Discussion Thread

Anyone have a preference between CDBaby and Reverbnation?  I'm aware of the basic differences between them (CDBaby takes a % of sales, Revebnation charges a flat fee every year, so costs will depend on how much we sell).  Reverbnation distributes to about 10 more stores for their basic package, but they both distribute to the big stores (iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon, Napster, Zune, LastFM, etc).  After that, they both distribute to a bunch of retailers I've never heard of.  So I'm not sure how important those differences are.

Thanks for any input you have.

Hey, I'm pretty much looking for the same info you are too. The main thing I have questions over is how much really gets taken from the digital distribution to places like iTunes. On reverbnation, they say iTunes takes 30% off of your sales, while cdbaby takes 9% of your total net income. This is the part where I'm confused as I expect most of my future online sales to be from iTunes, but I'm not sure if iTunes just has an automatic 30% claim to all of your sales no matter what, and wouldn't an added 9% on top of that leave you with 61% revenue in the end while you can still get by with 70% with reverbnation? I'd like to get some clarification on that if possible. I'm not the best with math but I'd settle for whatever will pay me more for the same service any day of the week, lol. If I can actually receive $9 for a $10 album on iTunes using CDBaby then I'm sold.

Thanks,

Here are the biggest differences that I have found:

- As far as royalty payments are concerned, the retailers always take a cut of the royalties before paying the artist. CD Baby also takes a cut while ReverbNation does not. Say, for example, that a track is sold on iTunes for $.99. iTunes takes their $.29 cut and then sends the $.70 to CD Baby. CD Baby then takes their cut of 9%, so you basically receive $.63. When the $.70 is sent to ReverbNation, all $.70 is paid to you, rather than ReverbNation taking a cut.

- ReverbNation provides weekly Trending Reports from iTunes and eMusic at no cost. From what I can tell, CD Baby does not provide Trending Reports. TuneCore provides them, but they charge PER report! In this case, ReverbNation is definietly the best.

- It looks like both CD Baby and ReverbNation deliver to the major, important retailers. ReverbNation appears to deliver to a higher number of smaller niche retailers. Whether or not that is a benefit for you is dependent upon your own desires for widespread accessibility.

- Not sure if CD Baby does this, but I heard that ReverbNation can assist artists with getting their profiles set up on Apple's Ping service. Seems like a pretty cool feature!

In my opinion, I am going to go with ReverbNation. I, for one, hate having to log in to multiple sites, so I like the fact that I can manage all of my promotional efforts in one place on their site while also managing my Digital Distribution releases. They appear to to provide everything that their competitors do (and more), so I don't see any reason not to give them a try!

 Hey guys,

I wanted to jump in here and help answer some of the questions about CD Baby.  The math provided by Terry Arnalds is correct, but I do want to point out a few things that work to your advantage by working with CD Baby for digital distribution.

No annual fees - Over the life of an album, this is a big deal.  Especially as your musical catalog grows.  If you have 5 albums up for sale and have to pay a $35 annual fee per album per year, it will cost you $175 a year just to keep your music on iTunes.  You would have to sell over 1,900 song downloads a year for the CD Baby 9% cut to equal that amount.  With CD Baby you're making money.  With the other guys, you're just back to zero.  CD Baby is a partner in your success.  We only make money of you're making money.

Sell your MP3's on CD Baby.com - on the CD Baby website, artists can set the price of their MP3 downloads.  CD Baby members also make a 75% cut off the sale, which is a higher payout to the artist than any other digital store.  This is especially great for long albums or special release singles.  You have the chance to get creative and make more money.

This discussion has mainly been about digital distribution, but don't forget with CD Baby we'll sell and ship your CDs worldwide.  We still sell thousands of CDs a day to points all over the globe.

Most of us here at CD Baby are active musicians as well, so ultimately, we want you to do what's best for your career.  Obviously we think CD Baby is great and would love to help you get your music out to the world.

Kevin

CD Baby

http://members.cdbaby.com

Do you know if you can still get paid weekly through stores like iTunes with ReverbNation or is everything monthly for everything? I'm not sure if CDbaby said they do or not, I believe TuneCore says you can get paid weekly for it but I think that just might be when they give you trend reports. I'd like to receive payments every week for what I sell if possible, or atleast set it up so I can get paid weekly from different digital stores, like iTunes 1st week, Amazon 2nd week, eMusic 3rd week, Rhapsody 4th week and repeat. Or is everything basically a big lump sum every month?

The thing I like about CDbaby is that they can also duplicate your cd, album art, cd art and everything for a very great price. I've been quoted at 100 full color art cd's for $264. The best I've found for the same product anywhere else was atleast $300. I don't think RN does any services like that, they might have affiliates that do though, not sure.

I do like CDbaby's credit card swiper thing though, and the cut is very reasonable. But does anyone else know of any other credit card swiper that you can have set up to your bank account or paypal account where you can still get 100% same as cash payment for selling your merch? I've seen these things on amazon for like $30-50 that look like they would work,and can tell you automatically if the card is declined or not, which would be ideal if you're touring on the road and won't be back through that town any time soon so you need to make sure that everything is approved on the spot, not a week later. I don't really mind if I have to hook it up to my laptop for it to work, I can go wireless anywhere and have internet access with a usb card.

