Menyou Blog

Flat rates versus percentage fees

As you may or may not have heard, digital distributor Tunecore received some bad press when they raised their yearly flat rate fee from $19.99 a year per album distributed to $49.99 per year.  Tunecore competitor CD Baby tried to attract Tunecore defectors with discounts, if they switched to their service, which has a percentage based distribution fee (and a $39 per album sign up fee). This led to a debate over at Hypebot about flat rates versus percentage fees, in which Jeff Price made the argument that: 

“I am by no means suggesting TuneCore is not a business, it is. And it does charge a flat fee for a service, but I feel I can look someone in the eye honestly when I do that, not when I take a piece of what they make when their music sells”.

This is interesting. Menyou, of course, takes a 10 percent cut of your sales - and when your global team of resellers make your music rock all around the globe, you pay them the percentage you decided in advance for each sale. The fact that your music can be spread and heard cost you nothing. 

The Menyou point of view has always been that we don’t make any money if you don’t make any money. And the resellers don’t make any money if you don’t make any money. To us, that seems fair. But the Menyou way is also one of listening attentively to users and customers. 

So what’s your take on this? Let us know in the comments, stop by our feedback forum here or say something clever on our Facebook Page. You can also reach out to us on Twitter.