The Path to iTunes

So you want to get your music listed on the iTunes Music Store? Well read on, Richard MacLemale will hold your hand through every step of the way.

The Path To iTunes

by Richard MacLemale

There's more than one way to get your music onto Apple's iTunes Online Music Store. But since I only know one way, that's what this article is about. I have already gone through the process, and much of this article will be about what I've learned. Which includes what I did correctly, and what I did incorrectly. Here's the important info upfront - it costs $55 bucks (plus the cost of burning and packaging five CD's) and takes slightly more than 3 months. But if you're patient, the end results are very satisfying. This article takes you through the process in less than ten pages, so it's a lot of gloss. But it's hopefully a decent overview for anyone interested in the process.

Making The CD

How Many Songs?

The process starts with you writing some songs and recording them. How many songs do you need? Here's one thing to consider... iTunes sells songs for 99 cents each, and entire albums for $9.99. Do the math and you'll discover that for a 10 song CD, it's 9 cents CHEAPER to buy each song individually than to buy the "album." Some artists like to include 12 to 14 songs to make the purchase of the album for $9.99 a bargain... more for your money. I think this is a good idea and would recommend planning on putting somewhere between 12 to 14 songs onto your CD. Further, I'd recommend recording 15 songs for the CD, then choosing the best 12 songs (or more) to include. This way, if a few songs don't sound as good as you'd envisioned when you recorded them, you aren't forced to include them on the CD. I included two songs on my CD that I had originally thought were pretty weak... but I was on a time deadline and I needed 12 songs. It's better to record more than you need, if at all possible.

The Recording Sessions

Sometimes you don't have the option of recording all 15 songs during the same time period. Sometimes you've got to include some older recordings, because of time constraints, lack of songs, or many other possible reasons. If this is the case, it's not the end of the world. However, it's generally a good idea to do your recordings concurrently. Older recordings, made with older gear, may not sound as good as the recordings you are capable of doing now. That was definitely the case with my CD. Because of time restraints I used recordings made over a period of 3 years, and it shows. Some songs sound better than others. It is possible, during mastering, to make up for this problem a little, but again, using the same gear and recording the songs during the same time period will make your album have better continuity. On the other hand, sometimes you can play "chase the demo." This is a process where you've got a recording of a tune that might not be up to par, but sounds really good. You rerecord the song with all of your new fancy gear and discover that the original recording STILL sounds better... maybe not in terms of fidelity, but perhaps performance. When that happens, my vote is to go with the older recording that comes across better. Continuity is preferred but having a great track is better. This article can't go into every detail of audio recording, but there are some things I've learned that I really wanted to toss in, so I'll do that.

Tracking

The process of putting down the tracks for each song is called "Tracking." When pros put together a CD, it can take several months of full time work. Most of us don't have that kind of time, so we have to be extremely efficient with the time we have. We can steal a page from filmmakers when it comes to efficiency. When filmmakers film, they don't necessarily shoot chronologically. For example, if they have remote location scenes in Egypt in the beginning and the end of the movie, they're not going to fly to Egypt twice. They're going to fly to Egypt, film the beginning scenes, film the ENDING scenes, then fly home.

In the case of audio recording at home, many times we use computerized instruments or loops for different song elements... such as drum loops in place of real drums. The work you do with computerized elements can be done any time you can do them, without worrying about waking the family (or your parents) up or disturbing the neighbors. Headphones are a good thing. Also, there may be times when no one is home but you... perfect for recording vocals or guitars. Plan your schedule so that your "studio time" can be as efficient as possible. If you know you can snag some time between 9 PM and 11 PM on a Wednesday night, but the kids are in bed, plan on putting down some loops or synth tracks. If you're planning on setting up your mic in the kitchen to record your acoustic guitar, figure out all of the tracks that will feature acoustic on your CD and plan on recording the acoustic part for all of them, or as many of them as possible. Efficiency will help keep you on task and also make you more productive. This is stating the obvious but it's a good reminder.

