Once you’ve signed up and purchased a subscription, send us your physical albums. We list them for sale on our Spinney Marketplace and cross list on our other Marketplaces (like eBay, Amazon, etc.). When we receive an order, we professionally package and ship to your fan. You keep 100% of your earnings – what we get paid for your album sale.

Signing up takes two steps

One: Create a free account
Two: Choose and pay for a subscription

That’s it. If you’re not ready to choose and pay for a subscription, creating a free account will get you on to our mailing list and help us stay in touch (newsletters, discount codes, etc.).

Once you have a paid subscription, you can take the next steps of signing up and sending in your albums.

Choosing the best subscription is key. How many units do you want to keep on the shelf at one time? Do you want to pay your subscription monthly or pay for a year up front (annual is a 20% discount over monthly fee)? Which level is best for you? Here’s a table to help you pick the best match for your needs:

Subscriptions start as soon as you pay for your subscription (which allows you to list and ship in your CDs).  We’ll also send instructions for shipping in CDs once the subscription is paid for.

Yep – if you have a coupon (e.g. x % off a subscription), you can use it during your check out. We use Stripe for check out.  On the left hand side, when you’re checking out, there is a space to insert a promotional coupon.  You’ll know it worked because it will recalculate the total before you pay to include the x% discount.

Absolutely! You can have as many titles as you’d like. The main limit on the subscription is how many units we’ll store at one time. The mini is 10 units at a time; essential, 100 units; established, 1,200 units

After you’ve subscribed, we’ll ask you to add your album(s). With any subscription, you can sign up as many albums as you want to. The only limit is how many we’ll stock on our warehouse shelves at one time.

We ask for the usual stuff – artist and title info, barcode and sale price, album image. Once that’s done, you’ll receive instructions on where to ship your albums. When we receive them, we get your Marketplace listing up and active, send you links to add to your webpage and socials, and you’re all set!

We list albums at the price you set during signup. When we make a sale and ship your album, we credit your account for the sale. Every time you reach your pay point ($20 in earnings), we pay you through our partner, Trolley. We pay monthly 15-20 days after each month end.

Zero. Nada.

You earn everything our Marketplace partners pay us for your album sale. We don’t take commissions on what you’ve earned.

We make our money from our subscription fee, and we use shipping and handling fees charged to your fans to cover our shipping rate, materials, and labor costs for each shipment.

We list first on our own Spinney Media Marketplace. This is the best place to send your fans. We use Shopify to run our platform, and that enables us to give your fans an excellent purchasing experience, including our lowest shipping prices. It also generates the most income for you. On average, Shopify only charges an average of 4% in processing fees per album sold, so the rest of that money gets paid out to you (Spinney Media takes no commission)

We also submit your albums to eBay and Amazon Marketplaces, and we’ll be adding additional Marketplaces in the future. Please note: These other Marketplaces (eBay, Amazon, etc.) have their own listing rules and acceptance criteria. We will submit to those Marketplaces and work with them to get your music listed wherever possible.

That depends on where your album sells. The best place to send fans is to your Spinney Marketplace album page (once we’ve received your album and we’ve sent your link to you). We also send listings to our eBay and Amazon stores to help you connect with fans that may shop at those sites (and we’re adding new sites regularly). Here’s an average breakdown for a $20 album sale:

Keep in mind these are fee averages. Marketplaces may charge additional fees for currency conversion or particular payment types on a given sale.

Trolley is our payment and end-of-year-tax partner. When you make your first sale (or earlier), we’ll send you an email from Trolley to provide your payment details and a tax form (for 1099 reporting at year’s end if applicable). This will help us understand how you want to be paid – ACH, paper check, etc.

Trolley pays out about 15-20 days after month’s end to your selected payment type provided you’ve hit the minimum pay point ($20 per period). Yes, there is a payment fee debited from your payment depending on which payment type you select (ACH is currently the least expensive option at $1 per payout).

Trolley supports lots of payment types. We’ve started with the most common ones (which also charge low fees per payout). That said, you want or need a different payout type, contact us at support@spinneymedia.com, and we’re happy to learn more.

