Hello,
I wanted to share with you my terrible experience with the digital music distributor company called TuneCore and to advise you to avoid them at all costs.
I’m a producer and guitar player operating under the moniker. After I worked hard for an year and a half on my full-length album, I wanted to distribute it properly to online retailers and I searched for an online retailer. I found TuneCore to be offering a service at competitive price, and I decided to go with them, even though their website looked a bit sketchy and cheap.
So I paid about 130 pounds to have my album distributed on iTunes and a long list of other online retailers. Tunecore website says that music uploaded to them should be on iTunes within a couple of days and within 5 weeks to any other online store.
After two months, my music hasn’t appeared neither on iTunes nor on any other online store. I have been calling them more than ten times during this whole period to ask what is going on, and they have always said they are “working on it”. I have been very cooperative when talking to their customer service people and I told them that I can upload again any of my files if needed, that I can send them links to download. The fact is that their system is kind of slow and crap and you can’t be sure what has worked and what not. All I received from them as feedback was that they are going to send me an e-mail with the status of my release. I did not receive any e-mails from them all this time. So I gave up after all that waiting and removed my release from their system and asked them to return me my money, but I haven’t seen any of it.
So don’t be lured by the cheap prices they are offering – the fact is that they are crap and I don’t believe that they are a legitimate business.
I will go on to upload my music on iTunes via some of the more established companies like DittoMusic or CDbaby.
I have no affiliation whatsoever with any competing firms, I’m just a musician that wants to put his music out, get heard, possibly earn some income. I have no interest in dissing TuneCore; and I barely have the time, but I’m going to post this as much as I can so that other fellow musicians are warned. I have discussed with others my experience and I have heard that other people were treated quite miserably, but apparently no one took the time to write about it and post online – at least I could not find any negative reports about them.
So hopefully, this message will be of use to anyone making a search about TuneCore and deliberating whether or not to use their services. TuneCore has not shown in any way to me that they are not the next online scam.
If you’re reading this you’re a musician interested in using tunecore to get your music out. Well it will get your music out but you won’t make a profit for shit. Ok so here’s the story. I put two albums on tunecore and the service works fast. My music is on itunes within a day and on amazon within a week. Everything is my music and my samples so I own the rights to everything. I made some sales totalling to about $100 in the later part of december.
Of course I don’t find out I made these sales until like two weeks later and they make you pay 3 bucks just to see what you make on itunes only but you don’t receive any cash yet. That’s irritating but that’s not scamming behavior, they don’t promise you instant reporting and you can do soundscan if you want instant tracking. What they do promise you is your money in 2 months. They make you wait at least 3 months, yes 3 months to get your money.
If you want to make a profit with tunecore, prepare to wait and wait some more or maybe receive nothing at all. The reason i’m so pissed off is on the tunecore site it says it pays the first wednesday of every month and the fourth wednesday of every month, two months after the month your music sells. So if I sold music on december 27th. I should expect payment 2 months later. Well it’s already the fourth wednesday of febuary, which is the 23rd right now and I haven’t gotten shit. So how come i’m not paid one cent tunecore. You guys are hoarding up my money and slurping up interest in the bank for at least a month.
More like scamcore. So let’s get down to how exactly tunecore is lying to their customers. They tell you the reason they can’t pay you is because the stores haven’t paid them yet and most of them don’t pay until two months later. Well everything’s fucking digital and instant dickwads. The stores have paid you within a month’s time and that’s when I expect my fucking money. Don’t give me that chargeback bullshit either. Yes stores wait up to month tops to give you guys money so a customer can’t do a chargeback because they paid with a bad card or they wanted it for free but that privelege is taken away within a month. look at the payment timeframes of honest working sites like zazzle.com and there’s actually real items being delivered so ridiculous that you assholes are pulling this shit on me for something that’s digital.
