CDBaby vs Tunecore: Where To Stream My Music?

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I don’t think it’s an accident that companies like CDBaby and Tunecore make their pricing so confusing.

If CDBaby say charges $49 to sell your music and Tunecore charged $38 to sell your music, most budget conscious musicians would probably choose Tunecore.

The thing is these music selling middle-men, differ in many ways.

In this post, I will point out in which ways they differ, as well as say which I think is the better choice for you. Keep in mind, I have used both services for a number of years and know many artists that have used both services and am familiar with the pros and cons.

To keep things simple, I’ll compare album and single sale options. But before we begin let’s ask ourselves a more philosophical question:

Should I Even Sell My Album?

For most musicians all that will matter is iTunes sales, Apple Music and Spotify streams as those will likely provide the lion share of income to unsigned artists.

In fact it is likely, you will make more from people streaming your songs than you will on iTunes as the majority of albums on iTunes don’t get bought.

Bet you didn’t know that 94% of songs on iTunes (that’s about 7.5 million songs) sold less than 100 copies?

So the chances of you selling more than 100 copies is very slim. Just to make things even more depressing, 32% of songs on iTunes sold only one copy! That’s it 1 sale: a lot of proud moms.

But let’s look on the bright side, streaming is rapidly growing and has surpassed 229.5 million listeners worldwide.

So basically if your music is not getting any traction. Meaning you don’t have a music video with over 1 million real views, there’s no point putting your music for sale. Sure it may feel good to say go buy my album on iTunes but the truth is nobody is buying your album, not because it isn’t good, but because nobody knows about it.

And it’s financially impossible for you to market your album to the masses. Why?

For simplicity purposes, let’s look at our friend, rapper Drake.

Drake’s Facebook page has 52 million likes.

So it is safe to say 52 million people in the world have heard of Drake’s music (otherwise why would they like his page?).

Now look at Drake’s album sales. Do his albums sell 35 million copies? No. Will they ever sell 35 million copies. Hell no. Drake’s album sales for Nothing Was The Same (which was released before streaming became popular) clocked in at 1,700,000 as of August 2016.

It’s still an impressive number but in percentage terms it is only 3.07% of the total amount of people that like Drake on Facebook that bought his album.

Less than 4% of people who like Drake bought his album!

For unsigned artists who only have say 2000 Likes, how many sales are they are going to do? Most likely under 100. And even more likely 1 copy. However, if we look at Drake’s streaming numbers they tell a different story.

His most recent album, Scorpion, was streamed over a billion times in the first week, making him one of the most streamed artists of all time. Remember when I told you way back in 2013 that the public would love streaming?

Anyway, I don’t want to sound all gloomy and all but album sales are following the typical 80/20 rule, or now the 99/1 rule.

Just as we know that 1% of the world controls 99% of the wealth, 1% of musicians sell 99% of music.

In fact, in 2007 out of 8000 songs released on iTunes, only 102 albums sold more than a million copies.

This trend is never going to reverse and will likely get more pronounced. So before you decide to sell your music, it may not be a bad idea to just give it away on Soundcloud until you have more traction.

Okay I get it! Nobody will buy my album except my mom, but that doesn’t mean nobody will stream my album! So who should I go with CDBaby or Tunecore?

The Pros: CDBaby

The thing I like about CDBaby is that they only charge a one time fee of $29 to sell your album.

And run sales from time to time where they knock that down to $19.

They do have a 69 option to help collect your royalties but if you live in a developed country, your country should already have an organization that does this for you.

Also they state you’ll need to pay an extra $20 if you’d like to be assigned a barcode, which is required if you want digital distribution, in-store distribution and SoundScan reporting.

Another thing I like about CDBaby is that they were founded and owned by Derick Sivers, an independent musician who sold it for $22 million in 2008, and gave the proceeds to a charitable trust. While this may sound trivial, I believe this is why CDBaby connected so well with independent artists because their founder actually cared (now that the company has been sold for over 10 years I’m not so sure the same can be said).

The Cons: CDBaby

The main thing I dislike about CDBaby is that they take 9% of all your royalties to pay for admin fees.

The good thing is 9% isn’t a whole lot if you’re streaming numbers are not very high.

For this reason, I would recommend going with CDBaby as you will actually be saving money as opposed to using Tunecore (which we will review right now).

