PMT Studio Blog

Kashi Cereal Stirs Anger - Exposed by Small Rhode Island Grocer

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:31:02 GMT

By Dr. Mercola

A simple sign on a grocery store shelf has gone viral, causing a storm of outrage among consumers who feel they've been misled by cereal maker Kellogg's claims about its Kashi cereals. A Rhode Island grocer posted a note on the shelf where Kashi was supposed to be, saying he'd learned it wasn't 100 percent natural after all, and therefore wasn't carrying it anymore.
It turns out the soy in Kashi cereals comes from genetically modified Roundup-ready soybeans, which have a gene inserted in them that allows the crop to withstand otherwise lethal doses of the weed killer.
USA Today reported that consumers felt duped into believing that Kashi was all-natural when it's notⁱ. Their complaints were initially brushed off by Kashi general Manager David DeSouza, who told USA Today that since the FDA doesn't regulate the term "natural," the cereal maker has done nothing wrong by defining "natural" as minimally-processed with no artificial flavors, colors, preservatives or sweeteners.

We...

Stand up for our reproductive rights!

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:14:58 GMT

Stand up for our reproductive rights!
Moments ago in the House of Commons, Stephen Harper?s Conservative MPs began debating a motion that, if passed, clearly opens the possibility of re-criminalizing abortion.

It?s never been clearer that more progressive women are needed as MPs

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How 150 People Might Get You Headlining Arenas

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:13:25 GMT

April 26, 2012
By George Howard
(Follow George on Twitter)

One of the most important things an artist can do in order to help accelerate his or her growth is to implement a well-executed and designed “touring” strategy. I put the word “touring” in quotations because this word means different things to different people. Too often, artists feel that unless they are crossing the country, they are not touring. This is not only fallacious, but also potentially harmful thinking. By using distance toured/number of dates played as your metrics, you run the risk of misjudging the success or failure of the endeavor.

Think about it this way: You’re a band on the east or west coast. You decide that you want to do a “tour.” You book some shows in your rough (east or west coast) vicinity, and then plot out the further reaches of your tour. What you will soon find is that, aside from Chicago, there really isn’t a whole lot in between the two coasts when it comes to touring. Before everyone in all of these states gets irate with me, I am not deriding these states, nor am I saying that there aren’t tons of amazing places to play in the Midwest, etc. However, for most bands that are struggling to build a following, the concentration of opportunity tends to lie elsewhere.

In fact, it’s for these very people that the following strategy is designed. That is, artists who have developed something of a following in their hometowns; to the point where they can headline a mid-sized (100-500 capacity) room. As a note, if you have not reached this level of being able to headline a 100-500 capacity room in your hometown, playing outside of your hometown shouldn’t really be your focus.

Once you have hit this magic number of between one and five hundred fans in your hometown, good things can begin to happen (please review the various articles that both Jeff Price and I have written for some tactics on how to develop to this stage).

The anthropologist Robin Dunbar put forth a theory that states that 150 is a very significant number. To (overly) paraphrase, it’s the number of actual/authentic connections any individual can maintain with other people. Think about your personal Facebook account. You may have over 150 people to whom you are connected, but how many are you actively keeping up with? The writer Malcolm Gladwell ran with Dunbar’s work, and suggested that ideas/products/brands spread when these groups of 150 who have organized around a product/idea/brand spread to other groups of 150. Once this begins to happen, exponential growth takes place. We see this every day, when something goes “viral.” What it requires, however, for something to make the leap from one group of 150 to another is what Gladwell refers to as a “weak tie.” That is some person who—for whatever reason—has a connection to more than one group. Think about how viruses spread. Some clump of people have a cold. One person in that clump goes out of town, and shakes the hand of a person belonging to another clump of people, and thereby infects that person with the virus. This newly-infected person now spreads the virus to all those in her group, and so forth.

The same theory holds true for bands. A band who has reached a stage where they are able to draw 150 or so people to a club in their hometown has now reached a mass where there is potential for their music to be spread—virus-like—to other clumps of people.

