War of the Record-Slingers

There's a fight going on online that most people don't know about. It's a war of allegiances, a battle of musical brawn and business know-how, and it's definitely not what you know, but who you know. This battle royale is between the modern age's few online music distribution companies, and they're tearing each other apart for your business.

Simply Googling online music distribution companies will elicit a bizarre mish-mash of news articles, blog reviews, and forum posts that could make any poor musician's head explode. It's not informative, it's not authoritative, and it's not – well, it's not very friendly. Nevertheless, music distribution is done online now, and the sooner everyone gets used to it, the better off everyone will be.

So what is music distribution, anyhow? Music distribution is the art and process of transmitting music and other recorded audio mediums to places where listeners can receive the product, for a nominal fee, of course. Naturally, this makes online music distribution companies something of a middleman, but they aren't middlemen without purpose. In fact, attempting to self-publish a record album without the involvement of online music distribution companies would be insane.

How insane? Try to imagine emailing customer service at iTunes requesting for information with regard to submitting your album to the Apple people in order for selling it on the iTunes store. Imagine them replying with a FAQ that doesn't answer even half of your questions. You're further behind than you were before you started, now. Imagine phone calls, endless file transfers, filling out forms... Now imagine doing it more than 500 times at more than 500 entirely different websites with an endless variety of methods and requirements. Yeah.

Much, much easier would be going to an online music distributor, someone cheap, dependable and personable (good reputation a must). MondoTunes is generally considered the smartest choice right now, though distributors have cultish fan bases and people will say bizarre things in defense of CDBaby or whomever. Mondo's generally considered the best right now because right now they're cheapest, they go to all the big stores and something like 700 others all over the place, and they've got the best customer service by far. Check out their reviews and testimonials to make sure nothing has changed since the writing of this article, but to be sure, the war of the online music distribution companies won't be coming to a close anytime soon.

Online Music Marketing

Pretty much everybody has the music marketing thing figured out by now, right? Wrong. In fact, unless you're an artist with a recent degree in merchandising (and even then, music is very specific) chances are you don't know all there is to getting your music “out there.” This short article will attempt to clarify some of the most important details.

Naturally, if you want to get your music “out there,” you're going to have to sell your music online, and to sell your music online, you're going to need to get on iTunes. ITunes is the unofficial frontrunner of the online music business, with outlets like Amazon and others nosing in at the lead. The problem is, most people don't know how to get music on iTunes. The answer is deceptively simple, in fact.

One could walk up to the pearly Apple gates and knock on the door and ask politely to be featured on iTunes, but that's the plebeian method, and one I'm not certain would be taken seriously by the powers that be. The professional answer to the question of how to get music on iTunes is to do it the old-fashioned way using newfangled technology and techniques. Namely, online music distribution.

The way to hook up online music distribution is to do a little research on online music distribution companies (digital music distribution companies) and to pick one of them to patronize. You should educate yourself in terms of pricing, the breadth and scope of the actual distribution, and whether or not customer service will be provided by an actual human being. Most companies use robot phones to deal with customer service. That won't do in a pinch (and this is your music we're talking about) so make sure you find a company who will talk to you on the phone.

Recent reports from artists distributing their music records right now have been scattered. Most artists are fanboys of one online distribution company or another for very dubious reasons, much like the age-old Ford vs. Chevy thing, except that there are four major distributors and each have their cult following. Seemingly, relative newcomer MondoTunes seems to be edging out the competition in terms of price, service, and customer service, and they boast over 750 online retail outlets in their partnership, iTunes included.

So when you're ready to sell your music online, you know how to get music on iTunes. Why wait? Make it happen.