The Pros: Tunecore

The first thing you’ll notice about Tunecore, is it’s modern web design

For only $35.99 you can sell your album through Tunecore. However, there is a catch: this is a yearly fee that goes up to $59.99 in subsequent years.

Meaning every year after the first, you’ll be shelling out $59.99.

If you’re scratching your hand right now, you’re absolutely right, why are you charging me to keep my album on Spotify, when it’s already on Spotify?!?!

This is straight up taking advantage of artists and I will not stand for it one bit! Just picture me standing on a table while screaming this out at inside of TuneCore headquarters.

The reason Tunecore claims they have an annual fee as opposed to CDBaby is that Tunecore doesn’t take any royalty fees.

So clearly an advantage of Tunecore is that you don’t have to give a percentage of your royalties away but a disadvantage is you have to pay every year for no reason other than to keep Tunecore in business.

Another pro of Tunecore is that you can use your earnings to pay for services on Tunecore such as the annual renewal fee, which although is a small thing is kind of convenient.

Tunecore also always seems to have little promos such as 200 free radio plays when you sign up now.

How beneficial this is I really have no clue, because (a) I don’t know anyone that has signed up for this additional service and (b) Tunecore was very vague about what radio station would be playing your song (my guess is that it’s an internet radio station nobody listens to).

Also isn’t payola kinda of illegal?

Another advantage of Tunecore that I haven’t found with CDBaby is that if your music has a prior history of selling (meaning your last release sold decently) or you have a good amount of media coverage/video views you have a better chance of being featured in various sections of iTunes or Apple Music or Spotify.

For example, Apple Music has a “Recent Releases” section, which placement in is highly coveted for obvious reasons, I’ve known artists who’ve got their music featured on there just by going through Tunecore, I can’t say the same for CDBaby.

The Cons: Tunecore

Tunecore has a much more user friendly design than CDBaby but it seems to be only to make it easier to get you to part with your money.

I could easily upload a song as we’ll as cover art without having to fill in nearly as much info as required by CDBaby. While this may seem like a good thing, when I can’t buy a barcode or don’t have to provide one, I feel I’m being duped.

Where CDBaby shines over Tunecore is that there is a lot of helpful easily accessible information when your uploading your album.

If there is a term or option you don’t understand, just click on the question mark icon and in easy to understand language an answer is presented.

Which Is Cheaper: Tunecore or CDBaby?

This is where we have to do some math.

Obviously, each artist is going to get a different split, but most unsigned artists who own all of their music make about 0.005 per stream.

Let’s say you get 100,000 streams every year.

You’ll make $500 (100,000 x 0.005).

Since CDBaby takes a 9% royalty, you’ll pay them $45 (500 x 9%) from your earnings, whereas with Tunecore you’d pay $59.99 per year.

So CDBaby is better for smaller artists who have less than 100,000 streams per year.

Where Tunecore is better is for artists who have over 150,000 streams per year.

For example, if you do a million streams per year than you’re making $5000 per year.

If you go with CDBaby, they’re taking $450 from your $5000! Whereas if you go with Tunecore, you’re just paying them the flat annual fee of $59.99.

You’ll have to crunch the numbers for yourself, but hopefully this gives you a general idea of who to go to for music distribution.

Let me know in the comments who you think is better and why?

Update: Upload For Unlimited Songs?

I’ve recently found a new streaming distributor that let’s me upload unlimited songs for one low price. You can see my review on them here.

 

 

Andre is the head audio engineer at ADG Mastering, which he helped found in 2012. For the last 10 years, he has made it his mission to empower aspiring artists and musicians from around the world. You can see more of Andre's writings on our Blog.

57 Comments

    • I love the TUNECORE setup process better than CDBaby. BUT: A “HUGE” negative of Tunecore is that if you miss the annual email for payment, which happened to me, or if you’re on autopay and your card expires, they take your music right down. Also, if you want your music out there in the ether FOREVER, at least until some other platform replaces streaming, for this, CDBABY is the only to go. Once I put music out, for the most part, I don’t want it down. Unless it’s a bad song, which can happen-:)

    • I only listened to one song ‘game on’ and although produced well – sounded dated and very mixed influenced so I didn’t check any others. It would probably work for a tv program called ‘game on’ but I doubt sell any singles. Now, my songs on the other hand are genius and I don’t need to add a link here…or rather I don’t have any links to my music because I’m just a bedroom guitar playing man and mearly jealous that I don’t have the balls to show the world my geniusness 🙂

  1. Don’t agree with article as I have actually sold my own physical CDs in my town. Not in the millions. But I hardly have any views on my youtube videos. I tried CD baby who is selling one album but has never seen any earnings on it although the report I have sold some tracks. One of my CDs has about 10 tracks on it.

