Re: Anyone here using AmazonMP3.com (CreateSpace) ?
Adam
well-researched one.
Anyone else here have a different viewpoint on the subject?
"Rick Paul" <rick...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:Uf-dncfEd_V6-n7X...@earthlink.com...
>
> "Adam" wrote...
>
>> Anyone here using AmazonMP3.com (CreateSpace) to sell their songs
>> online? If so, how's that working out for you? Happy with the service,
>> the taxes, the site's cut of the pie, etc.?
>
> I'm not using it directly, though I have looked into that possibility in
> some depth. I am, however, using it indirectly through TuneCore's Amazon
> Disc On Demand program, which basically tacks an on-demand CD capability
> onto its digital distribution plan.
>
> First, with respect to CreateSpace itself, I find the economics
> potentially devastating to the potential for pricing a recording at a
> reasonable level while also allowing yourself to make some profit. As I
> understand it, there is a media cost per unit, plus a discount off LIST
> PRICE (emphasis added), that combine to dictate what Amazon makes on the
> deal.
>
> The fixed media charge is $4.95 for a single disc product. That isn't
> horrible as on-demand disc stores go -- e.g. Lulu charges $5.50 -- but
> it's not competitive with Kunaki.com, who charges $1.75 per disc,
> either -- they are more competitive than even most bulk low-vlume CD
> manufacturers who also use CD-R media for quantities under 1,000 in most
> cases.
>
> It is in the percentage cut that Amazon gets that things get bad. First,
> there is that they are taking their cut off list price, not off the markup
> above the cost, so you have to be really careful in pricing your product
> or you could even end up owing them money on each sale (i.e. if they'd
> even allow you to price at such levels -- I'd hope they would not).
> Second, while the percentage cut they take for sales on CreateSpace itself
> are a relatively reasonable 15% -- for comparison, Lulu takes 20%, though
> it is off the markup over the media cost, not off the list price -- they
> take a highly unreasonable (IMHO anyway) 45% cut, again off list price, if
> the sale is made on Amazon.com. And you can't prevent the possibility of
> someone buying it on Amazon. In fact, I suspect most customers would be
> much more comfortable purchasing on Amazon than on CreateSpace since
> they'd be more familiar with the Amazon name.
>
> So, let's do some math. Let's say you list your CD album for a fairly
> typical $15. The cost if you sell it directly will be $4.95 for the media
> plus $2.25 (15% of $15) for Amazon's share, for a total of $7.20. Thus,
> you gross $7.80. If you have royalties to pay on this (e.g. mechanical
> royalties to co-writers), your actual profit may be less, but the bottom
> line is this is not so bad. Let's look at an Amazon sale, though. Here
> you have the same $4.95 media cost plus a $6.75 additional cut for Amazon
> for a total cost of $11.70, leaving you with a gross of only $3.30. If
> this were a 12-song cover album, you'd have $1.09 (9.1 cents times 12
> songs) in royalties to pay off this, which would reduce your profit to
> $2.21.
>
> You might say that's not so bad, because $3.30, or even $2.21, is still
> better than most major label artists would get. Yeah, but they're selling
> a lot more volume typically, and making their livings off concerts, song
> royalties, etc. More importantly, can you even sell your CD for $15?
> Much more common is to list indie albums at $12 or even $10. What happens
> to the numbers then? I won't show the math, but the $12 leaves you with a
> gross of $5.25 on CreateSpace and $1.65 on Amazon, while the $10 album
> leaves you a gross of $3.55 on CreateSpace or 55 cents on Amazon. That's
> right, the Amazon figure isn't even enough to pay for 10 songs' worth of
> mechanical royalties -- in fact, it covers just over 6 songs' worth!
>
> Mind you, you could charge a lot more for your albums -- CreateSpace's
> example uses $25. But who would pay $25 for a normal length album. And
> what if the product you want to sell is an EP? That just cannot be done
> at even a close to reasonable price. By contrast, I've been able to do 4-
> or 5-song products on Kunaki, price them at $5 and still make money after
> covering co-writer royalties. (If someone buys directly on Kunaki, the
> gross for that is $3.75 minus some fairly minimal credit card transaction
> fees. If you order inventory to sell at local gigs, there is shipping
> cost on top of that -- the customer pays the shipping if they order
> directly on Kunaki -- but you can get that down to a very manageable level
> if you order as few as 25 units -- from memory, I think the unit cost
> including shipping came to something like $2.35. The main downsides with
> Kunaki are that they'll only leave your product in their on-line store for
> 180 days if there are no sales in that period, whereas CreateSpace and
> Lulu don't have any timeouts, and the Kunaki store is really not
> worthwhile other than for fulfillment from your web site as it really
> isn't meant to be a retail e-store, but more like just a way for people to
> order your things as you direct them there.)
