A true pioneer in its field and with a solid reputation, TuneCore is a major company in the world of digital music distribution.

The company has been around for fifteen years and allows independent musicians who want to reach an audience to stream their music on platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, or TIDAL.

TuneCore is a major player in digital music distribution, but that doesn't mean they are in a monopoly position, in a market with an exponential number of competitors who stand out by innovating and offering more affordable fees for clients. Oops. Artists.

In this review, we'll tell you everything you need to know about TuneCore, from the history of the company to what it can do for independent musicians.

TuneCores' history

Founded in Brooklyn, TuneCore debuted in digital music distribution, publishing, and licensing in 2005.

That year we were talking about Tunecore in World News Tonight on the ABC channel, the Daily Mirror, and Pitchfork, because digital distribution was still in its infancy and because their first client was none other than Pixies frontman Frank Black. It is also established that the Nine Inch Nails went through TuneCore for the distribution of their album Ghosts I – IV on the Amazon digital platform a few years later.

TuneCore ran into financial difficulties that we heard a lot about in 2012, but they have since rebounded in a spectacular way as reports show that the income brought by their artists is higher every year.

In 2019, the company announced that its artists had taken a symbolic milestone of reaching $ 1.5 billion in revenue, thanks to the growing popularity of genres such as heavy metal and J-pop. TuneCore's list of artists is impressive with 250K of them across the world. At the start of 2019, their artists totaled 200 billion plays and downloads, a figure representing an incredible 83% increase from their results the previous year.

What TuneCore does

Although the company has diversified in recent years to offer more services, TuneCore's core business remains online music distribution.

Signing up and distributing through the TuneCore portal gives you access to over 150 music platforms around the world, from the most powerful in the industry like Spotify and Apple Music to some you probably haven't heard of before.

In addition to offering the usual digital distribution services, TuneCore provides a number of tools that can benefit modern musicians such as personalized mastering, licensing of your covers, promotion on social media, feedback allowing you to hear the sincere opinion of your fans, and much more.

In short, you come to the base for the distribution, but you stay for all the additional benefits, as TuneCore likes to say. Later in this test, we will detail all of TuneCore's services outside of distribution.

TuneCore's reputation in the music industry

If we are to believe the few negative reviews on Trust Pilot, TuneCore would be an evil company whose goal is to exploit innocent musicians who are only looking to make a living honestly.

But if you take a more holistic view, you quickly realize that 30 negative reviews only represent 0.00012% of TuneCore's 250K users. Just as most people don't take the time to praise or publicly criticize their local supermarket, the majority of TuneCore's huge number of customers don't have much to say about the music distributor. We can therefore consider that most musicians enjoy working with the company. After all, TuneCore's overall rating on Trust Pilot is currently 4.4 out of 5 with over 1066 reviews!

TuneCore went through tough times in 2013 and was heavily criticized for not having enough revenue generated by its artists to justify its annual fee structure. The accusations were founded since subscriptions on paid streaming platforms only accounted for 9.1% of the US music industry's revenue that year. Today everything has changed. That number climbed to 47.3% in 2018 and looks set to continue rising. What does it mean? Well, it shows how digital music streaming has exploded in a short period of time, and on the other hand that TuneCore's business model is working much better for artists today.

TuneCore is one of the largest digital distributors in the music industry and this is mainly because of bands and musicians who see the company as a globally reliable and obvious choice. However, TuneCore, like its competitors CD Baby and DistroKid, is increasingly seen as a rigid and reluctant company to innovate in the industry. New music startups offering distribution only or accompanying it with other services are a threat to TuneCore's traditional business model. Indeed, many of these companies offer much cheaper prices than TuneCore and some of them even offer unlimited free distribution.

However, the reason TuneCore has managed to hold its own against its competition (for now) is that these startups are young and their business model has yet to prove its worth. Stem Music's decision to part ways with most of its customers in 2019 is an example of what can happen when a new distributor fails and it affects its users. It's true that TuneCore is quite a classic company, but that's not a flaw for a music distributor.

In order to help you find out if TuneCore is right for you, we'll go through everything there is to know about this music vending machine.

TuneCore pricing structure

TuneCore's pricing structure works well for some musicians, but not others.

