Is TuneCore really a direct-to-fan solution?
To: Paul Resnikoff/Digital Music News
From: Scott Feldman
Re: TuneCore Has a Great Story to Tell. So Why the Misinformation?
Direct-to-Fan is the dominant trend in today’s music space. Whether it’s Trent Reznor telling us, or anyone else, the ability to engage with fans and provide unique, compelling offers is tantamount to success.
What’s disturbing though, is that you’ve labeled Tunecore as a frontrunner in the direct-to-fan space. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In the effort to connect with fans, TuneCore provides opportunities to send your music through 3rd Party Distributors into the hands of fans. In doing so, you…
- completely forfeit the opportunity to collect fan info from purchases,
- you forego the opportunity to control much of how your music is presented,
- you even lose a lot of say into the pricing and overall availability of your music on their platforms.
This is about as indirect-to-fan as it could possibly be. And while it’s great that there’s money to be made in these channels, breaking an artist doesn’t start by having music on iTunes. In this case, Bob Lefsetz is 100% correct.
As for the “fuzzy logic” regarding transactions vs. revenues, it should be obvious to anyone that the more people between the artist and fan, the less money ends up in the artist’s pocket. All of the spreadsheets and analysis you can create doesn’t amount to anything if you can’t simply connect with your fans. And Tunecore, for all its merits, doesn’t actually accomplish that most basic task.
Tunecore makes their money based upon the fees paid upfront for the option to distribute across multiple platforms. They do not collect any commissions beyond what the providers take, and pass everything along to the artist. And while that’s great, I seriously question how much the artists are paying out to TuneCore compared to how much they’re making through the service.
My guess, like the major labels of old, is that the artist rarely recoups the expense of getting their tracks out there. Sure there are exceptions, but the vast majority of artists (from my experience) fall into the latter. Without the opportunity to engage fans and build a fanbase, pushing music out through TuneCore is introducing a very small fish to an impossibly massive ocean. There are no opportunities for exposure or growth and no direct connection to interested fans.
Nobody is saying that DIY is the savior of the music space. To be very clear, Direct-to-Fan is NOT DIY. In today’s industry, you can’t be a one-man corporation handling your own sales, marketing, promotion, performing, booking, and more. TuneCore is a DIY solution for 3rd party distribution. Nothing more, nothing less. And they do a great job at it! But to my knowledge only Nimbit provides a complete direct-to-fan platform offering solid guidance and support for these needs – including (but never relying on!) 3rdparty distribution.
I encourage all artists, at any experience level, to think about what they actually need to succeed. When they’ve done that, the choice becomes clear. And at that point, Nimbit is ready to help you: smartly, strategically, and best of all, effectively!
Let me clear up a few things, Scott. You say artists using TuneCore:
–completely forfeit the opportunity to collect fan info from purchases
This just isn’t true. The stores don’t pass on that information to anyone, even if you go direct with them. Anything you CAN get from the stores, TuneCore passes on to you. That’s everything from the sale period, the store/territory, whether it was a track or album sale, on and on. We even go so far as to create graphs and spreadsheets to help people manage that data. If someday the stores start giving out data from the fan who purchased it, you can bet we’ll pass that along too.
–You forego the opportunity to control much of how your music is presented
Also not true. TuneCore arms all our artists with the information they need to know how their material will be presented in the stores, and if you need a change, you can just write us and we’ll have the stores do it. Going direct with the stores wouldn’t give you one more inch of say on this.
–you even lose a lot of say into the pricing and overall availability of your music on their platforms.
Completely untrue. You can never have a say in the pricing of your music, that’s price fixing, and it’s illegal. In some cases, the stores let you pick the level (frontline, midline, catalog, etc.), and we pass that choice on to you. And if you have an availability issue, such as no rights in a given territory, again, we’ll make that happen for you at the store.
Of course we’re indirect with the stores—to the advantage of the artist. Artists and even many labels can’t go direct to the stores, the stores aren’t open to building new relationships, forming the contracts, etc. And why would you want to have to manage twenty contracts and get twenty different accounting spreadsheets every month? You lose nothing by going with an aggregator, you gain all the tools we’ve built, all the access and ease we grant, and, with TuneCore at least, you get it for a ludicrously low price that covers an entire year in all stores. That’s our business model: good service at a fair price with nothing lost.
You say, “I seriously question how much the artists are paying out to TuneCore compared to how much they’re making through the service.” Several points here: 1) artists are making astonishing money, we’ve paid out $40 million just last year alone—I have too many examples to list here; 2) how much would you have to pay lawyers to draft and review contracts with all twenty stores, if you wanted to go direct, to name merely one expense TuneCore obviates; 3) how much you make is, now as ever, up to YOU, the artist/label. We promise to deliver your music to the stores, but it won’t sell if you don’t work it, promote it, support it, market it or if it’s awful music.
You conclude, rightly, that TuneCore isn’t Direct-to-Fan, and that’s fine. We’re not. But I have to say that for the DIY person who wants into the digital stores dominating the market (iTunes, Amazon, etc.), TuneCore is the DIY solution, and there’s NOTHING LOST in access, freedom and accountability by using us. For those who want to do more with their music, I say, yes! Good! Work it, use everything at your disposal to get out there, from TuneCore to YouTube to Google.
–Peter
peter@tunecore.com
Peter –
The artist forfeits a certain amount of visibility, positioning, and presentation when they distribute to 3rd parties. As an example, no matter how phenomenal my music is (trust me, here…), I’m still competing with the Rolling Stones, Justin Bieber, and MGMT for placement. On my own website/Facebook/MySpace, that’s not the case.
Additionally, in a direct-to-fan model you definitely have a say in the pricing of your music — if I choose to sell my music, on my site, for $0.99 or $99.99, that choice is mine to make, and I collect every piece of fan info from each transaction.
But to the $40 million you paid out, what does the average (non-arena gigging) Tunecore artist earn? I would think Jason Mraz or Cheap Trick (looking at your homepage) would raise the average up.
I’m not advocating that artists go “direct” to iTunes or Amazon. I agree that it would be a frustrating, expensive process. The point was that if Digital Music News considers TuneCore as a frontrunner in direct-to-fan, then something’s off. You’re a solid company doing wonderful things, but direct-to-fan isn’t one of ‘em.
Thanks for the comment, I appreciate the opportunity to create a dialogue others can benefit from.
Makes perfect sense, Scott. I see what you mean, it’s not direct-to-fan, no. And actually, our payout curve isn’t that “spiked”–by no means are only a few artists getting the lion’s share. It’s far more even than that.
I just wanted to make sure people didn’t feel there was something lost from using a good aggregator, especially TuneCore.
Thanks!
–Peter
peter@tunecore.com