2007.03.15 - Playlist Magazine - Getting Your Music On The iTunes Store (Izzy)

Getting your music on the iTunes Store

By Jim Dalrymple

If you remember walking into music stores as a kid and thinking how cool it would be to one day see your album sitting on the shelf, the digital age may help your childhood daydream come true. With the help of a company called TuneCore, any musician or band can get their music in the most popular online stores.

TuneCore is the brainchild of Spin Art record label owner Jeff Price. When the industry shifted from physical retail stores to the online world, Price saw the ways of the traditional music label model trying to fit into the digital landscape that just weren’t working in this new environment.

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The best part for the artist is that they keep all of the money from the sale—TuneCore does not take any money on the backend. Instead, the company charges one-time fees of 99 cents per song and 99 cents per store for each album and an annual $9.98 charge per album.

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Izzy, Marley, Shoes

While theoretically anyone could—for a few dollars—take some of their own songs and sell them on iTunes, they’d have some fairly high-profile company. Artists like Ziggy Marley, Kelly Shoes, and Guns ‘N Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin all have music online through TuneCore.

“I’ve done licensing deals in Japan and Europe, but I’ve never been able to get my music out globally so everyone could get it,” Stradlin said. “When I got in touch with Jeff [Price], it was literally two weeks and my stuff was up—that’s 10 years of work.”

After years with Guns ‘N Roses, Stradlin is all too familiar with the music industry and how things are changing now. Back in the day, a new Guns ‘N Roses album would be an instant hit, but systems like TuneCore give artists a way to get their own music out there as well.

“With G’n R I would be onstage in front of 20,000 or 30,000 people playing our songs, but at the same time I would have this piece of work that I’m just dying to get out. This is a way for me to get the music out there — there are zero people between me, my music and the fans,” Stradlin said.

Another TuneCore artist, Liam Sullivan, made his comedy routine “Kelly Shoes” a sensation on YouTube before putting an album on iTunes through TuneCore. According to Sullivan, having the music on iTunes has taken things way beyond where he ever thought it would be.

“It could have been this really local underground thing, but that’s about it,” he said. “iTunes is a store to me, it’s like having my CD in target or something.”

There’s no catch

According to Price, TuneCore is working just the way he envisioned it, and it’s only going to get better.

“I wanted to make a destination Web site that allows artists to succeed,” Price said. “You have within your grasp the ability to be a worldwide superstar with the Internet—you don’t need to give up your rights and revenue to make that happen.

Izzy Stradlin says he will continue to put his music online through TuneCore for future albums.

“It was so simple,” he said. “I kept waiting for the catch, but there was no catch.”

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Full article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070317125825/http://playlistmag.com:80/news/2007/03/15/tunecore/index.php