Dart Music Specializes In Classical Streaming

Classical music hasn't fared well in the digital music age, but a new service called Dart Music aims to change all of that.

Dart is like a TuneCore for classical music, with an annual rate of $20 for a single musical piece, $40 for an album, and a 100% royalty payout to the copyright owner. The service then submits the music to online retailers like iTunes, Spotify, Google Play and others.

The difference between Dart and other aggregators is that it pays special attention to metadata. While most other aggregators include metadata that identifies the artist, song and label at a bare minimum, entering other metadata can be a tedious chore.

Classical music requires additional metadata like conductor, ensemble, and performer, since there is so much more featured collaboration in a classical piece that needs to be identified. This is where Dart is said to shine.

While incomplete metadata is an industry-wide problem, Dart is trying to solve the problem as it specifically focuses on this market niche. Find out more at dartmusic.com.

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TuneCore Acquired By Believe Digital

Digital music aggregator Tuncore, one of the pioneers in that area of the music business, has been acquired by Believe Digital for an undisclosed amount. Believe is the French version of Tunecore only larger, operating in 29 countries.

Both companies will reportedly retain their current staffs and continue operating as normal, but will now be owned by a new corporate entity called Tunecore & Believe Digital Services.

The new company is now a heavyweight in music aggregation, reportedly responsible for 25 to 30% of all uploads to iTunes every day.

This merger may turn out to be a significant upgrade for artists currently signed to Tunecore.

Tunecore company stresses services more for the DIY artist who does everything for himself, while Believe is known for its artist hand-holding. The company features departments for marketing, radio promotions, and project management - all the services usually provided by a record label.

Of course, those services are all for hire, but just the fact that they're available is a step in the right direction for many artists that don't have a clue what to do after they finish recording and uploading their songs.

Usually mergers and acquisitions like this are to the detriment of the end users. This time it may turn out to be a giant positive for artists and bands everywhere.

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Submitting Your Songs To iTunes

If you're an indie artist you know that its possible to submit your songs to many of the digital streaming services like Pandora or Spotify, but that's not possible when it comes to iTunes. The fact of the matter is that many digital services, including iTunes, require either a mid-sized record label or a digital aggregator like CD Baby or Tunecore to submit your songs.

One of the reasons for this is the expense of administering a large number of accounts. There's a cost for the initial setup of the account (which is why an aggregator sometimes charges a setup fee) and most solo artists accounts won't be able to cover that amount during the lifetime of their songs on the service.

Then there's customer service, or the lack thereof. It's expensive to provide and just one call can wipe out any lifetime profits for either the aggregator or the digital service. That's why it's so hard to get someone on the phone at virtually every online company.

iTunes is a special case though, in that it only deals with larger accounts, meaning labels with at least  20 albums or more, or an aggregator. Apple supplies a great submission tool called iTunes Producer that prepares your songs for submission in terms of all the metadata and artwork, but you must be approved by Apple first before the app can connect to the iTunes store.

Let's say you have the prerequisite 20 albums in your catalog and you want to become an approved iTunes label. Apple still requires the following:

• A UPC code for each album
• ISRC codes for each song
• A US Tax ID
• An iTunes store account with a credit card on file 

Finally, Apple sets a sales threshold for each territory that you must exceed before it pays you, so sometimes you can get paid much faster by using an aggregator.

If you're a solo artist, you're pretty much forced to use a digital aggregator to get your music on iTunes and many other digital services. It's much easier than submitting to each one, as an aggregator is a single submission, but it will cost you either a yearly fee or a percentage of your sales revenue. If you're a label that meets the submission standards, then it's worth it to keep the submissions in house.

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TuneCore Launches New Artist Services Portal

TuneCore is expanding its services by launching their Artist Services Portal and debuting an analysis tool called Track Smarts. The company's new offerings are part of an effort to compete with other full-service artist portals like Bandcamp and Nimbit.

Artist Services provides tools for promotion, website building, merchandise management and fan engagement through third party services that are available at special pricing to TuneCore users.

