Online Music Distribution Australia
American
Society of Composers, Artists and Performers, stands proud that it
"protects the rights of its members by licensing and distributing
royalties for the non-dramatic public performances of their copyrighted
works" as stated on their web site. However, over the last year or so, many
news stories have been released about ASCAP's aggression against everyone from
cell phone companies to iTunes to small web sites. These increased aggressions
place the musicians in a dangerous position where, rather than embracing
technologies changes to further their sales, the artists may be losing their
market share by silencing the technology that would promote them.
ASCAP's
first target in their campaign against technology was the cell phone industry,
citing the use of songs as ringtones as a public performance of an artist's
songs. As a result, ASCAP believed they qualified for a cut in the sale of
every ringtone. Please note, the cell phone companies are already paying a
licensing fee for using the songs, however, ASCAP believes a further payment should
be made because the ringtone is a "public performance." The case was
eventually thrown out by a judge who ruled that no public performance was
involved in a cell phone ringing.
While the
judge may have ruled in favor of the cell phone companies, it begs the
question, what was ASCAP's goal? People don't opt to listen to a thirty-second
clip of a song instead of purchasing it, instead, the 30 seconds might serve as
a tease that will pique a listener's interest and lead them to go purchase the
song the next time they are at their computer. What's more, the cell phone
companies already pay licensing for the songs, so profits are already being
generated for the music industry when users purchase songs. As such, it seems
ASCAP's only possible goal here was to stifle the promotion of their artists by
stopping people from playing their artists 30 second clips, or at least
requiring that they be paid more for the clips (which would likely get pushed
off to the consumers, increasing the cost of these artists songs and thus,
decreasing their sales/promotion).
ASCAP's
fear of thirty second promotions and essentially free advertising does not stop
with the cell phone companies, as they extended their attacks to digital music
stores like iTunes and Amazon. ASCAP feels that the thirty second previews
offered on Amazon, iTunes, and similar online music stores, qualifies as a
public performance and so, demands that these services pay an additional fee to
cover this usage. Once again, it is important to note that these services
already pay for distribution of the music, ASCAP just wants further money for
the "public performance" aspect of the service.
The
question resurfaces, why? ASCAP in effect is asking Amazon and iTunes to pay
for the right to advertise ASCAP's artists as these thirty second previews are
offered as a way to get people to purchase more of an artist's music, not less
of it. If iTunes and Amazon were forced into such an agreement with ASCAP, it
is likely that they would just remove this feature from artists under ASCAP's
wing, opening more opportunities for artists not under the ASCAP banner. The
only people who would be hurt by this deal would be the artists themselves, who
would lose sales to fans who want to preview a song before blindly purchasing
on these digital music services.
In their
continued crusade to silence the music, ASCAP shifted their focus to YouTube
and similar media outlets. With strong justifications (Yahoo, YouTube and
others are profiting from these videos after all), ASCAP sued the various
digital video distributors and won settlements and monthly contracts for the
performance of videos on these networks.
However, in
a similar vein to their attacks on digital music distributors and cell phone
companies, ASCAP decided to push its demands too far and again, is forming a
noose around the artists they claim to protect. ASCAP has decided not only to
sue the digital video distributors, but to also send letters of demand to sites
embedding videos from these services. Now, any web site that embeds videos from
YouTube that feature ASCAP artists will be served a letter demanding the site
pays ASCAP for their usage.
This seems
fair, until you recall that ASCAP is already being paid for each of these views
by the digital video services. In effect, ASCAP is double dipping, attempting
to be paid for every view by both the digital video service and by the web
sites that are sharing these videos.
Why is this
cause for concern? Again, ASCAP is trying to sever promotion of its artists,
and even reduce the amount of views its videos will receive, thereby reducing
the overall amount of money they could be paid by these digital video services.
As a web distributor, when faced with the possible burden of paying licensing
fees for using YouTube, would you continue to promote and embed those videos,
or would you find artists outside of ASCAP's domain and promote them instead?
The new
digital age and the Internet have made it possible for people like me, my
friend, and most of all you, a chance to release our own music worldwide
independently. Best of all it has made it possible to release your own music
without actually being signed to a record label. Only until recently I never
released how this was even possible. My friend didn't even realize how this was
even possible. We can now use online music distributors to release our music
and cut out all the middlemen. There are many music distributors available on
the internet that are all very good to use, many of which will work in a
different principle on how they take their cut from your music releases. Some
of these music distributors will just take a one off yearly payment and charge
you a fee per song you upload for release, whilst others may want a 15-20%
share from every release sold online through them as well as a small
distribution cost from every release depending on how many download stores you
want to distribute your song to. Many of these distributors offer good customer
service, as well as the necessary ISRC codes that will identify your song and
make it chart eligible. Most of these distributors even have online software in
which you release your songs with, along with online tutorial videos on how to
release your music with the software to make the process much easier such as
music distributor Rebeat for example.
