1st off, thanks for taking time to do this guys!

I am an independent artist who does electronic music (Ambient, world-beat, tribal, used to even be called New Age back in the early-mid '90s).

Anyway, my question is, most of the songs on my (and my groups) albums are anywhere from 6 to 20 min. long, and I even have a CD that is one track (62min).

I know that if I put my back catalog on I-Tunes I will still sell CDs for $9.99 regardless of the number of tracks or their length, but what about a service like E-Music which sells a subscription and then you get a set number of down loads every month...meaning if I put up my single track ambient album on E-music, people get to download it for ... one download.

What does an artist get paid in this case...technically its an album, but in reality its one track.

I see tons of ambient, world and classical cds which all fall into his category.

Will I get burned putting this cd up on E-Music?

What is your advice?

Thanks,

Paul

I'm sure someone else will answer the Emusic pricing details (my guy at CD Baby who has the pricing contract isn't awake yet), so instead let me offer up a related point:

You won't get screwed putting your music up for sale at Emusic, even though they pay less.

You won't get screwed putting your music on subscription services like Rhapsody or Napster, even though they only pay 1-2 cents per play.

Reason being, subscribers to these services often get ALL of their music there and ONLY there. So if you're not there, they'll shrug and never hear you.

I've met too many musicians who mistakenly think that by NOT putting their music on Rhapsody, they're going to magically boost their iTunes sales. But if you put yourself in the mindset of a Rhapsody subscriber, you can see the flaw in that logic.

Try putting your album on Emusic regardless of the answer to your pricing question. You'll be reaching all kinds of new fans who only browse Emusic, and you'll be getting paid when they do.

The real point is to make new fans who then search for you, find your home site, sign up to your mailing list, and develop a relationship.

Don't miss out on all of that because you were holding out for an extra 25 cents somewhere.

I guess I have always thought that...I-Tunes customers are not E-Music customers are not rhapsody and so on...

I am sure there is crossover, but thanks for the very wise words!

Paul

Careful, Paul, that's not entirely true! This is all in our FAQ (TuneCore: FAQ), but here's a quick summary:

--Your album has 11 or more tracks: will sell for its line (frontline, midline, etc.), usually $9.99 from the U.S. store.
--Your album has 10 or fewer tracks, but at least ONE track on the album is set "album only" or is over 10 minutes in length: will sell for its line (frontline, midline, etc.), usually $9.99 from the U.S. store.
--Your album has 10 or fewer tracks and NONE of the tracks is set "album only" and NONE of them are 10 minutes or longer: will sell for $0.99 x track count in the U.S. store.

EXAMPLE: An album with 5 songs, all under 10 minutes, none marked "album only" will sell for 5 x $0.99 = $4.95 in the U.S. store.

There are exceptions even to these policies, but that's pretty much how iTunes tries to make sure people get a fair price for a certain amount of music. Like all general systems, it's imperfect, but the best that anyone can come up with.

eMusic does indeed pay by the track, not the album. But they weigh by lenght, paying multiples of the percentage of the pool. It does "top out" around 3x, so if you have a very, very long song you may not get quite the return you want, so keep that in mind. But they do take length into account!

--Peter
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