Mixing

Once you've got everything recorded and you're ready to mix, it's time to be... patient. It's always a good idea to allocate a lot of time to mixing, or rather a lot of days, if possible. You can come up with a decent mix on your first try, but it's always a good idea to do a mix, listen to it on a variety of different systems, and then listen to it the next day on different systems. After you mix for a few hours, your ears may become fatigued, causing you to misjudge elements in the mix. Sometimes leaving a mix and coming back to it later in the day or the next day is a good idea. The best mixes I've done were mixes that I did over a week long period. I'd mix them as best I could, then come back the next day and check them out, make changes, then put burn them onto a CD and check them out on my car stereo on the way to work, and then on the way home. Then I'd make adjustments and repeat the same procedure, until I couldn't hear anything that still needed to be fixed. If you've got an iPod, you can use that instead of burning CD's. The point here is not to mix so that your tunes sound good on a car stereo... the point is to mix and listen on a variety of different speakers, and then remix and repeat. There are a million different tricks for helping you mix, and I won't list all the ones I know here, but here's one more that is mission critical - the vocal (or main instrument) level. Here's a good way to see if your vocal is set at a good level - turn the volume down so that the song is very soft on your speakers. How does the vocal sound? If it's the only thing you can hear, chances are it's too loud in the mix. If you are straining to hear it because it's buried in the music, then the vocal is not loud enough. Eventually you'll be done mixing all of your tracks. Mastering is next.

Mastering

This is the arcane science that so many people do not understand. Read advice online about mastering and you'll be told that the best thing you can do is to "hire a pro" to master for you. That's stupid advice in a "do-it-yourself" article so I won't tell you that. Basically the process of mastering is using eq and compression and some other stuff to make the CD sound good as a whole. Again, there are lots of tips elsewhere on mastering, and I recommend you read them. But I also want to discuss the basic concepts briefly.

First you must decide on the order of your songs. Yes, the order matters. A lot. There is such a thing as pacing. You're going to decide how you want to pace your album, but use some logic. Some people will take the two best songs and put them first and second on the CD. The idea behind that is that some people will judge the album by the first two songs. Some people like to put fast, then slow, then fast songs so that the pace of the album starts out fast and then slows and then finishes fast again. What approach is best? I have no idea. That's an area that I'd like to do some reading about. I can tell you what I did, though, and you can take it or leave it. On my CD, I had some songs that sounded similar. So my goal was to space those songs out. I felt that it was better to try to keep listeners guessing rather than to put same sounding songs next to each other. You may feel differently. However you decide to order your tracks, just be aware that the order will affect the listener's experience, so keep that in mind. About the only thing that I am sure of is this - do not put your worst song first.

Once you've got the order down and you've mixed each song, you import them into iTunes and burn your CD, right? Not so fast. If you haven't thought much about your levels, you may create a game for your listeners called "Ride the Volume Knob." That's where your listeners are forced to adjust the volume between songs because your levels are all over the map. Yes, soft songs can be softer than loud songs, but in general you want some consistency. If you're using a program like Logic, you probably already know more about mastering than I do so you don't need advice from me. If you are using GarageBand, I'd recommend the free AU plugin named Inspector. Here's the link:

http://www.elementalaudio.com/cgi-bin/demo/demo.cgi

Run the installer and it'll appear in GB in your list of AU plugins.

So how do you make sure your songs are similar leveled? Well, you'd think that you could just make sure that each song has peaks that are close to but do not go over 0 db, and you'd be set. But our ears do not perceive music that way... our ears listen to the average level of a song, not the peaks, to determine loudness. So many people will either compress or limit (or both) their mixes to even things out a little. Many, many people take this to the extreme, leading to music that is loud sounding but flat and uninteresting. Think of it like a mom who always yells at her kids. Yelling is only effective if you do it every so often. The mom who yells at her kids all the time is ignored by her kids. They get used to the yelling and tune it out. Same way with dynamics in music.

You could study mastering for years to perfect your skills, but for the sake of this article, think of it this way - some people will listen to your CD from start to finish. Make sure that the songs sound good together and that the listener will not have to jump up and adjust the volume, bass, or treble knobs on their stereo for each song. And again, use the same idea we discussed with mixing. Once you think you've got your CD mastered, listen to it on a variety of systems to make sure that it sounds good as a whole. One more tip - do not, under any circumstances, use the "Sound Check" feature in iTunes that makes all songs play back at the same level. This can boost some of your songs up too loud to the point of distortion. Do your level setting in GarageBand or with your favorite mastering app or recording program. Don't rely on iTunes for level matching.

Hardcore home recording enthusiasts would cringe if they read the gloss job I just did on mastering. I realize that. This whole article is an outline, not a step by step "How To Make An Album" guide. Let your ears be your guide, and read as much as you can about mastering.

Packaging

So now you've got a copy of your final CD. You're going to need at least 5 of them. Why? CDBaby requires a minimum shipment of 5 CD's. What's CDBaby? Read ahead and find out.