>
> So what about the TuneCore with Amazon On Demand (a.k.a. CreateSpace)?
> This is really for getting your product in Amazon as a CD. There, the
> Amazon cuts are in fixed percentages off list, but they set a minimum
> price level, and also a maximum, and you can go in increments of $1
> between the levels. The minimum is $8.98, so it's still not terribly
> useful for a single or EP, and the maximum is $18.98. You get 40% of
> that, so Amazon is getting 60%, but without a fixed media cost added to
> their cut. Thus, you gross anywhere from $3.60 to $7.99, depending on
> where you set your price. For the $15, $12, and $10 list price points,
> which would have to be $14.98, $11.98, and $9.98 here, you'd get $5.99,
> $4.79, and $3.99, respectively. Not as good as you could do if you sold
> through CreateSpace directly on the $15 or $12 albums, but better than
> you'd do if you sold on Amazon through CreateSpace at any of the price
> points or if you sold through CreateSpace at the $10 price point.
>
> The catch with TuneCore is that there are delivery charges, as well as
> annual maintenance charges to keep your releases live after the first
> year. If you're already using them to get your album into iTunes, Amazon
> MP3, Rhapsody, etc., then the incremental on the delivery charges to get
> into Amazon Disc On Demand is only 99 cents, and there is no incremental
> fee on the annual maintenance. However, if you're talking about only
> going to Amazon Disc On Demand, you're talking about on the order of $31
> for the first year delivery charge on a 10-song album and almost $20 a
> year thereafter for the maintenance charge. So you have to look at how
> many you're expecting to sell.
>
> As for product quality, I did take a look at the quality of my album,
> "Love Holds On", from Amazon via TuneCore. The print quality is good, but
> the insert graphic was folded wrong (slightly misaligned), and it is clear
> they are using those kind of punch-out tray cards you might use if
> printing your own CD labels and wanting to make it easy to fold them
> because the serrations are visible. They do use high quality on-disc
> printing.
>
> The big problem I had with the TuneCore/Amazon thing, though, was they did
> not use the custom graphics I'd sent them (their process for dealing with
> the customer providing full CD graphics is apparently manual, but they
> supposedly can accommodate it), and rather got just generated text-based
> graphics for all but the cover image. And I'd designed two additional
> panels (i.e. as compared to my Kunaki design) just to suit the extra
> panels in the Amazon/CreateSpace specs, while also designing an inside
> panel for the tray card (CreateSpace uses the clear type, whereas Kunaki
> does not). Thus, the product design ended up looking inferior to my Kunaki
> product (Kunaki also doesn't use those punch out tray cards as there are
> no visible serrations), even though the packaging was meant to be enhanced
> with the extra graphics. Of course, a direct CreateSpace customer should
> not have the wrong graphics problem, because there wouldn't be a middleman
> involved in getting the graphics set up. However, they might conceivably
> have the other two quality issues I mentioned (i.e. visibly serrated folds
> and misaligned fold).
>
> Bottom line for me is that the economics of the CreateSpace approach,
> especially if you expect most sales to come through Amazon rather than on
> your own private CreateSpace store, don't make a lot of sense to me,
> though That said, if you view it as a better than nothing way to make CDs
> available on-line to people who insist on that instead of digital
> downloads, don't expect to sell more than noise-level quantities, and use
> another approach, such as Kunaki, to make your CDs for local gig sales, it
> might not be a bad way to go, as long as your potential customers are
> willing to pay a premium price.
>
> At this point, I have not yet convinced myself it is worth doing for any
> of my releases, despite not being thrilled with the other options. On the
> one hand, Kunaki is great for doing small batches of CDs for gig sales,
> and they can be quite nice for on-line sales IF your customers are willing
> to buy there. (Take a look at the sales page for my Kunaki products --
> http://kunaki.com/MSales.asp?PublisherId=116844 -- for an idea on what
> might scare them off. In particular, note there are no song previews, no
> visible branding, or anything to give confidence in what they would be
> buying, other than possibly that they'd gotten directed to it from my web
> site. The only thing they can do is get into the individual albums and
> see the graphics from all panels and view the song lists.) However, if
> your sales volume is too low, your products could disappear in half a
> year. (I've already had one disappear and a second is past the time when
> it nominally will, so it may be gone at any time.) Lulu has a more
> reasonable cost structure than CreateSpace (but nowhere near as good as
> Kunaki), but their product quality is not as good. In particular, they
> use paper labels, whereas both Kunaki and CreateSpace us high quality
> on-disc printing. (In case you want to compare store looks, my Lulu store
> URL is http://www.lulu.com/rickpaul. If you want to compare the look of
> the page with my album on Amazon, go to http://tinyurl.com/ygxg72e.)