My favorite
distributors are a German based distribution company called Feiyr. I mainly use
them for my record label releases as they have great software imbedded into
their online website which makes it great for releasing tracks for my record
label. They also have a large list of digital distribution stores that they use
to distribute your music too, as well as a large popular amount of record
labels using their services.
If your
thinking of starting a record label then it is not easy I'll be honest. I never
imagined it being easy either and as frustrating as it has been for me, I
haven't given up either. It could have been a lot easier if there were more
information that I managed to find available online, but I never found it
unfortunately. It has been one big trial and error mission for me, but the
mistakes pay off in the long run. Any articles I found on the subject were
never continued or about a page long. The best way that I found to learn was to
just chuck myself into the deep end and get on with it. As soon as you start
using your first Music distributor to release your music and see your first
release, everything will start to fit into place nicely. If you can use a
computer and are familiar with the Internet which I'm sure you are, then you
have no excuses not to get started now. It seems that perseverance is your best
friend, so please remember that and don't give up. Once you hit that brick wall
you must keep going. Countless times we have all felt like throwing in the
towel and giving up, but remember that's just the easy way out, that's because
it's true! If you have read this far then you will be as determined, if not
more determined than me with a fire in your heart to succeed. You want to start
a record label or you want to release your own music. You want to test the
waters with yours and others music and there is no better opportunity than to
start today. You at least owe it to yourself! Today's digital age and the
Internet have made it possible for you to do just that, so no more excuses!
Music has
not lost its inherent character ever since the times of prehistoric percussion,
but recording media is becoming more and more intangible. MP3 is gradually
replacing the CD, record stores are disappearing and giving way to web shops,
and search engines are now taking the place of the guy at the record store who
used to tell you where to find the record you were looking for and also told
you who was hot or not. Even though it's not the case yet, soon iTunes, Napster
and Amazon will surely sell more music than physical stores; and they have a
great advantage over "real" shops: there's no need for a warehouse
anymore, the stock stays on a server and it can be replicated endlessly.
These
developments affect the key players in the music industry and the role they
have in the process of marketing an album. Until now, once the record was mixed
and mastered, the artist depended on the financial support of a label to
replicate a great number of copies and to dispatch them to the dealers. Both of
these tasks are on their way to disappearing thanks to online music sales and
service providers like Zimbalam.
Zimbalam.com
is the "mass market" version of Believe Digital, a record label with
its own artist roster and, at the same time, a special service provider helping
traditional labels bring their catalog online. The idea behind Zimbalam is very
simple: they put your songs in 20 online shops in 240 countries for a fixed
rate under a non-exclusive distribution agreement. Having your demo on Napster,
Amazon and iTunes is now possible for only £19.99 (two tracks) or £29.99 (three
or more tracks).
One of the
best surprises Zimbalam has to offer is that you get 90% of the royalties
generated from the retail price, which means real money in the bank for each
sale. If you sell two songs at £1.49 each, at the end of that quarter you'll
get around £2.20 from the sale. You can also claim back an additional
percentage of the sale as a song-writer's royalty through the PRS, to further
increase you revenues. Excellent royalties, absurdly low prices and a
non-exclusive agreement? It seems too good to be true. That's why we went to
Believe Digital's offices in Paris (France) to learn more about Zimbalam and to
test their services. We met Denis Ladegaillerie, a skilled lawyer who has
worked for Universal Music US, eMusic, MP3.com, Rollingstone.com, and is
co-founder and CEO of Believe Digital.
You first
need to understand that this is business and not hustling. When you want to start
making real profit from your music you need to look at it differently. Selling
your mixtapes on the street is not the same as selling them online. Be prepared
to start making business moves and making a future for yourself.
You need to
learn some good business principles to stay making money online. Make sure you
have enough songs to sell before starting. Collect around 100 of your best
songs that you want to sell and name them properly. Right now the trend is to
sell singles for $.99 each and albums for around $9.99 each.
Make
organized folders for your songs and albums with categories to keep everything
from being mixed up. You will soon find out why this is important. You can
break your categories down into styles, genres and tempos.
Go on
iTunes and look at the people are selling the most singles. Study how they
price their music and apply it to your songs. You don't want to copy everything
that they are doing, but make sure you understand what is popular right now.
This will help you fit right in and create your own market.
Keep your
prices all the same. Charging different prices will make it seem that one track
is hotter than the other one. Having one set price will show that they are all
hot songs. Distribute Your Music Worldwide. Our network of channels can
distribute your music across the globe. Distribute music to Apple Music,
iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Play, and Deezer.
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