Yes! We can fulfill orders outside our Spinney Marketplaces for you. Here’s how that works in detail. The TLDR summary:

• Invite info@spinneymedia.com as your fulfillment partner
• We’ll ship orders for you as they come in
• You get paid for the sale directly by your partner (Bandcamp, Bandzoogle) – we don’t handle the money or payouts
• To cover our shipping and handling costs, we charge your payment type on file for actual cost of shipment + $2 for each box shipped.

Most direct-to-fan orders only require one box, even if your fan is ordering several albums at one time. We might have to use multiple boxes if shipping a larger shipment to a distributor or venue on your behalf.

Send your fans to your Spinney Marketplace album page. We’ll send you links once we’ve received your albums. This is the best place for fans to buy your album. Why?

• Fans get to choose how they would like their album shipped – deeply discounted rates and/or speedy delivery
• You earn the most money per sale. Every marketplace partner charges processing fees, and our Spinney Marketplace partner charges 4% on average. That means we typically get paid 96% of your list price for every sale, and we pass those earnings to you.

Ah, the Search for More Fans. It’s not easy. Here’s what we recommend and where we can help:

• Use digital streaming and YouTube as your marketing channels. They help you bring in new fans who can then buy your physical albums.
• Make sure you have an artist webpage and link back to our Spinney Marketplace for physical. It has the lowest payment processing fees out there, too, so you make the most from each physical sale.
• Tag us on social media posts, and we’ll also do features and posts of artists we work with from time to time.
• As Chairman at Spinney Media says, “it never hurts to ask.” Reach out to family & friends & current fans to spread the word. Book some shows. Chat with artists about opening for them (and vice versa). Check out our blog, too, for more ideas and tips from Chairman.

If ordering from our Spinney Marketplace, where fans have the lowest shipping & handling costs, here are the January 2025 rates:

If ordering from our Spinney Marketplace, where fans have the lowest shipping & handling costs, here are the January 2025 averages. These rates are “DDU” (duties and taxes paid at destination if required/applicable). Suffice to say, these averages will change depending on a fan’s country, the shipping mode they select, rules and regulations, tariffs, etc.:

Customer returns are debited against your pay balance

Returns (or removals or recycling) are unfun and expensive for everyone. The cool thing about our model is your subscription fee pays for your space. We really want you to sell tons of copies. If it takes a little or a lot longer, that’s okay!

We list on our Spinney Marketplace once we’ve received your physical albums at our warehouse (though we sometimes get a page up early after signup, too).

We then send a request to list on our eBay and Amazon stores. Usually, this does the trick and we get your album listed on all of our Spinney Media-operated stores.

Occasionally, one of our partner sites runs into an issue and can’t/won’t list your title. When that happens, we chase the issue down, try to fix the root causes, and get you listed on all of our store sites ASAP.

You can message us through our contact page or just email support@spinneymedia.com

You can chat with me on Instagram.

If you want to have a call, you can text or call me at ‪1+(503) 512-0397‬. I live in Portland, OR (Pacific Standard Time or PST), so I’m typically available between 9am – 4pm if not on another call/meeting.

Happy to hear more about what your company offers and how it could benefit Spinney Media musicians and labels. Send us info and introductions to partner@spinneymedia.com

Investing can be complex – rules, requirements, and such. I’ll send you over to our expert by asking you to email invest@spinneymedia.com

Right now, we’re building the business with the folks onboard. When that changes, we’ll add a wonderful career page link here!

Yep, right here!

We most recently updated the Terms of Service on March 21, 2024. Here is a summary of the changes:

Updated Our Role section to clarify how we submit to non-Spinney-Media Marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, subject to those Marketplaces policies, rules, and acceptance criteria.

Summary: We’ll submit your album to all of those Marketplaces; those Marketplaces may or may not accept our submission (and then we follow up, appeal, provide more info, etc. to try to get albums listed wherever possible)

Updated External Orders section to clarify the rate for shipping and handling as “Shipping and handling is calculated as shipping at our cost + $2 handling for each box shipped. Larger freight orders may require a custom quote.”

Yep, right here!