MondoTunes, CDBaby, TuneCore, and ReverbNation: How They Measure Up
If you wanted to sell music around the
world twenty years ago, you needed to get picked up by a major
label. That meant demo tapes, postal services, and constant
performing on tours. That was all a ton of fun, but extremely hard
work and very expensive, besides. That's where music distribution
online comes in.
Music distribution has changed in two
decades. Today's music distribution is digital music distribution.
This is a good thing for modern musicians. It takes much less work
to sell music online than it does to sell albums off a merch table,
and you don't even need to leave your house. In fact, today's
artists don't even need a complete album.
If you want to know how to sell music
in the modern market, the first thing you need is a music promotion
company selling your songs, and handling your digital music
distribution online. Distribution of music and selling songs
requires a vast, ingrained network of business partners worldwide,
which is why corporations like Virgin, EMI, and Capitol Records were
able to control the industry for so long, but today's music
distribution companies are smaller, friendlier and more honest than
the giants of yesteryear.
Today there are four major companies
that handle digital music distribution, each having its ups and
downs. These are MondoTunes, CDBaby, TuneCore, and ReverbNation.
The following graph shows how their prices measure up (click to
enlarge if it's too small).
MondoTunes is the least expensive of
the group, which would make sense if they were offering fewer
products and services for the price, but in fact they offer much,
much more. This can only mean that Mondo is trying to snatch
customers from their competitors, naturally, and there's no telling
when the other companies will start offering more/charging less, but
as of now (late August 2012) MondoTunes doesn't show any sign of
raising their low flat rates, and their service is probably going to
stay superior for the following reasons:
They offer free UPC and ISRC codes,
which is extremely unusual in all kinds of publishing (music, books,
whatever). They offer the ability to create your own music label,
too, as well as live representative assistance (think actual phone
calls, also unheard of). Perhaps most of all, however, their
distribution network is the exact same one utilized by Gaga, the
Black Eyed Peas, U2, One Republic, Rihanna, and countless other
artists signed to Universal Music, which means Mondo boasts the
largest music distribution in the world today. Finally – and this
may be most important of all for many artists – Mondo's still run
by the same small crew of people that started it, all of whom have
been musicians in the scene, themselves. That can be extremely
comforting.
Selling songs online can seem daunting,
but it's far easier than one might expect, and far, far easier than
the traditional method of music promotion. Selling your songs is now
as simple as – well, the click of a button. If you can compare
prices (as above) then you no longer need to understand the
distribution of music or how to sell songs. You don't have to know
an A&R rep to sell albums, anymore, and while the old-school
music fan in you may feel nostalgic for the old ways, the truth is,
music all around the world is much better off without them. As long
as honest, inexpensive companies like Mondo are around, absolutely
anyone can sell music online.