I do like RN's press kit feature and gig finder feature, I think that seems pretty convenient.

But I'm still trying to figure out if RN charges you the same rate every year, or if its per album per year. Cuz if they charge you a flat rate of $35 a year per each album then that'd be a different story. They advertise that you only pay $35(depending on your service) once a year regardless of how many releases you have now or will have in the future.

I wondered the same thing and was just told be ReverbNation support that:

"There is not currently a limit on the number of albums that you can submit, but each album will require its own Digital Distribution subscription ($34.95 per album)."

Up till now I was going with RN, but considering the cost if you're maintaining multiple albums CD Baby seems like the way for us to go.

 I have been asking this question everywhere too! 

I think if your not gonna sell much then CD baby takes only a % of the royalties you get but then the retailers still take their bit! :S Reverbnation's way is better because they dont take any royalties.

I've been looking at other digital distribution companies out there but they all pretty much offer the same except one, Pitchmystuff. They offer a similar method as reverbnation do but its cheaper by like $5 plus they send it to a lot more retailers including pretty much ALL of the retailers Reverbnation do. They offer like 2 packages, Premium and Premium Plus and they are $30 or $50 and they both send to over 400 retailers including the big names. They also say they dont take any cut of your royalties so to me this is a big win. Here's the link for you to take a look, they do lots of services cheap and user friendly for artists like copyright and stuff. http://pitchmystuff.com/page/digital-distribution-overview

 

Let me know if you know of anyone else cause I will soon be finishing up nmy second album :) 

I like reverbnation because it offers you a jukebox widget of your stuff that you can post all over the web- so I am able to hear your music on other sites and not just the host

 All true, but do not forget that ReverbNation ask the artist for money for each release (check reverbnation.com for prices as they may change across the time).

Something I want to point out to artists is that I am sure all of us will have great success, but until then my suggestion is to go with CDBaby unless you are absolutely sure that your music will sell quite A LOT, as the costs of reverbnation may not be covered by few sells (especially if you're going to release a single).

Let be honest on this, regrdless you inspiration, ability and technical skills to sell fairly good amount of music (assuming that your music's sound quality, mix down and mastering are at a professional level) you need ads that costs money, so, even if not directly connected to your reverbnation costs or your CDBaby % I would put ads costs also as another cost over selling your music and would add this to the total amount of costs you'll have to sustain in order to sell your music to decide what of he two service is better for your needs and market.

 

Nobody has mentioned bandcamp.com. I feel like they are the BEST place to sell your music. So, much I really can't explain in a thread. I recommend checking them out before you decide where to sell your tunes?

@littlesea  I know this answer is a year late but the best credit card processor for shows is Square.  http://Squareup.com.  The reader plugs into your iPhone, iPad or Android and it's cheaper that anything out there that I've found.  The swiper thingy you plug in, they mail to you for free.  It's pretty cool and I use it.  In fact, I just ordered a second swiper to help get people through the lines faster.  Hope that helps :)

 @ Eightbic  I use Bandcamp for certain things like free or discount downloads, but I have a hard time getting past their 15% cut when I get just as much functionality and more from cdBaby and they take 9%.  Because not only does Bandcamp charge the 15% (yes, I know it drops to 10% if you sell at a certain level), but you have to deal with PayPal fees which can be quite a chunk when an order consists of only a few tracks.  In order to get around it, they admitted to me when I asked them about it, that you'd have to set up two Bandcamp accounts and two PayPal accounts.  One PayPal account to handle micropayments and another PayPal account to handle payments over $10.  That's just too much of a hassle for me, unless someone has a better plan that has worked for them.

I do use Tunecore for new releases for digital distribution (because I anticipate high sales at that time, so my profit margin is higher) and then switch to cdBaby when sales taper off and the flat rate service no longer justifies my staying there, but I use cdBaby for my physical distribution.  

In my opinion, it all depends on how many downloads you're realistically expecting to sell.

If it's a large amount  then you want to give away as little as possible in royalties so the annual fee/ no cut option might be better.

If, however, you're not selling bucket loads then CD Baby makes more sense. The annual cost of keeping your albums in digital stores can only grow whereas your royalties may not. 

Once your stuff is on iTunes etc, you don't want to change distributor because your album will be removed if you don't pay the annuals.

My first two releases were on Tunecore which costs nearly $50 a year each. My next release will be with CD Baby.

You can, by the way, use all of Reverbnation's promo tools, pages and widgets without paying them to distribute.

 

 I reckon the best idea: use Bandcamp AND one of the big aggregators. I''ve already setup my BC site, and about to go with CD Baby for the rest. I've done a comparison of all four networks here: http://www.funk.co.nz/auckland-music-update/tunecore-reverbnation-cdbaby-the-orchard/