TuneCore, Amazon Partner To Publish And Distribute CDs

Amazon is partnering with Tunecore to provide any artist with on-demand CD printing and distribution for $31 a year. For that lowly sum, they will handle the creation of a 10-track album, passing all other costs to the buyer.

Finally, a service that will remove the middle-man and make it easier for artists to provide albums for fans on Amazon and iTunes, without the exorbitant cost normally associated with CD manufacturing.

TuneCore CEO Jeff Price told Wired that “as an artist, you have unlimited physical inventory, made on demand, with no upfront costs and worldwide distribution to anyone who orders it at Amazon.com.” The service gives all of Amazon’s payout to the artist, which is about 40 percent of the total retail price. Price says that “TuneCore artists have generated over $32 million in revenue from music sales over the past 22 months.”

“Some of the artists, frankly, have been selling more than the Billboard Top 40 artists,” he added. “It’s just not being picked up by the mainstream places that track sales.”

Short-run CD manufacturing may be the solution for artists that still want to make a physical copy of their music available to fans. Before, one had to buy X hundreds of copies, with the risk of not actually selling them all. With TuneCore, not only do you get a physical release, but your album is also instantly available for digital download on services such as Amazon MP3 and the iTunes store.

Through a deal with TuneCore, Universal Music Group will have its professionals master your CD before it gets distributed for $50. The major labels are getting cut out of manufacturing process, so they might as well play to their remaining strengths. Trent Reznor and Keith Richards have already escaped the labels and signed with TuneCore, but can the service expand to indie artists, and thus revolutionize the entire music market?

[Wired]