Source: www.lostindigitalmusic.com
In the digital music distribution world, there is a harsh competition around pricing and royalties rates.
More and more services like TuneCore*, DittoMusic* and others attract customers / poor D.I.Y musicians by offering a 100% royalty rate.
But what does this mean exactly?
When offering you “100% royalties” these companies do not take a big risk, I’d even say no risk at all.
They could offer 150% as well, this won’t change anything.
This is pure marketing in order to have you pay for upfront fees during the uploading step of your music, or subscribe to monthly/yearly payments for “maintenance” or “storage”.
Why am I saying the royalty rate does not matter?
Because you will not be making any sales, or at least not enough sales to threaten the profitability of digital music distribution companies who make business on upfront fees and/or recurring payments.
“100% royalties” is an illusion, as 100% of zero is stil zero.
If you’re lucky your digital sales will let you recoup the service fees you’ve paid but that’s pretty much it!
*nothing against these companies, just examples of these types of business models
