One of the questions I got, most often, during the days of the Zune forums was how does one get their music into the Zune Marketplace. At the time, the only answer I could come up with was “Get your record label to send your music over to Zune.” Well that’s a nice answer… if you have a record label.

But what if you’re one of those bands without a label? What if you’re one of the millions of people who start a record label every day and don’t have the reach to contact Zune to get music into the marketplace. Where do you go? What do you do?

Here’s a few services that can help you get your music into various music marketplaces, including Zune, and therefore in front of a lovable listening public:

CDBaby

Pricing: $39 per album, $9.95 per single, plus a host of other features you can use to promote and sell your material.

“CD Baby is the oldest, biggest and most trusted online independent music store and distributor.” – CD Baby website.

CD Baby is probably one of the best known places to not only sell your music, but get it distributed to the major music stores. They have plenty of distribution partners including iTunes, Zune, Spotify, Last.FM, Amazon MP3, iHeartRadio, Napster and Rhapsody.

Check out CD Baby’s Members site for more information.

Tunecore

Pricing: $9.99/year (Single); $9.99/year (Ringtone); $49.99/year (album)

TuneCore is another big player in the game of music and video distribution. When you upload your music to their service, you can practically get into the same services, as CD Baby, including iTunes, Zune, iHeartRadio, Nokia (go figure), Spotify, Amazon MP3 and more.

Check out TuneCore’s site for more information.

SongCast

Pricing: $5.99 per month, plus one time setup of $19.99 (per album) or $9.99 (per single).

“SongCast is a streamlined and affordable digital music distribution service for artists and labels. We offer one of the best distribution services around because our features are designed to help sell your music online and worldwide! Our features allow you to sell your music on iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, Emusic, Spotify, and MediaNet without any hassle. You'll have access to iTunes Daily Trending Reports, your own Ping Artist Account, free UPC and ISRC codes, a free public store front/profile, and - most importantly - you'll be able to keep 100% of your royalties without worrying about any long-term contracts.” – Songcast Website

Note that SongCast only distributes to iTunes, Amazon MP3, Rhapsody, eMusic, Napster, Medianet and Spotify. No mention of Zune Marketplace.

Check out SongCast’s website for more information.

ReverbNation

Pricing: Free to sign up. $34.95 for 34 distribution channels; $59.95 for 40 distribution channels

“SongCast is a streamlined and affordable digital music distribution service for artists and labels. We offer one of the best distribution services around because our features are designed to help sell your music online and worldwide! Our features allow you to sell your music on iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, Emusic, Spotify, and MediaNet without any hassle. You'll have access to iTunes Daily Trending Reports, your own Ping Artist Account, free UPC and ISRC codes, a free public store front/profile, and - most importantly - you'll be able to keep 100% of your royalties without worrying about any long-term contracts.” – Songcast Website

You can distribute your music to over 40 stores including iTunes, Zune, Last.FM, iLike, Rhapsody and Napster.

Check out SongCast’s website for more information.

Please remember… when checking out these services make sure that you understand about your digital rights. Find out about who has the rights to your music, how you will get paid, how you can get reports on your sales/revenue and more. Don’t just haphazardly start uploading your music to all of these places and hope for the best.

Also, take note of the time it will take between getting your music into these services and when you’ll start seeing them in the various distribution channels. Don’t assume that it’s overnight or within the week for all of them. Keep that in mind when deciding on who to use and when to use them.

There are most likely other places you can go, but these are the four major players that bubbled up in my search for music distribution. I hope that this helps young artists and groups find their way into these channels and ultimately into our speakers.

Good luck and I look forward to hearing your music.