By far the biggest benefit you'll find with TuneCore is that the company doesn't require you to pay them a commission on your royalties. Most of TuneCore's competitors require their users to give them 8-50% of the revenue from their downloads and streams. That is, if your music is successful, you will be forced to donate a percentage of your hard-earned money. For example, if you accepted a 10% commission, that means you will have to pay $10,000 if you have earned $100,000.

TuneCore does not ask you to pay a commission on your royalties but does charge a fairly modest upload fee. However, their annual album renewal fee of $50 isn't that low anymore.

If we add them up, between the costs of renewing an album and putting it online, many musicians might be tempted to turn to a distributor whose overall costs are lower, even if they will then have to share their royalties.

You have to do the math and assess the amount earned by most musicians on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. There is no exact data on this, but we can easily say that the majority of musicians do not earn $100,000 per year in streaming revenue. In fact, it's very likely that they won't earn $10,000 or even $1,000.

If you're not a recognized musician in your niche, TuneCore's annual upload and album renewal fees are probably not worth it against a more affordable distributor who will require a sharing of royalties. In other words, if you're not making a lot of money, you might be better off agreeing to pay a commission.

Here's how TuneCore's pricing looks:

• Album: $29.99 the first year and $49.99 each following year
• Single: $9.99 per year
• Ringtone: $19.99 per year

The company also offers discounts for musicians who produce a lot of music through a “Credit” system. For example, buying 20 credits in anticipation of a long-term album release will give you a 14% discount. Most musicians won't use this feature, but it's a nice benefit for those who plan to release multiple albums during their careers.

The TuneCore platform

Compared to those of its many competitors which are often sleek and innovative, TuneCore's platform is somewhat busy, dated, and difficult to use.

Uploading singles or albums is an unnecessarily long and frustrating process. It's clear: simplifying the upload process isn't necessarily high on their agenda. This is a minor inconvenience, unless you are a prolific artist.

The “Album Checklist” page which asks to add the information concerning the release of your album is rather easy to use, until you get to the upload section. The platform needs everything to be absolutely perfect before the music can be uploaded, but this information will not be given to you clearly. In reality, you will see some rather vague error messages and you will have to start over and over again, until the system judges everything to be good. There's also no option to let you drag and drop multiple songs at once, which means uploading an entire album can take from 20 minutes to an hour.

TuneCore's upload portal offers options to choose the platforms to which you can send your music as well as an option for your fans to purchase your music before its official release. However, in an age of fewer and fewer downloads, most musicians won't have the need or the inclination to pay an additional $15-25 for this feature.

Available platforms

TuneCore boasts of its ability to distribute music on “the majority of the world's digital platforms.” Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, Google Play, all are reachable through TuneCore.

TuneCore works with 150 platforms and more are added every year, which is certainly not the maximum possible (some distributors work with 600 platforms), but they want to focus on the online platforms that will provide the most benefits.

In reality, even working with 150 platforms is a bit excessive considering that most of them are small, niche, and probably not able to give the same visibility to an artist as Spotify or Apple Music. The number of platforms TuneCore offers isn't particularly impressive, but that's because there is no point in it being.

As evidenced by their recent collaboration with the major Chinese media company Tencent, TuneCore is good at moving alongside the music industry and signing with new platforms. A useful tool the company offers is the “Store Automator” option, which will automatically send each of your new songs to the platforms that have just been added to the TuneCore catalog for $10 per song. You can also do it manually, but it is ultimately more expensive and it wastes your time.

TuneCore can distribute your music to all major online music platforms, but it is true that on this point DistroKid, CD Baby, and many others can offer you the same. However, the company is renowned for its ability to foresee and anticipate the needs of artists. At the end of 2019, TuneCore was one of the first major international distributors to enter the Chinese market through Tencent.

Their support

Contact TuneCore customer service and you will realize how big a company you are dealing with. The company works with 250,000 artists but employs only 215 people.

Of those 215 people, it's hard to know how many work in customer service. This means that to get a response from a human being regarding a problem encountered on the platform, sometimes takes weeks. Good luck if you need urgent help. The company relies on the fact that a very large amount of users will move through the upload and distribution processes smoothly because its employees would not be able to handle the full workload if it were not the case. If you are one of the unfortunate ones who are having trouble using TuneCore, the assistance you receive will likely be effective, but by no means fast.

When it comes to changing certain elements of a song after it has been distributed, TuneCore will essentially tell you that they will attempt to make the changes but recommend that you remove the music and start all over again.

