D.I.Y.

TuneCore Paid $101.8 Million To Artists In 2012

image from musiciancoaching.comTunecore still refuses to comment on the ouster and subsequent battles with former CEO and co-founder Jeff Price, but the controversy hasn't stopped company from paying out a record $101.8 million to Tunceore artists last year – a 47% increase over 2011.  

More stats provided by Tunecore and how CD Baby compares:


  • 78.9 million downloads in 2012, up 25%
  • 1.2 billion streams, up 258%
  • Since 2006:
    • Delivered 1.8 billion music units
      downloads & streams
    • Paid out over $250 million in earnings
    • 447,000+ 
      total releases

Competitor CD Baby paid out $50 million to artists in 2012.  Since it's inception, they too hit the $250 million since launch milestone last year if digital download sales, on-demand streaming revenue, physical CD sales, and sync licensing royalties are combined.

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    3 Comments

    1. I think TuneCore better serves larger artists who benefit from not having a percentage of digital sales taken, and have the volume to not worry about the $50/yr maintenance fee which isn’t fixed for life.
      CDBaby’s 9% equals to $555.55 in sales for an album per year in order for TuneCore to be beneficial. As long as your album sales have the stamina, TuneCore is beneficial. For smaller artists such as myself, TuneCore is not financially reasonable.
      That said, if higher volume artists are on TuneCore because of the lack of a percentage fee, then of course they’re going to have higher total volume.
      I think something CDBaby could probably do is a tiered percentage system, where 9% comes out for your first, oh, $500 in sales on an album, and after that it drops down to 1%. That way they can also more consistently serve larger artists.

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