If a company like Apple or Amazon offered to enable you to sell your music under an agreement where you kept 100% of your sales revenue, in consideration for you agreeing to sell your music exclusively at this store for two years, would you accept this offer?

I would need more specific information before jumping for a deal like this.

How does the store make money off this deal? If it's not sustainable it's no good for me either.
What revenue can I reasonably expect?
Will my music be buried amongst lots of better known artists?
How easy is it for me to link in to the store?
If they're giving me 100% of sales revenue they can't have any affiliate schemes so how will they market their store?

I'm not sure how well big stores serve smaller artists apart from the advantages of a solid payment gateway and some security for the purchaser, but I think I would be happier using multiple outlets.

Are you saying the store would not take their usual cut of each file sold, and distribution would be handled without a middle man (i.e TuneCore, IODA, The Orchard, etc.)?

In any regard, I believe it matters to people how and where they want to purchase and experience their music, so I would not advocate agreeing to sell the music exclusively via one store.

No, I would never sign exclusively to one online retailer, period. There are already free alternatives (or close to it) that don't require exclusive agreements and there will be many more to come. And I honestly don't mind sharing a bit of my sales with an otherwise free site (like Fuzz.com) to help keep them in business.

And it doesn't matter who they are (Amazon, iTunes, etc). Unless you're a really well known artist, you're going to be directing 98% of your buyers where you want them to go anyway. You're always better off keeping your options open and leveraging multiple outlets.

Well we're talking about itunes aren't we. You'd have to be mad otherwise.

And i think thats giving up a lot of opportunities for 30c or whatever it works out at.

There's probably lots of follow-up questions, like these:

- What is the "term" or duration of this exclusive arrangement? As an artist, I would want windows to opt out. I would assume that you would still be able to Terminate the Copyright in the US. (Can't speak for International usage).

- Would I still be able to sell my product at shows? Or am I restricted to Drop-cards?

- I would clearly only sign away a license for the Masters. Publishing is out of the question, as area Sync Rights, etc.

- How would this be like or differ from the standard exclusion clauses in deal from a Label?

Fascinating question. If the download store was really beautifully coded, had strong indie principles, a trusted community (like CD Baby, etc.), I might consider it for smaller releases, singles, special projects. All things considered though, I probably wouldn't hand over exclusive distro for a major album release.

I, for example, am a subscriber to emusic. I don't buy music online from any other place. I never purchase music from apple and if I can't find a release on emusic I either download it illegally or buy the CD if it's lovingly packaged. The lesson I draw from my own experience? Give people as many options as possible.

People are funny in how they make purchasing decisions, and I would rather give up 10-50% here and there to sell more units in total.

I have to agree with the majority here. giving your your album to a single download store just for 100% is not something I would recommend. Unknown artists with a smaller fan base need to be able to spread their music everywhere, most of the time for free. Going exclusive is really only helpful when you have a established name recognition with a large enough fan base.

Think back a few years to when Napster hit. At that time, artist gave labels the exclusive right to distribute and sell their music. Artists even did this for only 10-15% of whole sale prices. Did fans only get music through the "exclusive" retailer?

Music consumers now hold more power than other player in the music value chain. If they don't like Amazon or iTunes or the player you have your exclusive with, they will get your music elsewhere. As an artist, an exclusive deal will only limit your exposure.