As of April 3, 2008 iTunes has officially become the top US music retailer beating out Walmart for top position. According to Apple sources, the data was taken from an independent research company called NDP Group.

This is very impressive for the independent musician front because selling music online is thriving and continuing to grow. iTunes has over 50 million customers and their catalog of music spans the globe and includes over six million songs.

As an independent artist, you must showcase your music and take advantage of Apple’s popularity. Selling music on iTunes can provide you the attention and credibility you operation needs. I’ve been over seas and noticed iTunes’ popularity is just as high as in the US. You can let fans from all across the globe go to a site they trust and buy your music.

Emerging artists need any breaks they can get and this is a great one. Sell your music with iTunes, WalMart, Napster and many more and give your band their showcase time.

Fried Roots has found distribution and now we sell our music on iTunes.

If interested in finding music distribution, click here for additional information.

Tunecore is a music distribution service that offers distribution to online retailers such as iTunes for a flat fee. This arrangement also allows you to keep 100% of the money that you earned.

The cost is $0.99 per store per album, $0.99 per track, and $19.98 per album per year storage and maintenance. This price is awesome. Test the marketability of your tracks and upload your projects. Tunecore this week delivered 468 albums to iTunes and $143,844.34 was earned in music sales.

The service is well explained in their FAQ page. They walk you through the process with examples. Tunecore also gives new accounts great marketing tips on ways to promote, once your album is on iTunes, which is very valuable. Distribution is only half the journey, let the sales begin.

Songcast has an amazing service. You get to have the same benefits as a major label with this form of distribution. Songcast is a music distribution service that places your music with major online retailers such as iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, eMusic and many more if you choose. The beauty of this service is that you dont have to worry about waiting for independent submission to each retailer, they take care of the dirty work.

To get the process started, you create an account and upload your album. You then choose where you want your music. You have the option of distribution just on iTunes or adding more stores such as Napster, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Puretracks.

To begin you must make sure you have a barcode and album art for submission. Some services offer these at an additional cost. As an independent artist, I needed both and didn’t want to spend more money. Currently till the end of this month, Songcast is offering a FREE UPC Barcode and album cover design.

The current pricing is very affordable. You get membership for $5.99 a month or pay for the year upfront and earn some months for free, depending on current promotion. I use Songcast and paid upfront for the year and earned two free months of distribution. The monthly fee allows you to upload an unlimited amount of albums to your account, which makes it great for my future projects.

You maintain the rights to your music and recordings and you can also cancel the service anytime. You don’t have to live in the United States to use this service, so you can set up your record label anywhere across the world.

If you don’t have an album, then just upload a single or EP. For more information, visit Songcast and judge for yourself.