Written by Bill Holland
So many musicians and DJs are telling me to put my tracks up on Snocap instead of giving them away. Everyone's saying I need to set up a player on my Myspace account and get my songs up on iTunes. Well, the question really needs to be raised: How much to I stand to make from all this effort?
CDBaby says they only take %9 of what you earn. Well, what exactly do you earn? They post to iTunes, Rhapsody, Yahoo, and even ringtone pages. You, the artist, should be seeing some significant income from this, right?
Well, not exactly. That 9% is a cut of what they get back from dealing with iTunes, Rhapsody, and whoever else. On top of that, you have to pay them $35 per whole album. That might not be acquired by them up front, and will most likely come out of the eventual sales. Since iTunes tends to have the best return ($.70 for every $.99), that would mean you make $0.63 after they take their cut. While that is not horrible, it is less than fantastic. It becomes significantly so when you realize that you will have to sell 55 tracks to break even on opening your account.
Snocap is one of the most recent offerings, and has attracted many due to it's omnipresence on Myspace. Logic would indicate that a service acting as a middleman through the artist through another middleman would cause complications. The figures offer a very clear view of what Snocap is all about.
Like any good business, or a business run by a media mogul, Myspace obviously wants a cut of the action. Their cut is the greater of $.10 or 15% of the wholesale price set by the artist. So, that means $.15 if you are charging $1.00 for a song. Then, Snocap comes into play.
For their server space, time, and possible other expenditures they want a heaping $.39. Add to that a $30.00 annual fee (the first year is free), and you had better make sure you are selling a lot of tracks. Granted, agents often want 50% of what their artists make during a tour, but this is your music minus the overhead of CD or LP production.