The timeframe of payment should be faster as a digital item is sold and delivered faster and the money is solidified faster. Tunecore always tries and blames the stores and say “oh well that’s their policy, we can’t change their policy to pay you faster.” It’s not their policy you dipshits. It’s yours and you just want more fucking money you greedy cunts so you drag payments on for at least an extra month. Even if one shitty store does do payments late you shouldn’t drag on all the other store’s payments for that one store as an excuse to make more interest off the money.
I know itunes and amazon pay within a month of the music being sold and they are the big money makers for musicians so get with the fucking program and start paying in a reasonable amount of time. I probably will get paid what’s owed to me but it is not in a timely manner and not even in the shit timeframe that was promised. 3 months is too long and not what I was promised. Also another thing that’s fishy about tunecore. No way that tunecore doesn’t take a cut of sales. They brag up and down that all they charge you is the fee up front and that’s it. Why am I only getting paid 70 cents for a song and 7 dollars for an album? I know itunes and other stores are taking their share which is ten cents per song and no more than a dollar per album. So that means tunecore is making 20 cents off each song you sell and another 2 dollars off each album. The reason I know this is because tunecore has a huge staff to pay and a huge corparate building and there is no way in hell the are able to function comfortably with small yearly fees. Even world of warcraft knows this.
They just want to get your music out there fast so they can make money off of it. It’s like youre doing all the work for them. Shit even their gay contest with paul barker required you to pay ten bucks to submit a song. What a fucking rip off. Ten bucks to join a gay contest. Tunecore is all about milking their customer where ever they can. That includes making you pay 3 bucks to see if you sold 3 bucks worth of music and taking more money behind your back. Fuck you shitcore. Fuck you up your gay corporate ass. If you want to sell music I suggest setting up a paypal store. Cut out the greedy middleman. Money is pretty much instant and you don’t have to worry about all the bullshit.
TuneCore is a scam - they owe me $28,000 in royalties and have not paid one penny. Arrogant enough to reply ‘If you want to file a lawsuit.. go ahead’ because they know i will have to travel from CA to NY multiple times to appear in court, etc. For more details check the tunecore forums, I am posting the entire discussion there. Just to notify everyone that TuneCore has performed a breach of contract. I am owed $28,000 in royalties – and they have not paid a single cent. It is more than 17 days since the issue was supposed to be ‘fixed’. Their response – “If you want to file a lawsuit, go ahead, we cannot stop you” Of course, TuneCore is out to waste my time and money by having to file a lawsuit against them in NY, but I have to do this and spread the message. If anyone is serious about their music, do not do business with TuneCore. If you are an indie artist making $20 a month, they will pay you on time, but the minute you get higher sales (because of marketing, promotion, etc) their system has ‘glitches’.
Victime#2
They guy above is exactly right. They are scammers and once they see someone start to do well they will just quit talking to you, or worse yet the CEO himself hung up on me because he was ask to point out things in the disclosure. He froze up because he knew he was wrong so just hung up. I will be spreading the word. I signed up to Tunecore last year and because I’m a newbie in music, totally independent and with very little marketing budget I was naive enough to think that I would be able to increase my unexistent audience via Tunecore.
Wrong. Not a problem because my music isn’t necessarily very good either but when I tried to remove my songs and my name from Tunecore after realising that I had made a mistake, they cancelled my account but didn’t remove my tracks, in fact, they distributed my tracks to a number of other pay sites. My music is available for free from my website and I think it is presumptuous to think that I should be charging money for tracks that are unreleased, unmastered and full of frequency soups and if I ever thought the opposite when I signed up to Tunecore, then I was totally wrong and take it all back. So I’ve contacted them again to remove my tracks from their site although this time I’m asking for their head office address as I need to do this in writing. In short: it wasn’t good for me either. I am fortunate enough to realise this mistake early in my career…
Victim#3
I signed up to Tunecore last year and because I’m a newbie in music, totally independent and with very little marketing budget I was naive enough to think that I would be able to increase my unexistent audience via Tunecore. Wrong. Not a problem because my music isn’t necessarily very good either but when I tried to remove my songs and my name from Tunecore after realising that I had made a mistake, they cancelled my account but didn’t remove my tracks, in fact, they distributed my tracks to a number of other pay sites.