The job of the band is to not simply wait and hope that some organic weak-tie does the spreading for them, but rather to encourage this type of spreading amongst disparate groups.

One effective way of doing this is to rethink “touring.” Stop considering it as a linear experience (i.e. going across the country), and instead think of it as an ongoing, endeavor with reciprocal benefit.

What I mean by this is the following: Once you’ve developed a following in your hometown of 150 or so, view this as your hub. Next, look to three to five markets within driving distance of your hub. These are your spokes. At the terminus of each of these spokes, find bands whose values/style align with yours (use Facebook, use weekly arts magazines from these “spoke” towns to educate yourself about the bands in these markets). Make sure that in addition to having similar values/style to your band, that they too are at roughly the same stage of development as you; i.e., able to draw 150 or so people in their hometown.

Once identified, reach out to these artists. Suggest that they come to your hometown, and open for you. The benefit to them is that you’re acting as a “weak tie;” you’re exposing their work—virus-like—to a new clump of people, who, because you’ve determined that there is value alignment between your band and the band who is coming to your hometown, will be receptive to this band.

In return for having them come to your hometown and open for your crowd, you open for this band in their hometown. In this way, the band is acting as a weak tie for you.

If you’re able to do this in three to five markets, you’ll be on the road once a week or so playing in new markets, while also playing once a month in your hometown with one of these bands opening for you. Playing more than once a month in your hometown will, over time, lead to diminishing returns as it fatigues your fans.

As you return to these “spoke” markets a number of times, you should be seeing growth in terms of people coming to see you specifically, people signing up for your email newsletter, etc. At this point, you can add more spokes, or extend them further out to more remote towns from your hub; all the while employing the same gig-swapping methodology.

Done successfully, it won’t be long before you have a plethora of viable markets for you to play. “Suddenly,” you’re really touring. But, rather than randomly bouncing from town to town, taking whatever gig you can get (and typically playing in front of indifferent audiences—if there’s anyone there at all) just so that you can say you’ve toured across the country, you’ve actually built a sustainable touring circuit.

From this comes everything. The bands who are doing this are the ones that attract managers, booking agents, music supervisors, labels, publishers, and, most importantly, fans. Bands who are not doing this, attract none of these. Eventually, these bands who have not employed a strategy as outlined above, and who attract no one, break up. So, remember to think of touring in the way it should be thought of: a tool. It’s the engine that drives pretty much everything else (online/social media, for instance, really accelerates when it’s combined with a robust offline (i.e. touring) effort). Importantly, think of markets as nodes of potential connectivity, and actively seek weak ties that help spread your music and message into these markets.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

George Howard is the former president of Rykodisc. He currently advises numerous entertainment and non-entertainment firms and individuals. Additionally, he is the Executive Editor of Artists House Music and is an Associate Professor of Music Business/Management at Berklee. He is most easily found on Twitter at: twitter.com/gah650

Related to this article: Let Radiohead Be Your Guide

APRIL 26, 2012 · 4 Comments and 7 Reactions in Artist Marketing,Marketing & Promotion,The Industry

Amazon, More Money, More Stores, #1 Albums, Over $100 Million Dollars & Sonic Youth...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:05:07 GMT

By Jeff Price

So there I was on the subway reading the NY Times, and once again in the Monday Business Section in the “Most Popular” Column was the list of best selling artists/releases, and once again there was a TuneCore Artist nestled between the other major label artists.

This was not supposed to happen (so says the traditional music industry). And it caused me to pause, reflect, and look back on the last year. I realized I missed the forest for the trees, and it’s a hell of a forest.

AMAZON

As some of you may recall, there was an issue between TuneCore and Amazon in the EU/UK, causing Amazon to pull down the entire TuneCore catalog of recordings.

I am pleased to say, that as of last week, all those TuneCore Artists’ recordings will be re-appearing in the Amazon EU and UK stores over the next five weeks. In addition, any new releases will be showing up in Amazon EU/UK in the usual time frame. You can read the official announcement and more about the entire thing here.

GROUNDBREAKING DEALS THAT GET TUNECORE ARTISTS MORE MONEY THAN ANY OTHER ENTITY IN THE WORLD.

