The way that we listen to music has changed dramatically since back in the day when recordings of music were even available for distribution. The physical form of music has passed such a transformation that I'm almost 100% sure no artist or audio engineer from back in the day even expected. In today's world we have reached the point where the physical distribution of music is at it's minimal point and with this, physical distribution centers are shutting down all over! So how are people getting the music that they want now days? This is where digital distributors take their place.
In particular iTunes "easily outpaces its competitors." For those who don't know what iTunes is, it is a media player computer program used for playing, downloading, saving, and organizing digital music and video files. On top of that and most importantly, it is a digital download market. iTunes can connect to the iTunes Store to purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, iPod games, audiobooks, podcasts, movies and movie rentals, and ringtones. With over over 28 million songs, videos, ebooks and apps for sale online, and with over 400 million active user accounts that serve over 315 million mobile devices, iTunes is most definitely a place where an artist should sell their music.
The first way to get your music on iTunes is to work with Apple directly. One of the main requirements for this is to have a catalog of at least 20 albums. So unless you're already established and have been making music for a long time, this might be a difficult task to accomplish. Luckily there are other options.
If you don't quite meet the requirements to work with apple directly, your second option is to go through what is called an aggregator which is somewhat like the middle man. Some of the more popular apple-approved aggregators are TuneCore and CDBaby. These companies work by placing your music on iTunes as well as various other digital distributors such as amazon MP3, spotify, MySpace Music, Napster, and many others. The great thing about these aggregators is that the artist retains the rights as well as keeps 100% of the royalties after the iTunes store takes their cut. Not too shabby, right?
On a much bigger note, companies like The Orchard and IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance) who are now merged together, work on a larger scale of marketing and distribution to both digital and physical retailers. Not only focusing on music but videos as well. With all these avenues, the possibilities are endless.
With all this being said, we can come to the conclusion that putting music on iTunes is not as big a challenge as most think. When you have your music on a platform that serves an audience of over 400 million users, who knows, great things could happen! More information can be found on the companies websites. Links are below.
www.tunecore.com
www.cdbaby.com
www.theorchard.com
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