My music is available for free from my website and I think it is presumptuous to think that I should be charging money for tracks that are unreleased, unmastered and full of frequency soups and if I ever thought the opposite when I signed up to Tunecore, then I was totally wrong and take it all back. So I’ve contacted them again to remove my tracks from their site although this time I’m asking for their head office address as I need to do this in writing. In short: it wasn’t good for me either. I am fortunate enough to realise this mistake early in my career…
Victim#4 tunecore is a f**king scam they will secretly take money out of your payments, the hidden percentage is what i called it the facts will come out soon.
Victim#5 The Part of the Tunecore Business Model that Jeff, doesn’t tell you about. While it is true that Tunecore offers a good service, I read that the FBI is going to start monitoring Tunecores accounting processes. Why? Isn’t Tunecore a great service? True on all accounts but why does a musician need to use tunecore to put their music on iTunes anyway.
Tunecore doesn’t pay a fee to iTunes…or do they. Tunecore pays a fee to iTunes, and other online stores to keep the littleman out. Therefore they can charge a fee. This seems innocent right. I’ts only a mere 9.00 per single and 35 to 50.00 per album. That’s where the 7 million in financing went. After doing the math and subtracting all the paypal transfer fees, I am wondering how Tunecore stays in the black. Aahh! The truth is revealed…Now… This is how they do it..aside from there state of the art automated processes . First you sign up.. they don’t care what type of music you put on and they don’t even check to see if the said music is copyrighted. They do let you check the box saying you agree that selling music that you don’t have permission for is illegal. All goes well and believe it or not in less than 3 weeks all your music is in the stores…Wow!… You then every 5 minutes, check all the online stores to see if you moved in chart position or sales rank.
Then 45 days latter you receive your first 30 dollar royalty check. Wow you are really siked and pumped. Another 45 days goes by and now you receive a 300 dollar royalty check. Wow.. This keeps happening for the next few months till finally you are about to hit the $1000 dollar mark and you do.. You log into your account to initiate the paypal transfer. You type in your email..and wait for the next 24 hours to see your cash…but….2 days go by..6 days go by then 2 weeks go by and no money. You are pissed so you email support and no one answers you. There is no phone number but after calling and the 2 hrs of googleing you find the address of tunecore. You then call the attorney general.
The attorney general, connects you to the better business bureau. You get the number. You call and…Someone answer the phone right away…Wow. You think. They must be busy processing payments. They explain to the rep that you want your money in the kindess tone.. He put you on hold..and then a guy named Tai comes on the phone. He tells you that they aren’t going to pay you..because you don’t have permission to sell your songs that you wrote.And…if you want your money..you need to produce the licenses for your songs. Now you are confused because you wrote all the songs, and registered them with the copyright office.
You are indeed pissed, but since you live in California and they are in New York, you can’t strangle them. You yell you scream, but they just laugh. You hang up. Not knowing what to do. You wrote those songs. How can they do this to you you wonder. You call back and try to remain calm. You tell them there must be some mistake. They laugh again and say if you have a problem than go get a lawyer. You hang up, call and think to yourself, I am going to get me a lawyer. You find who you think is a good lawyer and you are confident until he says that he charges $500 dollars and hour. Saddend you call around to find a lower priced lawyer but the fees keep getting higher and higher. YOu only made a little over $1000 dollars. If you hire a lawyer you will receive no money because of the fees they charge. You call Tunecore again..This time you keep getting tossed around. Finally you are transferred to a fellow named Peter. He seems like a good guy.