Track Smarts is powered by SoundOut, which is a music research tool used by record labels and radio groups to help determine the market potential of new songs. Track Smarts can be used by an artist to help determine what songs on an album are the strongest, plus to help provide insights on the best demographic to target for the greatest success.

While there are many artist portals that already offer merch and fan management, Track Smarts is actually a pretty interesting feature. It's available in 3 tiers, ranging from the Starter at $15 per song, Enhanced at $40 per song, and Premium at $115 per song.

This might be a little too rich for most indie artists to absorb, but it's still less expensive than anywhere else for the same services, even directly from SoundOut. Either way, it's worth checking out.

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A New Way To Distribute Music Digitally

If you want your music on iTunes, Spotify, and other digital services, most artists choose to use either Tunecore or CD Baby as a distribution method. Each have their upsides and downsides, with the downsides mostly being financial, with Tunecore charging a flat per year for each release and CD Baby taking a percentage of the sale. Now there may be a cheaper and easier way to do it, thanks to DistroKid.

DistroKid is an offshoot of Fandalism, the social network for musicians started by Philip Kaplan. What makes it different from most other distribution networks is that it costs only a subscription fee of $19.95 a year which allows unlimited uploads of your music. You can even upload one song for free before you enter any credit card information.

Kaplan started the service with an eye on democratizing music distribution even further than it currently is by making it a snap for anyone to release their music. While on the surface this seems like a noble idea, the big problem is that since there are really no record label gatekeepers to sift through the mediocre to find the brilliant, at least the service fees of Tunecore and CD Baby would make people think twice before they'd release something that might not be up to par.

The flip side of that coin is, who really knows what another person might like? Music history is filled with big hits that their writers, artists or record labels thought weren't very good and were later pleasantly surprised by the public's enthusiasm. The beauty of Music 3.0 is that if you look hard enough, you'll find at least a small audience for it somewhere. The downside is that it's hard for the consumer to sift through all the noise.

DistroKid is a boot-strap operation despite the earlier online successes of Kaplan (the ad network AdBrite and social shopping Blippy), so it's yet to be seen just how effective it will be in getting your music to all of the sites it claims. Plus, there's not a lot known about how the accounting is handled yet. That said, if you want to get your music on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play and Amazon in 2 to 4 hours (which is really fast), give it a try.

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iTunes Gets Swindled

We all think of Apple as this monolithic company with high and enclosed electronic walls, far too smart for anyone to scam. Usually that's true, but every once in a while it happens, most recently with the UK iTunes store.

According a story in the The Telegraph, DJ Denver White, an unknown part-time rapper, was sudden selling on the level of a superstar like Madonna, yet without any buzz or visibility. While it's possible for someone to get a street buzz that quickly cascades into major sales, anything resembling that was nowhere to be found, which prompted an investigation.

It turned out to be a very sophisticated scam where gang members with at least 24 laptops along with thousands of stolen credit cards, purchased the music of DJ Denver from both iTunes and Amazon for six months in early 2009, which accrued royalties of nearly $1 million.

What's worse, Denver's songs were uploaded through digital aggregators Tunecore, CD Baby and SongCast, who were unknowingly caught in the operation as well.

The gang members installed a program on the computers called "Hide My IP" which was intended to disguise their location. They then used the stolen credit cards to purchase the music, which then generated a royalty for DJ Denver, which the group then divided.

The fraud was detected when someone at iTunes noticed that a part-time DJ with no marketing or record label affiliation was selling enough to be featured on the high volume sales chart. After some forensic investigation, the police were able to track them through email and Paypal accounts, since the "Hide My IP" software couldn't hide their identity as much as the crooks had hoped.

At that point iTunes stopped paying royalties, so someone named Daniel Thompson began to call Tunecore demanding payment of the outstanding royalties. Tunecore was already in touch with police, so they told Thompson they could only pay that large amount in person for tax reasons, and offered to send him a free airline ticket to come to New York to pick up the royalty check. After Thomspon sent them his address in order to have the tickets sent to his home, the police swooped in. In total, 11 gang members were charged in the crime.

