Get on iTunes for Free

Yea, you heard me right. A new digital distributor is upping the ante and offering you the ability to get your album on iTunes for free. That means no upfront costs, no recurring yearly upkeep fees and no % of songs coming off your profit!

This is all done from WaTunes, a small digital distributor, music marketing site and community. There decision means that they are putting themselves out there against the big boys, TuneCore, Reverbnation, Musicadium, CD Baby and other.

From their official blog:

Me and my board members have discuss great options to provide you the best low cost digital distribution service on the net. We’ve went from being free to be charged, to giving 90% of sales, to giving back all the sales earnings. We’ve finally can say that we have raise the bar even higher by providing you guys an ABSOLUTE digital distribution service. As of now, WaTunes will enable it’s customers to continue to sell unlimited music, earn 100% of the royalties, and more, ALL FOR FREE! There are no fees, cancellations, no gimmicks.

All of their current paying artists will be relieved of their monthly payments immediately and put on their freemium services. WaTunes is attempting to monetize their business through ad revenue from their network and a new player/sales widget WaTunes3. Their current digital distribution package includes iTunes, Napster and eMusic.

In a day and age where ad revenues hardly supprt the big boys, it will be interesting to see how long they can afford to stay on this model before they go back to at least an initial upfront account fee.

If enough artists support the platform, they should have the strength to get some pretty good CPM rates - the goal is to get enough of those WaTunes3 players embedded on outside profiles to get the viral traction they need to serve up those impressions.

Will be watching this one for sure!

Till next time Rock Stars!