  2. Tune core takes 10% of your royalties. It takes 20% if they secure a sync fee from a TV or film placement. They also take 20% of all Youtube money and charge you $9.99 a year to keep collecting Youtube royalties. Just read this today off the Tunecore site.

  3. I guess the difference is between Distribution and Publishing. They say they keep nothing from distribution. The figures I’m referring too are under publishing. Which ultimately is where the money is. I’m not saying they’re bad or good. They’re providing a service and u hv to see if it’s ultimately good for the artist on a case by case basis. Here are the links. On this page look at the asterisk by the 90%.This refers to publishing. http://www.tunecore.com/index/publishing_administration?_ga=1.160209786.619522169.1470699583 Here’s the link on the Youtube fee and royalties. http://www.tunecore.com/index/pricing?_ga=1.203176022.619522169.1470699583 I think this is interest. On this link Tunecore says “Tunecore keeps absolutely nothing from your music sales. You keep it all.” But right on their pricing page they say you keep 90% or 80% if they secure a sync placement. So obviously they’re keeping some of your money. Mainly on the publishing side. http://help.tunecore.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/66/kw/keep%2090%25 Hope this helps n sorry for any confusion.

  4. And doesn’t CDBaby have a matching “hidden” deal? If so, where can we look to find it? On the other hand, if not, the choice becomes quite clear.

  5. I am unsure of what to do. Now that my intense semester is over I am working hard to complete my Christmas EP and I need it to be out by monday 12/19/2016. I was prepared to work wit tune-core of Cd Baby, but it appears they may not even be able to get it out onto ITunes or Spotify in time. I was planning for the EP to be free of charge in efforts to gain exposure. I need High traction fast! What do you suggest?

    • Just put it on Soundcloud or Bandcamp. And next time give the whole release process waaaaay more time. I’ve had times I completed my album and it took a year to get released by the label!! Really frustrating.

  6. Tunecore are scum. Only an idiot would trust their dough to losers like them. Tunecore will steal your money and lower your sales. Stay away from tunecore.

    • You sound bitter. Can you provide a link to one of your songs please. Sometimes artists blame everyone else but themselves. If I say your song is good then its good and your statement will have more value.

  7. CD Baby is not able to handle 24 bit files for iTunes and they cannot facilitate uploading a digital booklet to iTunes. That sucks. I’m checking tunecore for my iTunes upload only. Also anybody know about emu music? Thanks!

  8. I decided what the hell, let’s try & get some of this music out on different platforms besides bandcamp which is the only thing I have been using. It has gone ok, the sales aren’t great but I am tired of trying to hustle CD’s. Nobody buys them anymore lol. So long story short I put up 2 albums on Tunecore for a year each. If it sucks I will just find something new & better hopefully

  9. I’m already a member of PRS. I know there’s publishing administration for £55 one off fee that I’ve seen with Tunecore. Is it worth having this as I have PRS anyway who could collect any royalties owed? If the selling of the CDs goes up to a substantial number do you think it’s worth then looking at this publishing administration at a later date? i would like to try something new though to see where it goes. Was tempted with Tunecore. Going to look more into CD baby. On balance though CD looks a better way and there is no annual fee

    The other thought was my co-writers would the publishing agreement be needed or as long as they’re all registered with PRS. It does make me think they’re trying to take your money for something you’ve already got in place.

  10. Great article, but loads of grammar errors. I have a simple rule for using Tunecore. Each song I post has 1 year to “prove” itself before I have to pay the $10/annual for single. If it makes up that $10, then I continue with that song. I haven’t posted a song for 8 years, but I do have one song that is paying for my gas money for my “day job”. Who knows, if I get ambitious and get enough songs to pay for my gas money, I may be able to quit my day job.

  11. I am going to release a charity song. I-tunes is the obvious place to put it, but I would prefer Amazon as I think more people will have an Amazon account than an i-tunes account. It will be a one-off release. I am considering using cdbaby or tunecore. On the surface, tunecore seems more attractive as the fee is less and I get 100% of the money (unless I’ve missed something). The reviews here seem to favour cdbaby. I’m in England. Any advice would be very much appreciated.