So let that be a lesson. Don't even think about screwing Apple.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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You're Not Getting Your Royalties

Last week Jeff Price, the founder and CEO of TuneCore, wrote a very profound piece on the Hypebot blog about the amount of songwriting royalties that aren't making it back to the songwriter, especially from digital sales. It's always been a given that a major label would do everything it could not to pay you any royalties at all, but the following goes way beyond our worse nightmares.

This is a very long post, but well worth the read if you have any sales at all.
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"While the major music companies' revenue from music sales has gone down, they have a brand new increasing income stream: revenue generated from the sale of other people's music. In the past five years, hundreds of millions of dollars of songwriter royalties have been generated and never paid to the songwriter, or have been given to Warner Bros, EMI, Universal, Sony and others based on their market share- estimates put this new income at over half a billion dollars.

Once these companies get the money, they keep it and don't account to anyone.

All the while, the songwriters that earned this money have no clue their pockets are being picked, their royalties are not being paid, and their rights are being violated.

I discovered this infringement and lack of royalty payments while embarking on a journey to discover how much money TuneCore Artists earned as songwriters. In the past three years, TuneCore Artists have sold over 500 million songs and earned over a quarter billion dollars from the sale of the recordings of their songs. With the help of Jamie Purpora, the former SVP Bug Music Publishing Administration and now President TuneCore Songwriter Publishing Administration, we identified another $60 to $70 million earned by these artists in songwriter royalties. The upsetting part, over 70% of this money never made it back to them. And keep in mind, I'm only talking about artists that use TuneCore—there are many more.

This infringement and lack of payment is one of the biggest outrages of the music industry and yet it is rarely talked about and even more rarely understood.

It needs to stop.

Let me explain the nutshell version of how it happens.

The new music industry is global. However, outside of the United States, digital services require additional rights, use different royalty rates and pay the owed royalties differently than the United States music industry. The end result is:

• The digital music service does not get all the rights needed from songwriters and therefore never pay the songwriter the money he/she is owed. 
• At the same time, local performing rights and collection agencies outside the U.S. illegally take a % of the songwriter's money while making it impossible for the songwriter to get what's left over. 
• This illegally obtained songwriter royalty money is then given to other major music companies in that country. 

These other major music companies knowingly take other people's royalties from the collection agencies. (Why not, it's free money earned off of music sales from songs they don't represent that they do not have to pay royalties on).

This scheme is beyond outrageous, it's wrong, it needs to stop (and it's why we launched the TuneCore Songwriter Service).

How do they get away with it, three reasons:

1) The existing global songwriter administration system was built for analog, not digital.
The old school music industry was built for the world of analog TV, AM/FM radio and 12" pieces of vinyl or 5" circular pieces of plastic; it was not built for the digital world. However, this old "analog" system is used for the administration of royalties from the digital world causing other people's money not to make it to them. The "analog" songwriter collection and administration industry knows this is occurring but has no motivation to change its existing system as it allows them to take/earn hundreds of millions of dollars off of other people's royalties.

2) It's cheaper to violate copyright than pay songwriters.
The new emerging digital music services have no simple solution to get licenses from and make payments to copyright holders; it's a pain, it's complicated, and, for the moment, it's cheaper to take on the potential legal liability than invest resources and time to comply with the law and pay the right people.

3) The complexity of copyright law and a lack of transparency create huge barriers to understanding.
The complexity of copyright law, the total lack of transparency by the collection agencies and the inability to audit anything, and you have a perfect storm for global copyright infringement with hundreds of millions of dollars of other people's money getting siphoned off and/or not paid to the millions of rightful copyright holders."

Please read the rest of this post since it has information that's vital to your well-being as a songwriter.