Long story short, each time a song is downloaded, streamed or publicly performed, the person who wrote the song is owed a SECOND, separate royalty.

To date, TuneCore Artists have earned over $70 million dollars in songwriter royalties, but have not gotten all of their money. So we started a service to get it for them.

It took a year to hire the people, build the technology and get it live. It’s been up and running for about four months, and you can view it here.

In the process of getting this live, we set up groundbreaking, first of its kind, industry changing deals. Digital music services agreed to pay directly to TuneCore the royalties owed to songwriters. This cut out a lot of middlemen that dipped, double dipped, and, in some cases, triple dipped into artists’ royalties and added over a year before they got their money (if it all). This TuneCore songwriting service means that instead of this money sitting with some organization in Japan, Germany, Switzerland, England, etc., waiting to be picked up, if ever, it can now make it back to the songwriter.

We also updated and modernized and re-invented global songwriter publishing administration. This not only gets more money back to songwriters more quickly, but it opens the doors for any songwriter to have a global publishing administration (until now, this was only available to an elite few, just as distribution was, before TuneCore launched).

For the first time, any songwriter can come to TuneCore.com/songwriters, click through four screens, and get a global songwriter publishing administration deal. Songs are registered with over 200 societies and digital stores worldwide, and a songwriter royalties can now finally make it back to the songwriter.

In addition, if a songwriter’s song is played in Deezer, simfy, Rhapsody, or Spotify, the songwriter makes more money via TuneCore than via any other entity in the world.

There are four more services with which TuneCore is in direct deals for songwriters, coming shortly.

Hold on to your hats, we get to change the world again—this time for songwriters.

MORE STORES

There have been a number of new stores over the recent months—some came as existing services which expanded, others are new deals for us. All are worthy of your music.

New stores and/or expansions to the TuneCore family of stores:

Deezer
Simfy
iHeartRadio
Google Play
iTunes – expanded into Latin America
Rhapsody – expanded into Germany and the UK

(Until the end of April there is a 50% off sale to add new stores to existing releases.)

We also signed a new deal yesterday with another music service (one I REALLY like) that comes with direct licensing for the songwriter. (Press release and announcement coming on that one soon.)

There are two more in the pipeline—they will also come with direct licensing for the songwriter…

TUNECORE ARTIST ACHIEVEMENTS

There were a lot, and I mean a LOT. So many we cannot mention them all. To start, there were over 2,600 TuneCore Artists featured in iTunes, Amazon, etc. Some as the Starbucks free single of the week, others on the main genre pages, main homepages, in newsletters, as the iTunes free download of the week, in special pricing programs, and the list goes on and on.

That said, here’s the short list:

#1 album on all of iTunes for almost an entire week: Hoodie Allen

#1 on iTunes Rock Chart: Thousand Foot Krutch

#1 Soundtrack on iTunes: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

#1 on iTunes Comedy chart: Patrice O’Neal and Doug Benson

#1 on iTunes Singer/Songwriter Chart: The Civil Wars, Ben Rector, and others

Starbucks “Pick of the Week” went to Jesse Thomas and We Are Augustines (they both got those giveaway cards in Starbucks nationally)

The Civil Wars sold millions and millions and millions of songs (no doubt turning down every single kind of major label deal you can possibly think of), and performed on the Grammys, while winning TWO Grammys (because one is just not enough) for their album Barton Hollow: one for Best Folk Album and the other for Best Country Duo/Group Performance.

The Dove Award (Christian music’s highest honor) was won by:

Lecrae’s Hallelujah for Rap/Hip Hop Recorded Song of the Year & Jennie Lee Riddle as a songwriter for the Inspirational Recorded Song of the Year – Hope Of The Broken World.

Kate Diaz played the official Earth Day Event in Washington, DC.

NPR Music featured a number of TuneCore Artists in their feature Song of the Day, includingGirl in A Coma and Jennifer O’Connor.

Donnie McCLurkin was honored to be a featured performer in the Whitney Houston Memorial Service.

