SOUND ON SOUND

[Donald Trump]

Hi,
As we've produced a CD we want the track names and cover artwork to show up when the disc is put into a computer, this means using the online databases to carry the information necessary. There are two such databases, Gracenote, covering things like iTunes and AllMusic(TiVo) covering Windows Media Player. With Gracenote uploading track names etc can be done through iTunes itself, but this does not allow for cover artwork, the Gracenote website implies that this can only be done through your label or aggregator. With Allmusic you post a complete final product CD to them in America and also e-mail Jpeg graphics to them. Although they don't say HOW the e-mail will be matched up with the posted CD when it arrives I'm assuming they'll just read them and remember, but they must get thousands of submissions and surely they'll pay more attention to major artists than to somebody unsigned.
I'd be really interested to hear from you if you have used either of these two methods,
Many Thanks,
D.T.

[James Perrett]

It makes little sense to produce a CD these days without also making your music available for download and streaming. You'll need an aggregator for these so why not leave it up to them to send the data to these sites?

[BigRedX]

Exactly. If you've gone to all the expense of making physical product, then surely you can afford the extra $50 or so it costs to get your music on all the download and streaming sites.

[Donald Trump]

Sorry, I just wanted to keep my question to the point of CD Recognition, of course we are going to release our music for digital downloading and streaming.
Yes you are right the aggregator could 'take care' of this side of things, perhaps as an extra service. I've used Tunecore in the past so have only spoken to them about this and they DO NOT offer this type of service even thought they deal with Gracenote and Apple/iTunes. I will speak to other aggregators too. But Tunecore so far have been extremely helpful and I do like their simple model of a flat fee.

p.s. Tunecore tell me that Gracenote dont store album artwork, actually they get it from AllMusic

Cheers,
Don. T.

[BigRedX]

AFAIK you only get cover artwork on iTunes if a download version is available from the iTMS.

We use CD Baby as our aggregator, and the version of the cover that we upload when making our single/EP/album available to the download services is the one that gets used.

[Donald Trump]

Thanks BigRedX,.

Do you mean that CD Baby are using the artwork you supply will then appear when your CD (rather than digital download) is put into a Computer CD drive?

ManyThanks,
D.T.