Thank you so much! That link was very helpful. I’m glad to know it’s not purely sales volume. It explains a lot. While I am not so familiar with formatting, my mixing engineer is. He’s mixed for major labels for years. I can ask him to make sure it’s formatted properly. As for the other requirements (the Tax ID, UPC Code, etc), I can manage those. I know it’s daunting for a lot of folks, but it seems worth the trouble to learn about these things. I just think going directly to Apple is better. The artists who are directly with Apple seem to have a better presence on Apple’s website. For example, I have a bio on CD Baby, but it never made it over to iTunes. If I were directly with iTunes, I think it would. I would also be eligible for their recommendations. I know some people who have sold 25-50,000 records, but none of them has ever been recommended by iTunes, because they were with CDBaby. And that’s where I think the real exposure as an artist comes. There’s no guarantee they would ever review my CD or recommend me if I were with them directly, but there’s a guarantee they won’t, if I’m not.

a.) Your music is formatted digitally in such a way it conforms exactly to Apple music encoding technical standard as well as the content and financial requirements. You can read more details about that here: http://www.apple.com/itunes/content-providers/music-faq.html

Also here: https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wo/0.0.0.9.7.3.1.1

b.) You are well established enough to handle all the financial, business and marketing transactions in selling music.

As what I see now, it is not all having huge fan base where Apple decides whether to accept independent music artist or not. It’s on how the music is formatted as well as if the artist complies with the content and financial requirements that she/he will be qualified to submit the music directly to iTunes.

Most indie artist does not know about these things as well as those requirements; it’s why they recommend the artist to deal first with the iTunes list of recommended music aggregators. One of these aggregators is CD baby and they can format your album, songs and singles to work with iTunes distribution. They also dedicated departments in their company to communicate marketing/business communications with iTunes.

It is also why most artist that are selling music with iTunes are major label artist because these labels already knows these requirements aside from the fact that they are pretty big companies with their own dedicated distribution/marketing department. This will be one to handle all communications with iTunes as well as getting those music encoded at the right format. iTunes on the other hand are sure that they can earn big money from these artist because it is supported by a major label with some heavy marketing plan (e.g. music videos, concerts, airplays, etc).

Once you submitted your application, you can as well follow up through their customer service. Although I am not yet sure how they handle these processes. You can start looking here: http://www.apple.com/contact/

Regarding what you said to Lynn, Is it merely the fact that a band is not signed to a major label? If a record has high production values, is it considered for direct sale?

I, too, would like to go directly through iTunes. My first EP was rejected, so I went through CD Baby. I must admit that I was new to the whole thing, and didn’t understand their process that well. But I would like to reapply for my new album, which is coming out soon. I already have several thousand pre-orders for the album, which comes out in June, and I’ve only just started getting the word out. I don’t want to pay CD Baby this time around. It also seems to me that if you want to get a song from your album as a free download on iTunes, you need to be directly with them. I have never seen an indie artist featured on the site who was actually going through CDBaby.

You mentioned calling Apple customer service. Does the main Apple iTunes customer service handle applications?

Cheers..

Thank You