| CD Baby DIY Musician Podcast |
 Dec. 14,
2008
Ep.41 : What's Your Story?
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| Will CD Baby offer WEEKLY iTunes sales reports? |
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| posted by Jonathan on Tuesday October 14 2008 @ 08:05AM PDT |
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TuneCore is now offering weekly sales reports of iTunes sales to
it's artists. CDBAby has always been my first choice of
distribution, but the company needs to stay ahead of the
competition! Does CDBaby have any plans to offer anything like this
to its artists any time soon? This is a crucial resource for
marketing and advertising, and now there is proof that it is
possible for an indie retailer to report sales from iTunes in less
time than a MONTH delayed.
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It probably goes without saying that we'd all like to see a better reporting system, and it probably goes without saying that CD Baby knows this and is working on some new features. I'm just guessing.
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Hmmm... Do I really need (or want) weekly reporting of sales from iTunes? At what point does a weekly sales report from iTunes become "crucial for marketing and advertising" as opoosed to the nearly weekly sales reports I already receive from CD Baby?
C'mon, Jonathan, give up your thinking on your opinion. I'd really like to know. If your sales are so high that weekly reporting is "crucial" I'm also thinking that you're doing so freaking well that your "marketing and advertising" could easily reflect your success without weekly updates!
So.. convince me. And don't tell me faster is necessarily better - really, it sounds like a come-on.
My two indie cents.
Peace & Harmony,
Michael Scott Smith
http://www.thebandofbrothers.net
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Tune core is also more expensive, so they should have additional bells and whistles.. CD Baby's DD is the best deal by far..
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CdBaby doesnt have the best deal by far, http://routenote.com does. They take only 10% with no signup fee. So if you sell less than 10k tracks a year, RouteNote is the best. RouteNote also do weekly iTunes reports!!
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As you all know, Disc Makers recently purchased CD Baby. The good news for the artist is that
all of the user interfaces and core services we offer to artists are undergoing complete
overhaul. This will take some time to roll out, but I know things like how the accounting is
reported is a big priority. You'll be hearing more about this in the coming months, so stay
tuned!
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Michael,
It sounds like you are probably able to do this with your sales through CD Baby (CD or MP3, I couldn't tell by your post). But for some of us, myself included, most of our sales come from iTunes. In that case, weekly reports, or at least reports with dates that come within a couple weeks of the sales, helps. It helps because you can run experiments and see the results.
Spend a week adding 50 MySpace friends a day. Did it help digital sales?
Take out an ad on a popular website. Maybe your website got more traffic, but did it help digital sales?
Play a big gig, the audience seemed to love you but you didn't sell too many CDs. Did it help digital sales?
Give away several tracks everywhere you possibly can. Did it help digital sales?
I could go on, but believe me, this helps. I used to be able to see my weekly SoundScan reports and I'd experiment with different methods of promotion. Eventually I found a couple things that worked for my audience, even though it's not what everyone said to do (hint: adding MySpace friends did nothing for my sales).
I only get to see those reports occasionally now, and so I would love to get more accurate reporting to line up my experiments with sales figures.
-Cameron
http://cameronmizell.blogspot.com
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Does it increase my sales to see them weekly? I know it would increase the accounting cost!
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I asked Ben Kihnel, CD Baby's Director of Partner and Label Relations (and one of our longest tenured managers) the skinny about these weekly data dumps from iTunes.
He tells me it's true that Tunecore now offers weekly "trending" reports, available to clients for purchase every Wed. The reports are archived for 4 weeks after they are posted and show the iTunes sales activity from Mon. through Sun. of the previous week. Every time a Tunecore client downloads such a trending report it will cost $2.98. So four reports a month = $12 for Tunecore. 52 reports a year is close to $150!
The trending reports are not completely accurate or final due to returns (yes people return downloads) and iTunes' "Complete My Album" function.
The trending reports are different from the monthly accounting report that we get (which get translated into your statement). iTunes still pays every vendor monthly - even if you get the weekly trending reports.
We could get weekly trending reports from iTunes, but it would almost quadruple the accounting administrative work we'd have to do (weekly, instead of monthly), while you'd still get paid once a month. We had made a decision that it wasn't worth the extra expense to get approximate data to our clients. Not to mention that we'd also have to charge for the service, to defray the increased cost.
So let me ask you, the loyal CD Baby artist: Would you be prepared to pay to view a weekly iTunes estimate of your sales? If yes, how much is it worth to you?