  12. I’ve tried tunecore and cdbaby out I published the same song with both and after 1 iTunes sale and 1000 YouTube views I made more using tunecore I got 73 cent got the iTunes sale threw TC and 66 cent threw CD for the views I got 11 threw TC but only 8 threw CD and the release I did for CD cost almost double

  13. Looks like Tunecore is offering an Publishing Admin service for collecting 90% royalties ($75 one time, unlimited songs).. There’s also a Youtube revenue option (one time $10 setup, unlimited songs) .. These options seem attractive for registering and protecting your work, even as others rip your music for use in their own youtube channel. what do y’all think of that. .?

  14. After 12 long years, CD BABY dropped me. I was making roughly $1,800 USD monthly with them
    And one day-to-the next they terminated my account and said that I failed to comply with their rules. I don’t understand what rules I broke, I had 2 copyright disputes which I won both of them and I was making great money with them. I think they dropped me because they weren’t making much money…. I don’t know

  15. I’m planning to build my own home recording studio. Play all the musical instruments and act as the sound engineer. But after reading your article and all the comments, I’m having second thought whether or not to continue.

    • Continue if you want to make new and interesting music. The sales process has almost nothing to do with that, no matter what the “winners” tell you. Scores of great albums go unrecognized every year. And while we will all disagree about what constitutes worthy art, the choices about what corporations greenlight and push have almost nothing to do with that. Selling means people, networks, hustle, full time effort, it’s a job that pays nothing until it maybe does. That job has always been there, and it’s never been about the art much. The difference between now and the singles culture of the 50s and 60s is that any one not already known is required to do all this themselves, unless they have some serious bank. Music is bigger than all that. Midori Takada made an album in 1976 that went unnoticed until very recently… now she’s touring the world. Music is history, culture, life. Sales is bullshit, manipulation, hype, persistence, presentation, gladhanding, compromising, being places you hate with people who will never be your friends. Only a small number of artists flourish in the latter environment. So do music for the reasons it exists, and either do sales for money by yourself, or far better, get others excited about the commercial or cultural potential of what you’re doing….. they will sell for you if what you are doing is truly new and utterly compelling. The middle class of art we knew is dead. That mirrors the society at large. If you want to change it, that’s a different, movement building conversation.

      • I’m a lady and I make great music AND bang a great musician. Don’t know who you you are Ouskevarna but I suspect you don’t do either one, otherwise why would you be such a bitter little pill baby. Cheers Em!

      • Go screw yourself….which I’m sure is what you’re used to from the fucked up comment you made about women making bad music. I happen to be a women who is a very talented rich and famous composer, musician, performer, producer, record company owner, with 25 years of experience to my credit. You are an absolute moron….you male chauvinist prick. Ladies….. disregard this utter display of ignorance and keep on creating great music. And for all you ignorant ass male chauvinists……you came from a women assholes.

  16. Hey Andre,

    Thank you for the great post that really clears up the differences.
    Correct me if I’m wrong.
    CDBaby is good for new independent musicians who aren’t sure how much of their music will sell. That way you pay a 1-time price and you’re good to go and you don’t mind paying royalties.
    But once your music picks up, you choose TuneCore because they charge you annually but don’t take any royalties and put you up in good positions on some of the best websites. And any money you make can be used to pay for the annual charge, that way you won’t be spending anything extra.

    Would love to hear your comments on the same.

  17. It’s a LONG story, but run from Tunecore! They are the devil! Ripped me off of 600 dollars 8 years ago. Had to fight them for 5 months to get it back. They are thieves and liars. (They allowed some unknown person from the mid-west to put one of my bigger songs on their service, and Tunecore and this person STOLE my money! Took 5 months to resolve it, with daily emails and calls. On the other hand, I have 24 albums up with Cdbaby last 12 years, and they pay me weekly and take a small 9%! More than fair. Oh, and you do NOT want to pay Tunecore $59.00 a year to keep your album up with them. In many cases, you’ll lose money. A few of my albums don’t make $59.00 a year… Trust me guys. And no, I don’t work for Cdbaby–

  18. This article is wrong. CdBaby charges a one time fee. Tunecore’s fee is yearly. Tunecore is a rip off. Also, Distrokid is better than both of these.

