Digital download sites to sell an album from?

[Paul Maddox]

Dave,

 CDBaby seem to do a good trade in didgital downloads, and also CD sales.
http://cdbaby.net/

 They're basically running it as 'distribution' service, so it covers a lot
of your concerns (no owenrship, etc).

Paul


On 24/6/08 20:00, "Dave S" <sly at mu-sly.co.uk> wrote:

> Hey Bar,
> 
> My reggae/ska band Moonbuggy has just released our second album!  We got 1000
> CDs pressed, and they look and sound sweet!  All very excited about that -
> official launch is on the 10th of July, but they're already selling like hot
> cakes around here.
> 
> However, as well as the CD sales, we want to have the tunes online somewhere
> to sell as digital downloads.  There's various ways we could do this, and to
> be honest, I'm not sure what to go for!
> 
> Overall options:
> 
> 1. Do it ourselves - I build or install some system, either in PHP or Ruby On
> Rails which handles the payments and so on.  Not out of the question - I've
> built online shop systems before so I can definitely do it.  However it's a
> fair bit of work, and will only catch people coming to our website anyway (no
> passing trade).  We keep most of the money, bar whatever Paypal or whoever
> take.
> 
> I found this Open Source option, which looks pretty good:
> 
> http://www.thirdchord.com/
> 
> However, it doesn't do FLAC or OGG (though I could almost certainly modify
> it), and also doesn't have the passing trade factor that we'd like to pick up
> on.
> 
> 
> 2. Find some site to sell the downloads for us... but which one?  We don't
> mind them making a bit of commission on it, within reason, and overall I
> guess it's likely to work out not hugely more than Paypal charges.  Benefits
> would be more passing trade, less work to do ourselves.  But I can't seem to
> find the right site to do it from.  What's everybody using these days?
> 
> Here's a few I knew of which on closer inspection don't seem to be quite
> right:
> 
> virb.com - I know it does download sales, but it seems a little bit too much
> social network and not enough record store, though perhaps I'm wrong, or
> perhaps that's a good thing?
> 
> beatport.com - I know a few who use this, but it seems to only have specific
> genres geared towards electronic music, not reggae / ska.
> 
> magnatune.com - doesn't seem to do reggae or ska, and also seems quite
> US-centric.
> 
> indiestore.7digital.com - maybe?
> 
> I found a bit of a list here - guess I'll try to work through them:
> 
> http://www.sean.co.uk/a/musicjournalism/var/promoting_your_music.shtm
> 
> So anyway, our overall requirements:
> 
> * We control the price - we want our album to be reasonably priced.
> * Non-exclusive licensing, so we can sell it elsewhere too.
> * Will accept self-released albums from independent bands.
> 
> Preferred:
> 
> * Availability of downloads as FLAC and OGG files if possible.
> * We control the encoding and tagging ourselves.
> * UK based - not massively important, but that's where we are.
> * Plenty of passing trade.
> 
> I suspect probably we'll end up using a couple of different solutions
> simultaneously, but I'm sure there must be others on this list who have had
> to do this kind of thing recently, and I value personal recommendations
> highly!
> 
> Thanks for your help everyone!  :-D
> 
> ~Dave
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