Joan Franka represented the Netherlands in the Eurovision Song Contest.

In December 2011, Alex Day became the first unsigned artist to achieve a place in the top ten of the Official Charts in the United Kingdom with his song Forever Yours.

Ian Axel’s track This is the New Year was in the Garry Marshall film New Year’s Eve (Sarah Jessica Parker, Halle Berry, Robert DeNiro, Jon Bon Jovi, and Jessica Biel starred).

Punchline was a featured performer on Howie Mandel’s show “Mobbed.”

Courrier’s track Between was featured in an episode of Vampire Diaries (shooting them to #52 overall on iTunes), and they have a big TV placement coming in May.

The list goes on and on…

REVENUE EARNED BY TUNECORE ARTISTS IN 2010 & 2011 FOR THEIR RECORDINGS

In 2010, TuneCore Artists generated over $60 million dollars from the sale and use of their recordings in the stores TuneCore distributes to (i.e. iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Rhapsody, eMusic, etc.).

In 2011, TuneCore Artists generated and got back over $100 million dollars from the sale and use of their recordings.

In 2012, the amount of money TuneCore Artists have made is already 68% higher than where it was this time last year.

Cool!

No matter how you slice it, more money is getting back to artists now than at any point in history.

(And for the usual contingency of people insisting that TuneCore is saying all artists will be billionaires, they won’t. Please read this article.)

SONIC YOUTH

This is more of a personal one for me. About two weeks ago, Sonic Youth selected TuneCore to distribute every album they released up to their first Geffen album. These albums sit withRubber Soul and Revolver in my world.

Are you kidding me? This is Sonic Youth! I don’t get tongue tied often, but there are literally three people in the world that will cause me to be a starry-eyed, stuttering school boy when I speak to them: Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis and Frank Black), Thurston Moore, and Kim Gordon.

I can’t tell you how many hours and hours and hours and hours I spent listening, and re-listening, to the most innovative, creative and groundbreaking band of my generation.

The sonic walls of sound, production, songwriting and influence they had (and have) on artists still resonate today.

This is a band that never ever sold out. They did it their way and stayed at it for years, inventing, re-inventing, never ever becoming or doing something that was not true to them.

The credibility they brought to any label that released their music or artist who had the opportunity to open for them is immeasurable. I am truly humbled and blown away that I am going to play any role whatsoever in Sonic Youth’s career. It is an honor. And a thank you to every single TuneCore employee who helped create a company of such high quality, trust, value and integrity that Sonic Youth would choose to use us.

For those that do not know them, you are missing out on experiencing music and artistic creativity that most likely will not repeat itself.

For those that do know them, it’s so worth re-listening to.

Without you, none of this would have happened.

Thank you for giving all of us here at TuneCore the opportunity to cause change and make things better for artists.

-Jeff and TuneCore

APRIL 26, 2012 · 10 Comments and 0 Reactions in Jeff's Postings,Music Publishing & Copyright,The Industry

Episode 33: Train :: Live From Daryl's House with Daryl Hall :: Current Episode

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:10:48 GMT

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The Additional 10.5% Spotify Royalty You Are Not Getting (and it's not really their fault)

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 01:11:20 GMT

March 30, 2012

The Additional 10.5% Spotify Royalty You Are Not Getting (and it’s not really their fault)

As the debate goes on about if streaming services are paying out enough royalties to artists, there is one thing that is not debatable: in the United States, artists and songwriters/publishers are not getting the entire amount, or any, of the additional 10.5% royalty owed to them from “interactive” streaming services like Spotify, Rhapsody, Slacker, MOG, Rdio, etc. (and the music services aren’t really to blame).By Jeff Price

Outside of the United States this same problem exists for other reasons (you can read more on that here), but in the U.S., the issues causing this are:

-U.S. Copyright Law For Streams
-How The Streaming Mechanical Royalties Are Paid Out
-Performance Rights Organizations Are In The Middle When They Do Not Need To Be

U.S. Copyright Law For Streams

In the United States, each and every time a song is streamed via an “interactive” music service like Spotify, Rhapsody, Slacker, MOG, Rdio, etc. (be it your recording of the song or a version covered by someone else), the person who wrote the song is required to be paid separate songwriter royalties.

