insoundInsound is a minor player with a lot of heart involved in its operation. They essentially act as a blog and record label, picking up and supporting new acts that are to their taste, promoting them and selling their music through the site. They’re a smaller retailer that survives by taking an active interest in the bands they sell, keeping their margins high (read higher prices to the consumer – MP3 downloads $9.99-$10.49) and selling other trendy stuff, badges, bags, books etc. If you can convince them that you’re worth selling they’ll really make an effort to put you out in front of their indie audience, with promotional tools like free MP3 downloads and custom merch to drag people in to buy your music. RouteNote doesn’t currently do digital distribution to Insound – your best bet would be to approach them directly.

***EDIT***

Just to respond to that comment: a totally unfair comparison of someone who happened to be on Insound’s MP3 download front page when I looked, The Castanets, shows their album ‘Texas Rose…’ as being $1.50 cheaper on Amazon ($8.99) than on Insound ($10.49). Please feel free to refute me with your own research. I think Insound might deserve the extra money for taking an active interest in the bands they promote, and I hope they pass on more $ to their artists, but as a straight comparison, Amazon is cheaper (admittedly this is only one example).

insound castanets

amazon castanets