With the recent Myspace Music relaunch, a pivotal question has been posed to indie musicians: what kind of distribution is right for me? As an indie artist and label owner, having your music online is pivotal to any band’s success. You can reach a global audience and increase fanbase size by creating mailing lists and article submissions to multiple directories.

Many musician friends of mine were happy to see Myspace get a shot in the arm so to speak by bringing attention back to their network. They wanted to be part of this distribution launch and signed up for Snocap and asked me if it was a good move.

Snocap allows you to set up a store instantly and sell your music on your profile page. The key thing here is that the service is Free, however, Snocap makes their share of profit. According to Snocap’s FAQ page: “SNOCAP charges a transaction fee of $.39 per download that includes all the costs of providing the SNOCAP MyStore: the bandwidth, storage, audio fingerprint license, PayPal and payment management costs, customer service, etc.” In my eyes it is a pretty steep cut. You are forced to raise your prices on a single or album just to recoup the cost of setup.

Songcast offers 100% royalties and places your music with major online retailers such as iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody and Napster. This is critical for our operation. We used to have our major releases just on our own website and you have to work on getting fans to find your store.

Songcast charges $5.99 a month for unlimited album upload. You will be spending some money here but your fans can feel more secure spending their money on a trusted storefront and it helps add some credibility to your operation. That is the tradeoff I was looking for. We have sold more albums because we were on iTunes than when we were selling off of our own site. Food for thought.

With selling music online their is always going to be some cost, you just have to place yourself in a position that can reap you the most profits with the least cost.

I am always looking for better deals for distribution when it comes to my music. The key is evaluating who their retail partners are, what sign up fees are involved, and understanding your ownership terms and conditions. RouteNote beta has just thrown their hat into the music distribution arena offering the indie artist some alternatives.

Routenote “is a solution, powering music distribution to a global market”. They connect you with their retail partners which include:

• iTunes
• emusic
• Audio Lunchbox
• Snocap
• Limewire

RouteNote currently has no signup fees and you as an artist retain 100% ownership of your work.

The key note here is what percentage cut of net sales are they taking out. Currently they say artist receive a 90% cut from all net revenues from their music. To find out more about their operations, check out their blog.

Overall its great to see more distribution services popping out into the arena. I currently use Songcast and have to say the competition between services is definitely worth a look. I enjoy Songcast because you retain 100% net revenues. Compare them with Songcast and bargain shop for your best fit.

Keep informed on sales statistics and opinions all around you. The key to success with the future of the music industry is understanding the different dimensions that the Music Business Model presents. Mashable presents a great article on the future of music sales. Read more below.

read more | digg story

Songcast is a music distribution service that places your music with major online retailers such as Amazon MP3, iTunes, Napster and Rhapsody. As digital distribution is changing, Songcast has been adding great new features to keep up with the social networking times.

David Cook from Blue Springs, Missouri was named the 2008 American Idol winner. I am personally not a big fan of the show, but in essence the contest is one big music distribution opportunity. Their is so much focus on the actual winner of the show that some people really don’t realize all the positives of the exposure for all contestants.

As a musician, you should always put yourself in a position so your fans can buy your music. This goes out to all levels of the game, even if you have a small fanbase. American Idol’s numbers were very good. Over 97.5 million votes were tabulated. David Cook beat David Archuleta by over 12 million more votes, but hypothetically, if both artist had some albums on iTunes of earlier work, their personal sales would look very good. Millions of Fox viewers could turn into nice profit.

I feel secure because I have affordable distribution with Songcast for any opportunity that comes up. Your future exposure is good to think about. If you are an artist that is going after auditions for tv shows, gigs or anywhere you might receive more spotlight, make sure you have some distribution for yourself. Establish the foundations for success.