The royalties paid by the music service to the songwriter are for two of the songwriter’s six copyrights:

The right of Reproduction
The right of Public Performance

(You can see all six copyrights you get the moment you write down or record your song here)

In the United States, the government created something called a “Compulsory” license for the right of Reproduction. This means that if the government’s set of rules (laws) are followed, the license cannot be denied by the person who wrote the song; thus the license is “Compulsory.”

The royalties paid for each streaming Reproduction are called “Streaming Mechanical Royalties;” this rate is set by the U.S. Government.

The Streaming Mechanical Royalty Rate Set By The U.S. Government

The “Streaming Mechanical Royalty” rate set by the U.S. Government is called the “Statutory Rate.”

The current “statutory mechanical royalty rate” for a stream of a song in the United States is determined by a ridiculously complicated set of formulas based on 10.5% of the music service’s gross revenue, minus the cost of the royalty paid for public performance. Multiple formulas are run using the 10.5% of gross revenue minus the cost of the royalty paid for public performance as the starting point. These formulas then get compared to one another and the highest one is picked. This “winning” formula sets the streaming “mechanical royalty” rate for this one particular monthly royalty pay period. Each time mechanical royalties are calculated (which under the law is every month), the stores re-run the formulas and do it all over again.

Below is a diagram that shows how the rate is calculated, but stated more simply, the streaming mechanical royalty rate in the U.S. is more or less 10.5% of the music service’s “Gross Revenue” minus the cost of the paid public performance royalty. This creates the “Total Mechanical Royalty Pot For This Time Period.”

To determine how much each stream gets paid from the “Total Mechanical Royalty Pot For This Time Period,” the music service counts the “Number Of Times All The Songs In Its Service Were Streamed In This Time Period” and divides that number by the “Total Mechanical Royalty Pot of Money For This Time Period.”

The end result is “The Royalty Owed to the Songwriter Each Time His/Her Song Is Streamed At the Music Service” (this applies to someone covering the songwriter’s song as well).

And now in blazing, eye-popping graphics, you can see the formula:

The Public Performance Royalty For Streams

In regards to the Public Performance royalty for each stream, there is no government compulsory law or statutory rate. The royalty rate is negotiated directly between the music service and the entity that represents the songwriter’s right of Public Performance—this couldbe the songwriter himself, but, in the U.S., it is usually one of the three performing rights organizations: BMI, ASCAP or SESAC.

What’s most interesting about the streaming mechanical royalty formula is that there is a limit to what the Public Performance royalty can be.

For example, if the public performance royalty for streams is 10.5%, it would make the mechanical royalty 0%.

Here is the math:

Or, if the public performance royalty for streams is 0%, this would make the mechanical royalty 10.5%

Here is the math:

In other words, from what I can tell, there is no way the total amount a songwriter gets paid for a stream from these two rights in the U.S. can ever be more than 10.5% of the music service’s gross revenue. In order for it to exceed 10.5%, the digital music service would have to agree to pay out more than required by law (the other option is for songwriters/music publishers to be paid nothing for streaming mechanical royalties—this also is not going to happen).

Therefore, by default, no matter what the public performance royalty is, the total amount of royalties earned by the songwriter/publisher for a stream of his/her song in the U.S. via an “interactive” service like Spotify, Rhapsody, Slacker, MOG, etc. is 10.5% of the music store’s gross revenue minus the cost of the royalty paid for public performance with the pot of money left over pro-rated out.

So the next question is: why aren’t songwriters are getting some, or any, of their money? This is explained in how these royalties are paid out.

How The Streaming Mechanical Royalties Are Paid Out

Unlike mechanical royalties from DOWNLOADS where the music service pays the mechanical royalties to the label and the label pays the songwriter/music publisher (see diagram below), the law states that streaming mechanical royalties must be paid DIRECLTY to the songwriter/publisher (see 2nd diagram below).

