My Music on iTunes - thanks to WaTunes!

Just got an email from WaTunes, informing me that my two albums which I had recently uploaded to WaTunes, are now on iTunes. This is FANTASTIC! Just took about one week, not as expected until mid August. The music I have on TuneCore and had uploaded a few days earlier is still not on iTunes... which gives WaTunes clearly an edge. These two albums which are now in iTunes are: "Digital Mahler" with recordings of my three pieces from Gustav Mahler's Symphonies, and the "Romantic Suite". I will soon upload more music through WaTunes, since this appears to work great.

This afternoon, the CEO of WaTunes, Kevin Rivers, called me on my mobile phone and guided me for about 30 minutes through a pre-release of their new interface software, which allows artists to customise their music into releasing it onto different online music stores. It is a software that the user downloads and runs on their own computer, offline. It basically creates the meta data for each store, allowing the user to control all aspects which go into the store. There is even a version tag, so that different versions of the release can be managed. The principle is that the artists manage their uploads offline and create the proper set of files. These files are then uploaded to WaTunes. This upload will be integrated into the final version of this management software; right now the user would upload the files through ftp.

I will try this out for my next albums.

Way to go, Watunes!

Online Music Distribution Experience

Here I want to share some of my first experiences with online music distribution services. So far I have uploaded through TuneCore and WaTunes. For checking if my music is online available, I did a search for "reinhold behringer" on each of the sites.

As a summary, from TuneCore the music seems to be fastest uploaded to Amazon. iTunes and AmieStreet seem to be the slowest - they did not yet have any music available after 6 days.

Here is my experience with TuneCore:

Date	Service	Issues and Comments
Day 1	Uploading Music to TuneCore	Files had to be in wave or MP3 > 300 bps - I uploaded wave.
8 hours	First of the uploaded music is on Amazon.	Because TuneCore does have no classical category, I put my music in "Electronic" and "Inspirational". That translated on Amazon to "Dance/Electronic" and "Christian/Gospel".
Day 3	Music is on Lala.	Listen only possible in US. Provides number of listens. Fortunately category stays as "Electronic" instead of something weird.
Day 5	Music is on ShockHound.	Uses "Piggy Bank" for payment. Puts my music into genre: Spiritual
Day 6	Music is on Rhapsody.	Cateogory: Electronica/Dance. Artwork is only partially there (is missing for Tristan, is not showing in enlarged icon view). Listen is only available in US.
Day 6	Music is on Napster (UK, cannot access US).	But need to be a member of Napster to see the tracks.
	Emusic:	No way of checking, because even the search requires a registration.

And here is my experience with WaTunes:

Date	Service	Issues and Comments
Day 1	Creating Album on WaTunes.	In its current form the GUI and upload interface are not very intuitive to use. One has only one attempt in setting up the album, later changes are through (the very responsive) tech support.
Day 2	Uploaded music content to WaTunes.	Track files are packed into one zip file which is then uploaded via web interface. I wondered how the track order in the album would be determined. WaTunes responded that one adds a number as the first characters in the track file name. Also when creating the album one should add the track titles in the form - I had forgotten to do that.
Day 3	Music is "In Review".

In summary:

TuneCore has a professional service, at a price of $9.99 per single. The uploaded music was fast online on Amazon. But the limited genre classifications that are offered by TuneCore, are a real bummmer. After uploading 5 singles, I have halted all further uploads indefinitely, until they fix their genre classification and add at least a "classical" category.

WaTunes offers free upload to iTunes, eMusic, and ShockHound. Their service is good value, but it appears not yet mature and really functioning. But they do have a large variety of genres. However, my music uploaded through them is not yet online anywhere, I got told it would be online by mid August. There are several issues with the web interface, which currently only allows a very limited management by the artist. One has to wait until the "New Experience" is implemented on their site, and until the VIP service is activated (expected by mid July, with large number of additional stores).

A note regarding iTunes: they really appear not to be artist-friendly at all. They are not interested in independent artist signing on, but recommend that they go through one of those intermediaries like TuneCore or WaTunes. And even through those, they take a long time until the music appears there in their store.

Amazon appears to be the winner - with the most rapid online publication of the music and with a well established and accessible brand. I have not yet found out if artists can sign on directly to Amazon...

Music in More Online Stores

The music which I had uploaded to TuneCore is now available in two more stores:
Lala and Shockhound.

I have now also uploaded an album to WaTunes: My "Romantic Suite" (2000) with the three files "Mirage", "Daring", and "Never Ending". Am in the process of uploading "Digital Mahler": "Adagietto" (Symphony #5,3rd mvmnt, Symphony #1, 3rd movement, and Symphony #4, 3rd movement (all recorded in 1999 and 2000).

WaTunes vs. TuneCore

While searching for an alternative to TuneCore which would be able to add the "Classical" tag to my music, I came across watunes. Not quite clear how the costing is: on one blog entry a monthly fee of $10 is mentioned, but when I signed on, there was no mention of a fee at all - indeed, their service is FREE!

And WaTunes has the "classical" category - which is absolutely essential for my music. Also, they do have a great array of sub-cagetories, something that TuneCore does not have at all. They require only MP3 files (320 bps), no wave files. And they need the artwork only at resolution 600x600, not like TuneCore which requires 1600x1600.

So I think I will give it a try and upload there. Pity for you, TuneCore, that you guys were not able to fix the genre classification... but if I would publish all my music under those incorrect tags, nobody would ever find the files.

Some of the WaTunes interface is not yet stable. I tried to edit my account information, and while it had accepted everything when I signed on, it complained that my username was too long when I wanted to edit my account info. Also the system had forgotten that I wanted to sign on as artist, not as listener... and after I had created an yet empty album, I should have written down the UPC code - because that one is needed when preparing uploading the content. In order to see the UPC code, one has to go back to the main page and go to "My Discography".

It seems that the web developers for those online music distribution sites are a bit overworked, not being able to address simple issues such as classical music tagging or managing correctly the database access, but I guess this will change in the future.

WaTunes: cover art costs $20. TuneCore: cover art is free.

Stores for WaTunes (free): iTunes (no country specified), eMusic, ShockHound. For an additional $29.99 VIP charge per year, more stores are offered: Napster, Amazon, AmieStreet, zune, masterbeat, beatsdigital, and others, including mobile phone stores.

Stores for TuneCore: iTunes, Napster, Amazon, eMusic, ShockHound, AmieStreet, rhapsody, IMVU, Lala.