How to sell music on iTunes through a distribution company

Ways to sell your music on iTunes

Music distribution is the practice that gets an artists’ music to all those places where his/her fans are likely to search for it, and on platforms, which can help an artist gain new fan base. With CD and cassette sales on continuous downfall, streaming and downloading music online is taking over, and becoming the most popular way in which listeners are consuming music in today’s environment.

Therefore, it is becoming highly important for an artist to make their music available on as many digital platforms as possible – especially across the mainstream ones like iTunes, such that fans can conveniently access their music with just a few clicks. Selling music on iTunes is crucial for any modern musician, as Apple’s market share is now over 50% of all online music sale. It is equally important to distribute your art on the newer platforms, so you have higher possibilities of being discovered by new listeners, giving an edge over competitors over lower popular platforms.

Major music platforms like Apple don’t usually deal with independent artists. They either necessitate demanding submission criteria or work with preapproved digital distribution aggregators, and make it very difficult for artists to publish their music to iTunes in absence of external help from these third party companies, or aggregators. Aggregators convert the musicians’ songs, connect with Apple, and manage all the legal proceedings required to publish music. Apple has a published list of its preferred aggregators, which artists can choose from.

An aggregator or a distributor is the new version of having a professional partnership. Thus, an artist must choose a distribution company that suits their needs most. One should make sure the distributor fits his/her requirements, budget, and long-term goals.

Once the artist selects the perfect aggregator, considering the costs and their needs, they then need to send the best quality audio and picture files – and let the latter take care of everything else. They will convert the file received to a suitable iTunes format and publish it on the music platforms. Most websites get the artists’ music onto iTunes within a couple of weeks.

Additionally, the artist needs to provide keywords and brief descriptions for their albums that ease out the classification process and make the songs searchable on the web. These are called metadata. Metadata is critical in digital distribution. All digital distributors seek information like artist name, title for the album, its release date, each tracks’ title, suitable genre for the album, release date and so on. This way, people can browse for music online and easily find your songs.