This is obviously frustrating, but there is no clear rule of thumb for changes to already released music and each distribution company has its own approach. When you release a song through TuneCore or one of its competitors, you are paying for a service that allows you to distribute your music on digital platforms, not to make changes after the fact. The problem with post-broadcast changes is that each music platform has its own policy in place and some will make the changes for you while others won't. Imagine having to communicate with more than 150 platforms about a small change that a single artist wants to make to a single or an album. Now imagine having to do the same, but for 250,000 artists and with a limited number of employees. There you go, you understand.

When working with TuneCore, be careful when entering the title of your tracks and uploading them, because if there are any errors, it is more than likely that you will have to start all over and it could take weeks before someone will come to your rescue.

Speed

With an average of one business day to analyze a song, TuneCore is among the fastest digital distributors.

However, each platform it serves has different deadlines. Some distributors claim that they can post music in a day on a selection of platforms, but with most large companies it takes a minimum of two weeks for the music to be made available to the public.

Artists should think about this before choosing to work with TuneCore or any of its competitors, since posting music instantly to Spotify or Apple Music is neither realistic nor possible in most cases. The speed at which TuneCore processes music is fine, but this process is subject to the rules and working methods of the 150 platforms they work with.

Stats and reports

Lots of distribution companies come under heavy criticism for not providing detailed data and analytical information about the music they distribute, but TuneCore is pretty good at it.

The company offers multiple ways to analyze your streams, downloads, money earned, and trends for music that is played on different streaming platforms. When sales are published (sales include everything from individual streams to album and singles downloads), a dollar amount is displayed in the platform's dashboard. Clicking on this section of the platform will take you to a page which details your Balance History, mainly the inflows and outflows of money on your TuneCore account. This part of the platform can be a bit buggy but it gives you a lot of information: which of your music works best, how many times it has been listened to, and even in which countries of the world it is streamed the most.

By the way, TuneCore lets you pay for its services directly with funds you've acquired through your account, which is handy. The idea is that artists can rack up enough streams and downloads to fund distribution services without having to dip into their bank accounts, but that's not necessarily possible for everyone. TuneCore makes your work available to the public, whether or not people listen to your music depends on factors beyond their control.

TuneCore offers daily, weekly, and monthly trend reports which are helpful in getting a good perspective on how audiences are interacting with your music. However, compiling information from different companies and presenting it in a consistent and actionable way is not the platform's strong point. Nonetheless, some of TuneCore's biggest competitors have little interest in the analytical side of music distribution, so this is an area where the company stands out.

In 2019, TuneCore announced its partnership with Apple Music and implemented a feature that allows artists to access detailed analytical information about their music's performance on this platform. But while being able to access the Apple Music artist platform directly through TuneCore is nice, any artist who distributes at home can use it as well, so it's not that interesting. The only real benefit TuneCore claims is that the artist verification process is faster than for non-TuneCore users.

Additional services and benefits

TuneCore was one of the first and largest distributors of digital music since its inception in 2005. Since then, the music industry has undergone radical changes and the number of music distributors has exploded. Generally, what differentiates them is their offer as well as their distribution services.

TuneCore claims to have a broad offering for their artists, but just like the Apple Music partnership which isn't that revolutionary when you look at it, a lot of its additional services aren't going to change artists' lives.

In order to help you get a better idea of ​​what TuneCore has to offer besides distributing your music, let's take a look at its additional services.

TuneCore Publishing

According to the TuneCore Publishing site, “The music you wrote might make money without you knowing it. We can find it and collect it for you. ”

This service allows you to get your hands on royalties that PROs such as ASCAP and BMI cannot collect, such as mechanical rights and direct licenses. They also claim that through them, artists gain access to lucrative syncing opportunities with major TV shows, movies, commercials, and podcasts.

TuneCore Publishing uses Sentric's RightsApp technology to track where and when its artists' works are released around the world and collect the corresponding royalties. They claim to be members of rights management societies around the world, which gives them great international reach, making it easier to trace music.

TuneCore allows artists to keep 100% of their copyright, but their publishing services aren't free. For a single price of $75, artists can be represented for as many titles as they wish. TuneCore takes 15% commission on royalties and 20% on sync contracts. But is it worth it?

