Online storefront?

[msmeritt]

I'm about to put up a site for my new band/album. Lots of great outlets these days, like CD Baby and countless others, making it very easy to sell CDs and MP3 and in some places even merchandise, and they take care of all the backend (transaction processing, shipping, etc.).

There are also places that encourage artists to build their own storefront, to build it right into their website, or they will build a storefront at their own website (e.g., yourbandname.theirwebsite.com) but to match your website so it is experientially seamless even though they, not the artist, are the retailer. Either way, they believe that doing this is much better for preserving relationship/connection with the customers/fans, as opposed to sending them offsite to a separate store like CD Baby, Amazon, etc. Of course, some such services/software make you to then do all fulfillment, but there are some all-inclusive services where they do take care of the whole backend along with the seamless-looking storefront. This is what I'm talking about here.

The question, then, is what's actually generally the better choice? With the backend fully taken care of in both cases, it all becomes about experience, and it seems to me the considerations are:

Integrated storefront: More seamless experience, traffic kept within (or effectively within) your website, but will customers be reluctant to entrust sensitive info (contact info, credit card #, etc.) to you?

Offsite retailers: Send customers offsite, disrupt the experience, risk losing them browsing more through your site, but perhaps gain credibility and comfort in terms of customers' willingness to carry out financial transactions.

I really have no idea where the scale comes down on this one. Thoughts?

[nvrsay]

Something else to consider. CDBaby also gets your music into iTunes. That's now the biggest music retailer out there according to a NYTimes article.
MySpace also allows you to sell digital downloads through that site and every band in the world has a MySpace page nowadays. The big problem with any choice is getting people to your site in the first place. What I have noticed in my limited usage of MySpace is how the networking aspect of the site is great for getting people to find out about you. You can then direct them to your own web site as well.
Being budgetarily challenged myself, I would recommend a MySpace page first to get the word out about the band and collect a hopefully large mailing list to notify people of your CD for sale on CDBaby and your own site. Then figure out a way to get people all over the world to buy your music on iTunes.
Simple right?

[msmeritt]

I have no doubt that it's worth doing these things, and I have these and many other things planned for in my marketing strategies. The question is what you do on your site. Do you put other retailers front and center, or do you have your own shopping cart front and center with links to other retailers either subsidiary or not present at all. Nobody seems to have information to answer this question effectively, which seems pretty strange to me given how much I'd think there'd be research on this topic!