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The only reason I can think of why people would need this, other than just being curious, is to track how effective promotion or publicity is. I think it would make a great add-on for those people.
But how many people are tracking their marketing? Not many...
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definitely worth it to me (mainly to analyze marketing experiments)
but I'd rather pay a year in advance and not get nickle and dimed
for it
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First, I'd like to see a more intuitive reporting system at CD Baby. There's no way to plainly see how many full album downloads for a particular album at a particular site without getting out a calculator or downloading and manipulating the spreadsheet. I'd be nervous about getting weekly reports that were organized in the same fashion as what we have now.
There may be other options, other than getting weekly numbers straight from iTunes. Of course, I realize any solution here is going to be a nightmare to begin with and will cost money. A 9% cut isn't a whole lot, which is part of the reason I'm sticking with you guys.
Even so, I feel like I've got proof that better reporting (either faster, more accurate, or both) helped boost my sales in a big way. If others are able to take advantage of reports in the same way, we're all for the better.
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Sorry, to answer the question... Yes, I'd pay, but not $150 per album per year. It would be worth a few bucks a report for a few weeks at a time while I was trying something new, but otherwise I wouldn't want to spend the money.
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Weekly reporting would be nice to have, but my sales would not support an increased cost for this.
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As an artist who has an album that sells 10-20 a month, and several others that, well, sell maybe once a year, watching weekly sales is not significant, and paying for it not feasible. but then again, I am more of a "hobbyist" musician that disguises himself during the day as an institutional researcher.
www.phloide.com
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Ok, my 2 cents.
How about a CD Baby website that showcases band video's and also a CD Baby online radio station that plays our music. I'le take those over the weekly accounting any day of the week.
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ooohh... love the radio idea... especially if it streams according to genre - but again, the royalties issues will come in to play. we need to have a waiver or something that allows CDBaby to "use" our music in promotional ways that prevents ASCAP and company from whining. Even "personal radio stations" on things like Live365 has to deal with royalties issues.
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Can someone clarify how LONG it takes from a sale on itunes being registered on our accounting summary? I've read conflicting reports from 1 month to 6 months so which is it? Or does it vary?
If I've had people from around the world insist they have bought and paid for a Download on iTunes (which has been on there since June) then would/should I now being seeing those sales listed?
All I show is a scant few sales directly from CDbaby itself which is not the main channel (I wish it was, I wish it was higher profile with a better front end like lastfm or reverbnation - we could tie in the distribution to the store/site then and get music lovers visiting on a whim rather than us attempting to get them to 'ignore' iTunes and go directly to CDbaby - obviously I'm talking Digital Downloads only here).
Thanks
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I would like to see a better delivery faster and quicker because to improve sales you have to have the product with the Vendor believe me I know Cdbaby is fast but I want to ask them to speed up the delivery even more to emusic ,Walmart and every avenue.
Just like you want your best company to do even better I know Cdbaby is fast.I am asking Tony CAN WE DOUBLE THE SPEED in which we make Album available to Vendors and know which albums are not listed with the Vendors even though they are delivered.
If we double the speed and have a feed back threshold of 3 months to check whether Albums are actuallly listed for SALESWITH VENDORS THAT WILL IMPROVE SALES ACROSS CDBABY.
There are many Abums there that were delivered by Cdbaby but for some weired reason may not be listed for months then Cdbaby had to REDELIVER. If Cdbaby can track those albums ON TIME Tony sales can improve across Cdbaby.
I think this is a good idea becaue the only way a vendor can pay you is is the Album is listed for sales .If the Album is not tracked after three months it may have been delivered but NOT listed therefore No sales. There are many albums there like that .Tony I NEED AN IMPUT HERE IS THERE AWAY WE CAN AUTO TRACK A DELIVERED BUT NOT LISTED BY VENDOR AFTER 90 DAYS.
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Just wondering... why can't iTunes provide artists who have CD Baby as a digital distributor a read-only iTunes account password?
So far the only reason I can think of is it would create more traffic to their administrative server.
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I was just on the TuneCore websiite and they are really promoting
the fact that they list their top 25 albums and top 25 songs each
week with Billboard Magazine. Seems like a cool idea but how
important is this. What are the ups and downs?
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It's just plain sh**tty that we cannot get free reporting of sales from iTunes on a regular and consistent basis.
No excuse except lame service.
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| NOTE: If you need a reply you should email CD Baby directly instead of posting here. We don't often read old message board postings, and have no way of replying to them!
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