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After The Album Is Finished

CD Baby's excellent DIY Musician blog recently had a post regarding the steps to take when your album is finished. I liked their suggestions but decided to put together a few of my own based on the article.

Here are 10 steps to take after your CD is completed.

1. Get some photos taken. If you don't have the album artwork together, then you may need photos for that. But even if that's well in hand, you're going to need new press photos. Get them shot by a professional ASAP. Check out this article for advice on photos.

2. Update your press kit. You do have one, right? If you do, update it to reflect your latest release. If not, time to get started on it. Check out this article on electronic press kits for more info, as well as this article.

3. Update your website. Once again, it's time to reflect the fact that you have new music to offer. Updating a site takes time, so the sooner you get to it, the better. Before you begin your update, check out this article on the 7 mistakes that bands make on their websites.

4. Determine your distribution. If you aren't signed to a record label, now's the time to get with Tunecore or CD Baby to help make your music available to the world.

5. Determine your release schedule. If you've just completed an album, ask yourself these questions: When is the official album release date? What will be the first single and when will it be released? What will be the second and third singles and when will they be released? Check out this article for a new look at release schedules.

6. Submit your album to Gracenote and All Music Guide. Gracenote is the service that recognizes the songs on a CD when you put it into your computer. All Music Guide provides all the pictures and bio info that you see on iTunes. Submit to both so people get all the details they need when they play your CD.
Click here to find out how to submit your music to Gracenote.
Click here to find out how to submit your music to All Media Guide.

7. Plan your social media campaign. This includes email blasts to your fans as well as posts on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You want to determine just when everything will happen, in what order it will happen, and who's responsible for getting it done.

8. Create some videos. Many people get all of their new music strictly from videos on YouTube. Get a video out ASAP even if it's only composed of a picture and the music. Real videos take time and you can release the official video later. Get something out there now.

9. Book your album release party. If for no other reason, it's a good reason to have a party and celebrate the fact that you've accomplished something that took a lot of work. That said, it's also the best way to get the word out about your new album, especially to the local press.

10. Play to support the album. It's time to get out there and play for people to expose them to your new music. Some artists and bands gig to support the album while others use the album to support their gigging. Decide which category you fall under, make a plan on what you're going to do, and follow it through.

There are more things that you can do, but these are the bare minimum. Remember, just because you've made an album, the world won't beat a path to your door. You have to be proactive in getting the word out.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

The Big List Of DIY Helpers

These days most artists or bands are in DIY mode ("do it yourself") in order to develop an audience, promote themselves and further their careers. Of course, there are a host of services that will gladly help you for a fee, and more seem to be coming online all the time. Some of these services have an advantage or two over the others, but most offer more or less the same services. If you're not happy with the service you're using now, it's pretty easy to find another that might better meet your needs.

Here's a list of the top 30 services, courtesy of Digital Music News:

1. ReverbNation
2. TuneCore
3. CD Baby
4. Topspin
5. Nimbit
6. VibeDeck
7. Bandcamp
8. Bandzoogle
9. FanBridge
10. Sonicbids
11. ArtistData
12. Headliner.fm
13. Soundcloud
14. BFM Digital
15. Zimbalam
16. ONErpm
17. Ditto Music
18. Rebeat Digital
19. Valleyarm
20. Mobile Roadie
21. BlueHaze
22. StageIt
23. ThingLink
24. GigsWiz
25. Slicethepie
26. Sellaband
27. Beta Records
28. Next Big Sound
29. Musicmetric
30. Dropcards

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

A Comparison Of Online Music Distributors

Here's an interesting chart that I found (my apologies, but I can't remember where) that provides a nice overview of some of the popular online music distribution services. With all the hoopla over Tunecore recently raising their prices, it's interesting to see that they're really not that out of line when you look at a side by side comparison.

So which one should you choose? Price isn't always the most important element of your decision. Things like free UPC codes and which stores and subscription services they service are also important. Ultimately, the general feel of the distributor and their user interface may have more of an affect on your decision than anything, so make sure you check them all out before making your choice.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.