——————————————————————-

However, the streaming music services have a problem, they do not know who all the songwriters are, and therefore have no way to get the licenses and pay them their royalties. The law anticipated this and allows them to file something called a “Notice of Intent,” which basically means they are making (or have made) some effort to find the songwriter/publisher and get the license and pay the royalties. This then means songwriters /publishers cannot claim copyright infringement.

For the most part, songwriters/publishers are not getting their streaming mechanical royalties, because the two entities—the store and the songwriter/publisher—have not connected. (Songwriters/publishers can do this on their own by tracking down each streaming interactive service directly and demanding payment. This is also one of a myriad of services theTuneCore Songwriter Service provides.)

For those songwriters/publishers who are getting their streaming mechanical royalties paid to them directly, around 6% -7% of their 10.5% songwriter royalty is being split off and diverted to the U.S. performing rights organizations: BMI, ASCAP or SESAC. These organizations then take a % of the songwriter/publisher’s royalty, before passing whatever is left back to the rightful songwriter/publisher three to six months (or longer) later.

See the diagram below that shows how this happens:

Performing Rights Organizations Getting In The Middle When They Do Not Need To Be.

Now as I look at this above diagram, I’m thinking: ‘The music store is already paying the songwriter/publisher the money, so why the heck is some portion of the songwriter’s 10.5% royalty going to ASCAP, BMI or SESAC? All this does is let them take a piece of it and then hand the rest back to the songwriter months later.’

In defense of ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, the reasons behind this come from the traditional industry where the intent was to help, not hurt, the songwriter. That is, 99% of the time, when BMI/ASCAP negotiate royalty rates, they are not really fenced in regarding what rates they can negotiate as they are around interactive streaming public performance royalties.

In addition, for those songwriters who are in “publishing deals” (as an example, songwriters who assigned ownership of a portion (or all) of their songwriter copyrights to another entity), ASCAP, BMI and SESAC will split the money they get from the music service in half and mail a check to the songwriter directly for 50% of the money and one to the publisher for the other 50%. This way, no matter if the songwriter owed money back to the publisher (or if the publisher is evil and does not account accurately to the songwriter), the songwriter still gets some piece of his/her streaming digital public performance.

Here’s a diagram illustrating this situation:

However, that’s the old industry. TuneCore’s customers have sold over 500 million units of music in the past three years and over 99% of them are not in deals where they’ve assigned ownership of their songwriter copyrights to another entity. For these artists—the new emerging music industry—ASCAP, BMI and SESAC provide no value. Instead, it takes longer to get less money.

In other words, isn’t this the way it should be:

I’m certain I’m not the first person to realize this.

My question to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC is this: if you truly exist for the benefit of the songwriter, why haven’t you created an option that allows the songwriter/publisher that controls all of their rights to get all their money directly from the streaming interactive digital service? By sticking yourself in the middle it causes the songwriter/publisher to have to wait longer to get less money.

As a solution, just have an on-line form where both the songwriter and publisher can click a button that says “For this song, I do not want BMI/ASCAP collecting and taking a piece of my songwriter royalty from interactive streaming public performances” (or you could tell the music service that your rate for that particular song is 0% so all 10.5% flows through to the songwriter/publisher).

Once that button is clicked, you will have helped the songwriter get more money, more quickly—the very reason you exist.

Perhaps I am missing some reason as to why this is not already happening, but I have not been able to find it.

And if I’m right, and ASCAP/BMI are truly in existence to get songwriters back as much money as possible as quickly as possible, then they should be leading the charge for this change; it should not come from a blog post written by me.

MARCH 30, 2012 · 89 Comments and 22 Reactions in Jeff's Postings,Music Publishing & Copyright,Songwriting,The Industry,Web/Tech

The Marketing Money Can't Buy

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:55:00 GMT

March 29, 2012

The Marketing Money Can’t Buy

Too often I see artists playing over and over again with diminishing returns. They’ve essentially worn their friends out, and haven’t done the thing that is most essential to the success of any band: shifted the burden of promotion from themselves to their fans.By George Howard
(follow George on Twitter)

Without doing this, all bands (or products) eventually fail. There is a ceiling quickly hit when the creator of/company behind a song/product does not shift the burden of promotion from themselves to the fans. They can do all the advertising, marketing, promotion their budgets can withstand, and—for some period of time—will see some impact from this. However, bands/businesses don’t ever break through the ceiling in earnest until some group of these initial fans (call them “early adopters”) begin turning their friends on to the band/business. We call this word of mouth.

