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To ask or answer a question, or add a piece of advice,
email us at crippledturtle@gmail.com all advice is supplied by our artists,
and Crippled Turtle can not be held responsible for faulty or incomplete
information. Soon this section will be organized and more easily navigable,
but for right now, we just wanted to get as much information up as we
could, and as soon as possible. |
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Amazon.com—to sell—go to www.amazon.com and near the top of the page there is a listing for “sell your stuff.” They charge you a $0.99 fee for each item listed, 15% of sales, plus an $0.80 closing fee. Your listing will be deleted after 60 days if the items don’t sell, and then you are notified by email on how to re-list them. Or you can do the Pro Merchant option, which allows you to post as many items as possible, for as long as you’d like, and your $0.99 fee is waived. However, they do charge a $39.99 a month fee for this option. Doesn’t seem worth it to me. As for pricing, you can choose your own, as long as “…the item price and total price of an item you list on Amazon.com are at or below the item price and total price at which you offer and/or sell the item via any other online sales channel.” Something to remember, especially if you’re selling your cd on your own site, without all the handling fees and whatnot. Amazon’s shipping on cds (which the customer pays, of course; I’m just putting it on here for comparison, so you can figure your pricing) is $1.99 per shipment + $0.99 per item. Amazon.com—addendum—you can only start a New Products Page—i.e. a page for your cd—if you have a Pro Merchant account, at $39.99 a month. Possible loophole: create a Pro Merchant account, list your products, and then cancel your account. The product list will stay up, and you can list your products again under a different screen name, email, whatnot. Loophole as yet untested…more later on that. Okay, loophole tested; you can (supposedly) start a Pro Merchant account (for introductory fee of $20 first two months) and if you cancel it before the end of the first month, that’s all you pay, and your product page stays up, and you can post products on it for free. I have started the account, not yet cancelled it, but seems easy enough. We’ll see. Amazon.com—promotion—start a recommendation list, NOT using your real name as your screen name, and include recommendations of yourself and other of our artists as well as some better known artists. Every time you look something up on amazon, recommendation lists pop up at the sides of the page. I’ve found quite a few new musicians that way. Also, post reviews for yourself (again, not using your own name) and other of our artists. People are more likely to buy if other people say good things (or anything) about an album, since they can’t hear the songs in their entirety and it’s hard to get a sense of what an album really sounds like, sometimes. Cdbaby.com—to sell—go to www.cdbaby.com and click on “sell your music.” They charge you a $35 one-time set up fee (per album), you price your cd however you want, they take $4 per for mailed cds, or 9% on digital sales. They also post your music, for digital downloads, with Apple i Tunes, rhapsody, yahoo music “and more.” You send them 5 cds to start, and when they sell out, you send more. They also have an “in store” option that can get you distribution with actual, physical music stores. Shipping costs (for customer) are $2.25 for one cd, with reduction the more cds you buy. So the way I figure it, cds on cdbaby must sell for $0.75 more than amazon to keep amazon happy. But if you are doing cdbaby and amazon, do cdbaby first; you require a UBC # (bar code) for amazon, and cdbaby will provide you with one for a $20 fee. Tagworld.com—to post songs for listening and downloading—you can post an unlimited # of songs, but the link where you can add, delete or change them, and everything else on your page, comes and goes. Sometimes it is the easiest thing in the world to change your page, and then you try to do it again another time and can’t figure out how you ever did it in the first place. Or maybe it’s just me. Music.download.com—listen and download—on the top right corner of their homepage there’s a link for artists to upload their music. It’s free, and you can have a bunch of songs, up to 50mb, but oh so tedious to get your page up. Set aside a couple of hours for this one. And then you have to submit it for review. God knows what doesn’t make it on there. Also all your mp3s have to be 192 kbps. I haven’t yet gotten this one to work. Myspace.com—not only can you post your music for listening and downloading, now you can also sell digital downloads. They cost the customer $0.99 per song, and you get $0.60. if you go through cdbaby.com, the myspace music store server, SnoCap, is one they deal with, and they take an additional $0.05 per song. But as they also do a million other download sites, it’s worth it to me to let them handle it all rather than do it myself and make 5 cents more per song. One of those questions of time vs money. Podcasts: get your music played on podcasts. No profit to you, but more exposure.
Here’s a few I’ve found: http://www.rubyfruitradio.com/aboutrfr.html
at the bottom of the page there’s an email to mail mp3s. this is
just for women musicians, though. There’s another, www.soupygato.com
that will accept emailed mp3s or snail mailed cds. beta records: www.betarecords.com it’s what crippled turtle wants to be. Promotes music not only to music buyers, but also the music industry. Free. Site is incredibly slow, or was at least on the day I signed up. In fact, I’m still trying to get through the process…it’s godawful. But you get to put up 8 songs and up to 64 pictures…which might explain why it’s so so so so so so slow. puremusic.com—for listening and downloading. Free, fast, easy to sign up, not so easy to build your page; hard to find where things are. You get 4 songs up, and can have links to your store sites and other sites. unsigned.com: this one had a scary “terms and agreements” page;
it looked like you sign away all rights to everything you’ve ever
done, and everything you ever will do. Not a good thing… Creativemusicianscoalition.com—basically like cdbaby, but a membership fee of $20 a year, or more if you want more promotions and exposure. Local library Local music stores
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