Monthly Archives: February 2009

Musicians have loads of options with which to sell their music and merchandise online. If you’re Radiohead, you can afford to give your music away for whatever fans feel like paying and you’ll get enough returns to pay the bills. But what about up and coming bands? A new site called Audiolife has the right idea. The site offers tools to build an online storefront for digital tracks, hard copy CDs, ringtones and other goodies that exists as an embeddable widget. So instead of trying to drive traffic to a yet another site, artists can sell directly from their MySpace page or existing site. The software handles credit card transactions in a variety of currencies and Audiolife takes a cut of everything it sells, including $5.49 for every CD and $3 for every digital album sold. Two other big plusses are that there is no-up front costs and artists maintain the rights to their music. The hard copy CD printings are also a big draw, as you can order small batches for just $4 per CD plus a small fee; until now small bands have typically had to order printings of 1,000 or more.