  19. We’re with Songtradr now and the distribution stats are pretty much non-existent; we can’t even tell we’re out there, except that I see it for sell on Apple Music. We were trying to decide between Distrokid, Tunecore, and CDBaby. After scouring reviews–including yours–we think CDBaby will be the best choice for our upcoming releases. We would be able to get distribution for a flat one-time fee, would be able to buy barcodes, and would have the ability to press physical products. All of that together, along with their reputation, leads us to believe they are the best choice.

  20. I have written three songs in the past year .the best of these is being produced by STUDIO PROS in CALIFORNIA as we sit here now ..my queries are how do I copyright my song and how do I get it played and sold ??.

  21. I’m sorry. I don’t wanna be a jerk, as your math checks out with streaming/download worthwhile earning power matters. I know because one of my songs was in a big tv show this past March 2021 and I got see just how people are consuming music. I got Shazammed a lot (tv show). That lead folks to Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube (in that order – I made a special YouTube lyric video highlighted in Shazam to go with the moment). I spent months leading up getting my website and SEO working as well as possible. I was discoverable. I had 100,000 streams in a weekend. Virtually no one bought a $0.99 track (43 total).

    What concerns me though is your info about Tunecore. Sadly, you’ve found the ‘masthead’ information they provide (and seems to keep being repeated online). Yes, their email ‘contact us’ is the worst kind of atrocious, boilerplate, see the FAQ, bullshittery. Sadly, the truth about this clandestine company is not being repeated all over the Internet. It should be. I would t be surprised if TC has employees focussed on SEO for their lies. I don’t know anything about cd baby, but I know tunecore. Tunecore has predatory business practices that are hard to see, which is why maybe you missed it. Everyone misses it. It’s designed not to be seen. It’s not just a feeling. I’ve been with them since 2012. My main complaint is that their legal framework is totally illegal. Check out what happened to Steven Cravis. Same thing happened to me. Like Steven, I too had a bunch of emails that basically said ‘read the fine print guy. We can do what we want and change the deal at any time. This is your new deal.’ You may say, ‘why didn’t you leave’? Sue them? Fair question. I am pretty sure that I’d die of high blood pressure anxiety stopping my life to fight with TC in court. Maybe I should have?

    Why not just leave them for CD BABY or Distrokid and let your PRO handle it? Another fair point. I gotta ask this though, “is cd baby any better?” I’m looking into it currently. I don’t wanna trade in my piece of shit for another piece of shit, you know? I gotta say, the amount of time I spend at the controls of all these places online I have to be with my music, is staggering. It has only gotten worse. One can easily find themselves adjusting pics, videos, and making content for all these social media portals indefinitely – and never get it done and never touch a guitar again. It happened to me. I almost died trying to be everywhere online for people to listen to my songs for nothing. I don’t have much to show for it, except glowing pride in my song’s popularity and feelings of satisfaction that indeed people do like my music.

    The least we should be able to do is trust our PROs and aggregators to agree to set deal with no shadow agreements. It would be nice to know more about how my earnings are collected. I had my song in a show in March 2021. It’s now Nov 2021. I’ve yet to see sync money, but I know tunecore received a check in June. TC is going to take 20%. Apparently it takes 4 months to sit on it and cut out 20% of my pay. I fucked up not dealing with my licensing agreement me myself, but this is only my 3rd time getting a deal. Tunecore keeps telling me it’s normal to wait 8 months. Haha

  22. We’ll me personally,… I prefer peanut butter & jelly sandwiches over ham sandwiches……
    So with that said, I say what the heck…give one of them a shot. Me, I went with CDbaby..
    didn’t research between the two, I just liked what they had to offer. I played around on Soundcloud for over 10 years, not with them anymore…there’s no sincerity on that site in my opinion. I’ve given music away for all those years too, with no good feelings about it. But now that my music is on major platforms through CDbaby, I feel a sense of great accomplishment even if I don’t sell one song. It’s out there worldwide and that’s very cool in my book… I’m already a nobody in the music world, I have no projections because of that fact. But I have sold music to complete strangers because of this platform, and that verifies to me, that hey, I do have stuff that people really like. I’m a chill guy and I take a chill approach with things musically…so everybody just chill and do you, nothing comes for free. Like Andre said, if your a nobody who wants to try and sell music, your best bet is CDbaby…If you a mild somebody who’s got some popularity than chose Tunecore…. Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches or ham sandwiches….https://open.spotify.com/artist/1VBelsRzLfiKBxWoUDwVIx

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