You explain the situation to him.. he pulls up your account..He tells you that it is illegal for you to sell unlicensed music. Again you argue that it is your music and it is original. YOu ask for the anme and number of the person who says your are stealing music. He blows you off and says you will need an attorney to get that info. YOu think about the lawyers fees and now in your heart you know that you are fighting a losing battle. You are so pissed by this time that you asked speak to the Boss. You are than transfered to the CFO, Gian…He says he ain’t gonna pay..You need a lawyer to get your money. You then in the calmest way tell him that it is yours music. And you tell him that you signed up at Tunecore so you want have to deal with lawyers. You thought they were on your side. He then laughs and says, “Buddy, Music isnt about you..It is all about Money and Lawyers.” Almost in tears and barely able to speak you threatened to sue them which is a lie. He then yells “don’t call here again.” And don’t you threaten my staff. And slams the phone in your face. **** This is a True story…And this happens to a lot of Tunecore customers. Tunecore will only steal money from those who cannot afford a lawyer.
They know you can’t sue because it is too expensive. A record company won’t sue them because of the lawyer fees as well. So who keeps the money. Tunecore!!! I am writing this to warn you about this practice. It doesn’t matter if you have licenses or not for your songs. If you samples someone, do a cover of a song, you are really not safe. Tunecore is trying lock down the independent artist sector and steal there money because they don’t have lawyers or money for them rather.
Tunecore has done this to thousands…and made millions in this shady practice. It is a good service on the outside. But shady on the inside. The Truth Exposed… If this has happened to you or you feel your royalties are a bit low for your efforts, feel free to email me xxxxx@yahoo.com We independents are only strong together..We can file a class action law suit and at least get a court order to audit there books.
Tunecore force website owner to delete this true story.
I won’t call it a scam, but I have had some questionable experiences while using their service. I am a songwriter and copyright holder of some compositions and their sound recordings which I paid Tunecore to to distribute digitally. I had roughly 300 dollars in sales in iTunes, Amazon MP3 etc…,
and when I tried to make a withdrawal I never received a check. I waited 2 weeks and never got my money. I contacted Tunecore and they told me that my account had been frozen. I asked why ? and was told that a copyright claim had been filed with them by another party.
I promptly sent Tunecore a picture of my physical U.S. Copyright Certificate with filing number and proved to them that I am actually the songwriter and copyright holder… but they didn’t listen or seem to respect my copyright. About a month later, the issue had still not been resolved. I then called Tunecore and asked to speak with someone. “They are in a meeting. They will call you back when they get out. What is your number?” is as far as I got. No one called me back or explained anything to me. Also, when I initially tried to make a withdrawal from my account via check, may account was debited the amount of the check, but I never received the check. So in my opinion Tunecore, stole (for lack of a better term) “X” amount of dollars from my account and hasn’t paid it back, nor have they sent me the check. “Yes sir, it’s on hold sir”. By Tunecore doing this, in my opinion they are really saying to me “We don’t really respect your copyrights and we’re going to keep your money”
It’s really not a super huge amount of money so it’s not really worth suing for, but it’s still MY money and I still want it.
Earlier this year, we stumbled upon a very depressing statistic. It turned out that the average Tunecore artist was making just $179 a year - and that was before any annual fees. But now, it turns out there’s an even more depressing figure: 99.875% – or nearly all – of Tunecore artists are making less than minimum wage through the platform, based on revenue figures recently shared by the company.
And that only counts revenues – not costs for creating content or annual fees owed to Tunecore. It also assumes that Tunecore revenues are being paid to one, solo artist, instead of being divided by a group.
(2) We multiplied that by the standard work week of 40 hours to reach a base monthly salary of $1,280.
(3) Then, we used a spreadsheet of top Tunecore earners from July of this year, which showed that just 749 artists made more than $1,280 in that month.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
(4) We calculated the percentage using a baseline of 600,000, which is the number of member artists reported by Tunecore in late April of this year (about 2-3 months before the July data was published).
The result was the 99.875% figure.
But what about diversification? Of course, artists must look beyond the recording for revenues, though we wonder how many are actually making up the deficit through merchandise, touring, publishing, sponsorships, or other endeavors. Most unsigned artists we hear from are struggling to make money on on the road, or from other avenues. Which means a day job or subsidizing parents to keep the ship afloat.
