Being happy with the way I'm making good progress on my first single release,
I began to look into just how the devil you go about selling your
song and how do you ensure it gets into the chart.
Given its massive market share, I had a quick look at how easy it is
to sell through iTunes. Within seconds I had found an application form
to register as an independent artist or record label, so that doesn't
seem too tricky. It would be pending Apple's approval of the application,
but I can't imagine why you'd get declined for a genuine musical effort.
Then I came across one site that claims able to submit to iTunes and a
few other online stores for you. Using TuneCore,
you can simply upload your songs, create your albums online and then click
once to submit to several places at once.
TuneCore does seem a very simple approach, but there are two caveats with it.
Firstly, it's not free. The fees don't seem a lot ($20 seems to cover an album),
but they are annual, so it does mean you being willing to invest something. I
found one blog entry
that claims you'd want about 26 sales to get your money back.
The second and more concerning issue is that it's clearly a US-based website.
This has real implications for getting into the UK singles chart. So, I tracked
down The Official UK Charts Company.
They've produced an
interesting document on getting your single online,
but it does seem out of date (2005 I think) so still mentions the rule
that used to state you need a physical CD copy of your single on sale
as well as the download before it's valid. As of January 2007, it has been
allowed to have a single available purely online enter the UK charts.
Another thing that shows the age of the document is its reference to needing to be
registered with Catco. I navigated to Catco's website and found it's been
integrated into PPL. PPL maintain a
Repertoire Database of sound
recordings.
Registering with the PPL Repertoire Database allows you to collect
royalties on all public performances of your songs. The guidelines
seems to state that you should register a recording with them
three weeks before the official release date. I may well get onto
doing this as soon as the song is finished.
Singles sales in the UK at least seem to be tracked by an
International Standard Recording Code (ISRC). PPL
provides details on allocating such codes to your music.
It is my impression that such a code would have to be provided to
any retailer if you wish your single to be tracked into the charts.
Sites such as TuneCore and the
IndieStore seem able
to generate ISRC codes for you, which seems an easy route to go
if you don't want to mess with registering such things yourself.
One thing to note, however, is that IndieStore only does that for
"pro" accounts, which cost £75 annually.
IndieStore specifically says this makes you eligible for the UK
singles chart, but TuneCore doesn't seem to make a statement on that.
Overall, it seems simple enough these days to get a single out
there on various retailers and get yourself into the running
for the UK singles chart. As usual, the choice seems to be
between running around filling in forms yourself or just
paying someone to do it all for you. At least the sites that
do it for you seem very much targeted to and friendly for
independent artists.