Unfortunately, this is where things get a little confusing. For example, a 20% commission might seem high, but that depends on factors that TuneCore is not very clear about. How intensely do they work to get licensing contracts for their artists? When an artist signs up for their publishing services, are they forced to sign an exclusivity contract? This information is surely available somewhere, but it is not easy to find. Whether or not you are interested in signing up with TuneCore Publishing depends on the specifics of your career and your motivation to dig for this information.

Partner Services

From duplicating CDs to promoting on social media, TuneCore has a lot to offer artists who distribute their music through their platform.

However, each “Partner Service” that TuneCore offers is totally different and some are, quite obviously, sponsored partnerships that seem to benefit the company more than the artists. In order to help you decide if they are worth your giving of your time, we present each of them to you in-depth.

YouTube Revenue Collection

This service allows an artist's track to be submitted to YouTube and tracked when it is used in videos posted on the platform. For an initial fee of € 10, TuneCore works with YouTube to find out where your music is used on the platform and pay you the royalties you get. In addition to the upfront fees, TuneCore takes a 20% share, which most artists find hard to digest.

Is this a good deal? YouTube is reputed to be the most famous streaming platform that pays artists the lowest, so it depends on how popular your music is on it. Companies like ASCAP in the US explain how musicians can collect their royalties themselves, but it's a process that will take you a long time. Others offer the same service but take a higher percentage. CD Baby for example takes 30% but does not charge you a setup fee.

Tunecore Social

This service targets artists who rely on social networks to promote their music. In addition to their 30-day Starter Offer, TuneCore offers Pro-level social media promotion services for $ 7.99 per month or $ 85.99 per year at a 10% discount. These services include the ability to download social media analytics reports, schedule a post to multiple platforms at once, and an app through which artists can access reports and schedule posts on their smartphones.

The idea is that TuneCore technology helps artists save time and understand their audience better, but giving away a portion of its hard-earned profits to gain access to it doesn't seem worth it if we are to believe the many artists who gave their opinion online. There are many other ways to streamline and schedule social media posts, and sophisticated analytics reports don't change the fact that organic visibility on major social media is no longer free.

Your Band Page

It is one of the social media promotion services offered by TuneCore. Via a template available on its platform, TuneCore allows you to create your public page that you can share on music platforms, on social networks, and through the press. This is a good point, but if you already have a website then this advantage is unnecessary.

However, for non-established musicians who are sharing their music for the first time and who don't have a website, this is a great way to share their music and identity for the first time.

Personalized and Instant Mastering

TuneCore is in partnership with AfterMaster Audio Labs which provides its users with low-cost mastering options. Exclusive rates are offered to TuneCore users. Paying $9.99 per song gives you access to “Instant Mastering” services, which are comparable to LANDR's innovative mastering services. For a price of $75 per song, the “Custom” offer opens the door to mastering services by experienced engineers.

In comparison to LANDR which offers unlimited free distribution through its platform, the Instant offer is not such a good deal, unless you prefer AfterMaster technology to theirs. When it comes to the Personalized offer, you will find as many good as bad reviews online. Therefore, it is better to listen to examples of their work in the studio and make up your own mind.

TuneCore Fan Reviews

If you're dying to hear what fans think about your music, TuneCore has you covered.

In partnership with the company Soundout, TuneCore offers three levels of services that give you access to your fans' opinions and data about your music. The “Starter” offer gives you access to 40 reviews for $ 15. The number of reviews and analytical data increases with each level of the offer.

More experienced composers will not necessarily be interested in this service. It is the same reason which pushes many musicians to flee the site specialized in the submission of music, Submithub. Feedback tends not to be detailed and sincere when a listener is primarily motivated by greed, which prompts him to give his opinion on as much music as possible.

Honest and detailed feedback can help composers, but that's unlikely to be what they will get with this service.

Partnerships and Special Offers

TuneCore is in partnership with companies such as Feature.FM, RadioAirplay.com, Bandzoogle, and Qrates. From artist websites to vinyl making, each company offers different services and promotions for TuneCore users.

Discounts are small, ranging from 5% for vinyl manufacturing to 15% on the Bandzoogle website. There is nothing inherently useful for artists here, but if you are not yet established and are looking to promote your debut album, for example, the promotion services offered by TuneCore will be a definite advantage if you already have plans to create your own website or to simplify promotional efforts through a service such as Feature.FM. But given that the discounts offered by TuneCore are so small, it's hard to consider them to represent any real added value.