>
> Rick
> --
> =======================================
> Rick Paul
> Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
> Web: www.RickPaul.info
> MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
> =======================================
Rick Paul
ball of wax, and actually quite good. I don't get quite as many sales from
there as iTunes, but it's in second place on that front. (I get into both
via TuneCore, also.)
As for CreateSpace, though, the numbers just don't seem to work out unless
you can price your product at a premium level due to the deeper Amazon.com
(not AmazonMP3) discount level off list on top of the fixed media price.
Keep in mind, too, that someone going directly through CreateSpace shouldn't
have the main graphics issue I had going through TuneCore.
Rick
--
=======================================
Rick Paul
Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
Web: www.RickPaul.info
MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
=======================================
"Adam" <n...@thanks.com> wrote in message
news:hc2lko$ckv$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Adam
MP3's only (no physical CDs)?
Would that be a more advantageous option?
"Rick Paul" <rick...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:ceudnTwTQfgqW3jX...@earthlink.com...
Rick Paul
answer that. Mine are done through TuneCore, as part of their general
service that also services iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody, Lala, and several
others. iTunes in the USA pays 70 cents a track -- outside the USA it can
actually sometimes be more due to exchange rates and different pricing in
different territories. The AmazonMP3 rate is a bit more variable. It
partly depends whether you choose the 99-cent premium price point (just like
iTunes) or a discounted price rate -- I use the 89-cent one for my tracks,
so the payout is a little less -- from memory, I think it might be 63 cents
per track. However, they also have some special promotions, such as the use
Pepsi (I think) points to get tracks. When your track gets purchased
through one of those, the payout is decidedly less -- 40 cents per track, I
think. Still, that's not too bad, and significantly better than some of the
CreateSpace via Amazon.com numbers when you consider even that 40 cents is
for a single song, not an entire album, and the end customer is more or less
getting it for free (not counting their soft drink purchases anyway).
BTW, TuneCore isn't the only way to get into the AmazonMP3 side of things.
I know CD Baby does it, and I think there are several other aggregators who
do, as well. Different ones have different deals, and pretty much all the
deals involve some payment to the aggregator, with some taking flat fees for
delivery plus annual maintenance and others taking commissions on each sale.
How the numbers work out tends to depend heavily on your level of sales.
Rick
--
=======================================
Rick Paul
Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
Web: www.RickPaul.info
MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
=======================================
"Adam" <n...@thanks.com> wrote in message
news:hc4le1$jrg$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Gill Smith
> That's a rather negative opinion of AmazonMP3.com, albeit a seemingly very
> well-researched one.
>
> Anyone else here have a different viewpoint on the subject?
>
> "Rick Paul" <rick...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:Uf-dncfEd_V6-n7X...@earthlink.com...
>>
>> "Adam" wrote...
>>
>>> Anyone here using AmazonMP3.com (CreateSpace) to sell their songs
>>> online?
More to the point, anyone know of a website for Amazon On Demand???!!!
I can't locate one
--
http://www.gillsmith999.plus.com/
Gill Smith
> =======================================
> Rick Paul
> Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
> Web: www.RickPaul.info
> MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
> =======================================
Yo Rick
just checked you out on Napster
there you share a name check ("Rick Paul") with an act going by the name
"Rick
and Paul" on iTunes!
--
http://www.gillsmith999.plus.com/
Gill Smith
news:JaWdnVuuAYV0tHvX...@brightview.co.uk...
Found it, sort of
Magic word is put CD into the search
but you get to a site which 'explains the concept'
not on which you place your order, seemingly
too many words to clarify things!
--
http://www.gillsmith999.plus.com/
Rick Paul
> Yo Rick
>
> just checked you out on Napster
>
> there you share a name check ("Rick Paul") with an act going by the name
> "Rick
> and Paul" on iTunes!
Yeah, that is frustrating. I think they map out the ampersand in the artist
name for that duo, whereas iTunes and most other stores change it to "and"
instead or something.
Nothing against their music or anything, but it just ain't me. ;-)
Rick
--
Rick Paul
Demand. It's really just showing through Amazon.com. However, if you want
to see what a specific Amazon On Demand page looks like, here's an example:
(The full URL would probably get broken into pieces as it is long.)
For CreateSpace, people get their individual pages, which they'd link from
their own web sites, but the products would also show up on the main Amazon
site.
Rick
--
=======================================
Rick Paul
Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
Web: www.RickPaul.info
MySpace: www.myspace.com/rickpaulmusic
=======================================
"Gill Smith" <gill.sm...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:OaydnVkanOI2fXvX...@brightview.co.uk...