A tour through the rich neighborhood. Perhaps the saddest part about all of this is that Tunecore CEO Jeff Price revealed the data with a completely different goal in mind. Price selectively published the spreadsheet of artists making over $100 a month to underscore how lucrative Tunecore is for artists. That list includes some extreme high-fliers, though it also includes artists signed to labels (the complete spreadsheet is available here). ”With the music industry democratized, more artists are making more money than ever before,” Price explained.
Along with the release of “Confluence” on CD in late January, we were really excited to also be releasing our entire catalog on iTunes and other online stores for the first time.
To get the new album, as well as our first album, “A Bygone Era”, and our demo, “True Position”, online, we decided to use an online vendor called TuneCore.
We uploaded all the necessary files and paid them up-front back on January 9, 2009, with an agreement to get the music up on iTunes USA, iTunes Canada, Amazon.com, Napster.com and Rhapsody.com.
TuneCore‘s website says that it takes 4-6 weeks for the music to go live. That’s awhile to process but understandable enough.
We were happily surprised to see our disography go live within a few days. Almost.
The one thing that hasn’t gone live is “Confluence” on iTunes USA. The most important album for us on the most popular online download site.
Boo, TuneCore.
Since TuneCore did say it would take 4-6 weeks, we gave them the benefit of the doubt and waited until their drop deadline of February 21. Still nothing.
So we emailed them. Within 48 hours, they responded and said they’d look into it and get back to us. But then we heard……..nothing.
A week later we emailed again. They didn’t even bother responding this time.
Another week later. No response again.
So here we sit two months after they happily took our money – and the new album isn’t up on iTunes and TuneCore don’t respond to customer support requests.
Our advice to all musicians out there looking to get your music online: Don’t use TuneCore.
As many of you know, the music industry has changed substantially in the past five years. Before the exponential growth of technology, musicians had to hope for record label signings to be able to get their music into the ears of potential listeners. Today, any artist can distribute their music to iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, etc through companies such as Tunecore and CDBaby for a certain fee. The problem becomes, then, that the distributor controls music placement to sites such as iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and therefore must be on their game about sending a customer’s product to stores in a timely and proper manner.
I have been releasing music since 2010, so online distribution is not a new thing for me. I have used Tunecore and CDBaby over the past three years (with no particular preference on either, til now) to get my music into big sites such as iTunes and Amazon. Explaining the process may help out a bit; Tunecore’s process is much quicker and simpler, while CDBaby’s is more involved. CDBaby has a one time flat fee, while Tunecore charges musicians yearly for distribution. With either company, the artist submits their songs, chooses a release date, and can only hope and pray their date is respected by the large distributors.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
tomlohrmannmusic
Our debut record was scheduled to be released on December 18, 2012. We had sent in all of the correct materials (WAVs, Album Artwork, Track Info) over two weeks before the release date. When the album did not show up at 12 AM on the 18th, I knew something was amiss. But only after four days were our eMails answered, and their messages were unapologetic and unsatisfactory to proper business standards.
Our entire album release week was completely ruined because of this mishap. We have not recovered any of the funds we would have made had the record been available on time. All promotion was halted and all we could do was sit and watch as Tunecore did not bother to answer in a timely or helpful manner. I understand that Tunecore handles distribution for many artists. What I don’t understand is why we were the ones who were not taken care of properly.
The album finally was released on January 2nd, two weeks from its original release date. The album was sent to Tunecore at the beginning of December, over two weeks before it was due in stores. This would have given them plenty of time to check for errors on their end, right? Wrong! Only after emailing them, and explaining that the album had not gone live yet did they even notice there was an issue. It astounds me that the artist would need to be doing the job of the company’s screeners. Very unprofessional and impractical.
We were and are absolutely disgusted with the communication and effort that TuneCore put forth in “working” to resolve our dilemma. Out of the 6 items we have distributed through them, 4 have had problems. This was by far the worst, a true financial and professional embarrassment. We won’t be using Tunecore again, and I would claim that artists who want to be treated like they matter should look somewhere else for their distribution needs.
Image may be NSFW.
