to every store available, there is certainly a hidden value in some of the less popular stores. iTunes, and Amazon will only pay you when someone buys your song, which is great, but Napster and some of the other less popular stores actually pay musicians per listen, despite this amount being somewhere in the £0.01 – £0.02 per listen region, it can soon add up if your songs are receiving thousands of plays.

 So what would I recommend?

Personally, I have a preference for Tunecore (No i’m not on commission!) as it is very simple to upload your music to and track payment. I did attempt to use Ditto once but I ended up being transferred to an old database which requested me to pay for the distribution via cheque, so I have lost trust in their system!

I would also recommend for those of you who haven’t already, to read the Online Music Promotion Guide, as this contains some excellent tips, particularly on how to use other website platforms to increase your music sales and gain new fans in the online world.