The RadioAirplay.com service provides Internet radio broadcasting to all TuneCore users who register for the service. It starts with a free limited trial and then it turns into an incentive to purchase the paid monthly subscription. The amount of this subscription depends on a complex credit system. Between the complicated pricing structure and the fact that it is very likely that an internet radio which broadcasts any artist who wants it is bad, this is a service that serious artists will not resort to.

Feature.FM, that's another story. They provide marketing tools to streamline promotional efforts and analyze data from multiple delivery platforms. And the 5% off Qrates is offering TuneCore users is a nice bonus if you've already planned to release a vinyl version of your album. In the end, there is nothing to be really happy about here, but there are still some benefits to TuneCore partnerships. It's a bonus, after all.

CD manufacturing

You might think CDs are a thing of the past, but that's still a big part of how artists promote their work to the press and radio, with much better sound than in MP3 format. TuneCore offers its own CD manufacturing services with prices comparable to those charged by other providers.

They offer their subscribers a $50 discount on any service with a total amount over $500, which is no small feat. There are surely other great deals out there, but if you're looking to make your album release easier, TuneCore isn't a bad choice when it comes to making CDs.

License Agreements for your Trade-in

Cover versions represent a huge market for artists looking to reach new audiences and fill their portfolios in the process. The number of distributors who are offering cover licenses is growing and TuneCore is just one of them.

When an artist plans to cover a song, the process of distributing and collecting royalties is completely different from when it comes to their own music. The service offered by TuneCore aims to clarify the sharing of royalties and copyrights and they fairly pay the original artist and the cover artist.

The company offers two license levels: Standard and Limited. Limited licenses are priced at $15 and are for artists who think they're selling less than 500 downloads or “units.” Standard licenses cost $ 59 and are aimed at those who think they are selling more than that. The main difference between these two types of licenses is that the Standard option covers artists indefinitely while the Limited option does not.

It is true that the world of royalties and music licenses is extremely complicated, but TuneCore's page on this subject doesn't clearly explain why this service is necessary or how it offers them better than that of their competitors.

Still, if you're an artist who works with TuneCore, you might want to find out about their cover licensing services.

Monetization of Videos

In addition to TuneCore's services allowing you to collect YouTube revenue, the company allows artists to collect royalties when their music is broadcast on Facebook and Instagram (Instagram is owned by Facebook).

In today's social media culture, this feature is not an option, but a necessity for artists looking to multiply their sources of income. Facebook has come a long way over the past five years making it difficult for artists to reach their audiences for free, but what users download and how they interact with music on the platform is another story.

Despite the social media problems, Facebook and Instagram still have just under 3.5 billion users. That's barely less than half of the world's population. Video and audio content is a huge growth engine on social media, and services like TuneCore seek to know when an artist's music has been used and pay for them accordingly. Here is how it works. By signing up for TuneCore's Facebook and Instagram Monetization program, you give users permission to use your music on the content they post on these platforms. Fans can access your work through a large audio library. There is even a lyrics checking system that allows users to post your song lyrics to their Instagram and Facebook content.

To use this service, TuneCore users do not pay an upfront fee but return 20% of their royalties. Is this a good deal? CD Baby takes 30% and DistroKid claims to offer this feature for free, but this claim looks suspicious (the digital distributor is known to “surprise” its users with fees they don't expect). A 20% commission is a significant price to pay for accessing Facebook's audio library, but TuneCore is betting that you won't have the time or resources to do so without their help.

In the end... 

TuneCore isn't the most obvious choice when looking for a music distributor, but it does the job well.

We can consider that the emerging business models of distributors offering their services for free or at low cost are too experimental today, posing a risk to artists who could see their music deleted overnight.

TuneCore has its flaws (their services are a bit expensive, their customer service is relatively slow, and they don't offer the same benefits as some of their competition), but the company is a trusted distributor that doesn't force artists to accept. to pay a large commission on their royalties.

In the end, this is the main element that differentiates it from its competitors and that makes the company interesting in the eyes of artists who generate a lot of listenings.

The choice is more complicated for artists who do not generate a lot of listenings and who will instead be better off working with a company that offers lower upload fees, but with commissions. If you don't earn much, you have nothing to lose anyway.

In short, while TuneCore isn't as new and sexy as the latest hottest startup anymore, it's still formidably comprehensive and effective. In short, a safe bet.