About indieHD

The Mission

We provide Artists with a simple, do-if-yourself platform for selling their music to fans, digitally.

We have a passion for high-quality audio and album artwork, and we go to great lengths to preserve your work's fidelity.

Plenty of excellent streaming services exist, and we don't aim to compete with them. We serve an entirely different purpose: sometimes, your fans simply want to preview, pay, and download in CD-quality or better.

While streaming has its place, a music-loving contingent exists that demands pristine sound for playback over a high-definition system.

Fans who love our platform have a few basic wants:

I want to buy the album, I want to buy it now, and I want the full quality of the studio release. I want to download the files to my device without needing iTunes or similar, and I want to playback the files on any device and without restriction.

We thrive on fairness, integrity, and transparency. There are no hidden algorithms or behind-the-scenes trickery, and every aspect of the platform aims to be maximally straightforward.

Why indieHD over iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, Bandcamp, etc.?

Fairness

• We give artists the money they deserve: ~85% of each dollar. We keep 10% to cover our costs, and payment processing accounts for ~5% of the average order.
• Customers are able to re-download purchased music any time they like, directly from any web browser. indieHD music is DRM-free and no proprietary software is required to download or play the files.

Quality

• We offer lossless audio files, which contain the original, CD-quality data from the physical CD. Most digital music stores offer the customer a low-fidelity file (such as MP3 or M4A). For convenience, we also offer MP3 and M4A versions of each purchased track, as well as ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio) and WAV.
• 90-second track previews are available for all songs, and artists choose the particular section of each song that is available for preview.
• High-Resolution album artwork accompanies each album at the artist's option.
• A print-quality CD-booklet ("liner notes"), in PDF format, accompanies each album at the artist's option.

Transparency

• We show both artists and fans how each sale is allocated (% to artist, % to credit card processing, % to indieHD expenses).

Light-Touch

• There are no long-term contracts to sign; artists enable/disable/manage their own music catalogs and leave any time they like.
• Artists set their own song prices.
• Customers can purchase any number of songs from a given album; buying the entire album is not required.

How does it work?

E-Commerce is expensive, and not every musician is in a position to set-up a secure web-server and sell music online. Instead, many do-it-yourself artists and music labels turn to an "out-of-the-box" solution. While less expensive than a custom e-commerce solution, these systems tend to be clunky and difficult to integrate with existing branding. Further, these systems are not designed specifically to sell digital music, and are often ill-equipped for the purpose; most platforms allow only for physical products to be sold, and those that offer digital downloads do so as an afterthought.

By contrast, the indieHD platform is designed specifically to sell digital music and downloadable DVDs. By taking a modest percentage of each sale, at 10%, we're able to pay for the entire operation: webserver/hosting, security certificate, bandwidth, customer care, maintenance, and future site development. This strategy avoids the need for all of us to have our own business entities, merchant accounts, payment gateway providers, etc., which would constitute an astronomical expense. Instead, we're all "splitting the bill" and running all transactions through a single gateway and merchant account. Using a billpay service, we're able to pay the artist directly and no second "monetary transfer" charge is applied; the money goes straight from our checking account into the artist's. (Artists outside of the U.S. must receive funds through PayPal, which is the most cost-effective option for international payments.)

The 10% that we keep also allows us provide customer care to fans who purchase your music, should they experience problems of any kind with their orders, and ensures that this website and your music remain online and available to your fans into the indefinite future.

The countries that we are able to support:

Customers from the following countries may purchase music from, or donate to, indieHD artists. If your country is not listed here, it's only because our payment processor does not offer us the ability to receive money from credit/debit cards or PayPal accounts in your country.

This list was last updated on February 19, 2018.