You have a number of options in terms of packaging. CDBaby does not require shrink wrapped CD's. The simplest thing to do is to buy some blank CD's, some paper, some CD jewel boxes, and make your own. Technically you could hand write the CD inserts, but it really does look better to your customers if you make your inserts on your computer. As far as the CD itself, you can leave it unadorned of artwork, or you can put a sticker on it that you printed info on, or you can buy CD's that you can print on and write on them, OR you can buy CD's that you can print on and go out and buy yourself one of those new inkjet printers for less than $200 that'll print directly onto CD's. That's the best choice. They didn't make them that cheap when I made my CD, dammit.

How do you make your artwork for your CD? I can't help you there. If you don't already know how to do it, get someone to help you or find someone willing to do it for you. I did a google search for info on printing CD's and found a nice photoshop template, which I used with Photoshop to make my CD's cover. You don't have to use Photoshop - you can use AppleWorks if it's all you've got. Just do something about packaging. But most importantly... DO NOT PRINT YOUR CD INSERTS YET!!! You're going to need a bar code, which you'll be getting from CDBaby. Once you've got your bar code, you can add it to your CD inserts and put them together.

Getting A PayPal Account

I'd recommend getting a PayPal account. They're free, and while it's not mandatory, it's a really good idea. Point your web browser to www.paypal.com. Click on the "Sign Up" or "Sign Up Now" link. You'll have a choice between getting a personal account or a business account. I'm not going to get into the whole issue of taxes or play accountant, but I can tell you that I chose "Business Account" because it gave me the most flexibility. You choose the account that's best for you. For my business account, I also gave Paypal my credit card info, again, to increase the stuff I could do with the account. Once your PayPal account is done, you can go ahead and sign up with CDBaby. Did I just gloss this topic? Yes, I did. The point is to get a PayPal account. The type and details are up to you. Do you HAVE to get a PayPal account? No, but it makes life considerably easier online. For example, CDBaby can send money from CD sales and digital sales directly to your PayPal account. This is pretty handy. You can also use your PayPal account to sell your own CD online at places like MacIdol. Having a PayPal account is a good idea... trust me.

Signing With CDBaby

Once you've got a PayPal account, head over to www.cdbaby.net. Note that this address is different than www.cdbaby.com. The dot com address is the store. The dot net address is for artists. That's you.

I recommend to you that you read every piece of info on the entire site, because there's lots of good info there, but here is the process of what you're going to do, summarized:

You're going to fill out an application for your CD, and you're going to have CDBaby generate a barcode for you. To distribute your CD with CDBaby it costs $35. To get a barcode for your CD, it costs $20. To get your music onto iTunes, it costs nothing, but you need your CD registered with CDBaby AND you need the bar code.

As far as payments, you can decide to have CDBaby put money directly into your PayPal account like I did, or you can have them send you checks when the money rolls in. Your choice.

The Long Wait

Once you're all done with CDBaby, the long wait begins. It can take a long time to get your CD onto iTunes... it took 3 months for mine to get there. You will not be notified by ANYONE when your CD has made iTunes... it'll just show up there one day. Tuesdays are new music days, so Tuesday night is a good time to check. You might think of watching the "New Releases" and "Just Added" sections, but in my case, my CD never showed up in either list. It was added with no fanfare. Didn't the folks at Apple even LISTEN to my wonderful masterpiece? :) The fact is that we, the CDBaby artists, are small ants compared to the big players on iTunes. The only way you're going to know your CD has been added is by doing a search for your name each Tuesday night. When your CD is added, it will show up when you do a search for yourself. After about a month you'll start searching every Tuesday night. There'll be that little anticipation each time you do the search... followed by the small sense of disappointment each time the search comes back negative. But one day your CD will show when you conduct your search, and you can celebrate with the beverage of your choice. Please drink responsibly.

Spreading The Word

So now you're a big star, with your CD on iTunes, and the money will start rolling in, right? No. You won't make a single dime. Not unless you market yourself, that is. The odds of someone randomly stumbling across your CD while "browsing" iTunes and deciding to buy it are probably zero. So how do you market yourself? How to you get people to know that your tunes are available online via iTunes? THAT is a question I can't answer. I don't know. There are a million ways to advertise a product. It's tougher with a budget of zero. Do some Internet research and you may find some good ideas on the CDBaby site, too. Unfortunately it's going to take either time, or money, or possibly both, to market yourself. See how much you can afford (time or money) and let some people know about your CD. Mostly, have fun with the whole process. Don't make the mistake of tying your ego to your success (or failure) as an artist. People are rarely "only one thing." You are more than just a musician, or just a songwriter. Chances are pretty good that some people will like your music and some people will hate it. That's true of every musician ever. So long as you're having fun, and your music is not hateful, then that's all that matters. :)