The promise of social media has always been that this word of mouth marketing can be accelerated via technology. Obviously, as is proven by anything that “goes viral,” it canhappen. Something “going viral” is just an extreme example of fans sharing and spreading the object of their fan-dom to their friends (via their social networks, typically) at a heightened rate.

It’s not possible to manufacture something that goes viral. Viral-ness, by its very nature, is no longer being promoted by the creator of the product/song/etc., and, therefore, the creator is not in control. If we could manufacture viral products at will, we’d do it every time. Additionally, if we could do it, it wouldn’t come as such a surprise (I’m looking at you Double Rainbow) when something explodes virally.

Part of the nature of something spreading in a viral manner is that it’s unexpected. This unexpected quality aligns closely with a key element of something going viral: it must beremarkable. Pulling that word apart you get its root: remark. We must always remember, that as is stated in The Cluetrain, “markets are conversations,” and conversations require topics of interest; topics that are remark-able.

All of this leads to the concept that at its core, social media succeeds only if: 1. You shift the burden of promotion from the creator/business of the product to the fan. 2. Your product/business/band/service is remarkable; if it’s not, people will not share it.

Once this is understood, you can begin articulating strategies that—while not guaranteeing what you do will “go viral”—will increase your odds of being spread by fans.

In his still-relevant book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, borrowing from Robin Dunbar, articulates the idea that the maximum number of authentic social relationships any person can maintain is 150. If you look around at the various clubs in your area, you’ll likely find that many of them tend to have a capacity of somewhere around 150 people (could be 200, could be 100, but you get the idea). This is why it’s not surprising that a band who does not shift the burden of promotion from themselves to their fans will have a painful downward trajectory of playing in these 150-capacity clubs for some period of time, until their friends get fatigued and stop coming.

To avoid this plight, bands need, what Gladwell terms, “weak ties” to bridge the gap between one social group and into another. “Weak ties” are people that introduce an idea/business/band to an entirely new circle. Consider, for example, that you’ve been on a job hunt for some period of time. You’ve talked to all your friends, and none of them have provided you with any leads. This is because all your friends are within the same circle, and basically share the same information/contact base. One day you board a plane, and strike up a conversation with the stranger sitting next to you. You tell this person that you’re looking for a job in a certain field, and, much to your surprise/delight, this person says something along the lines of, “You know, I have a friend who is working in that industry; I should connect you.” This is the power of the “weak tie.” It introduces you into an entire new community.

Using this thinking, bands can strategize to increase their odds of breaking out of their circle of 150.

Here’s an example. There is a very fine band by the name of Guster. As they were emerging in the late 90s/early 2000s, they were a student band at Tufts University in Medford, MA. Prior to holiday breaks, they would gather their fans and arm each fan with several copies of their recent releases. They’d give these fans the following mandate: When you return home for the holidays, and you meet up with your hometown friends, who are also returning from college, give them copies of our release to take back with them to their colleges after the holidays. In doing so, Guster was able to utilize “weak ties” to build a network of fans throughout numerous universities. This is, of course, the very definition of social networking—long before either the term or the internet architecture (i.e. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) were invented.

This method worked for Guster not just because they shifted the burden of promotion from themselves to their fans, but also because their music was (and is) remarkable. They, like all bands, had to start by playing in front of their friends, but, because the music was (is) remarkable, the fans wanted to spread the word. Guster, understanding this, created anarchitecture of participation that enabled and empowered these people to do so. Note, Guster did not have to give incentive for these fans to spread the word; rather, the fans wanted to spread the word because they were passionate about the music. The sharing of something they loved, was reward enough. Guster just gave them tools and direction.

It’s also important to note that Guster’s gambit worked because there was something physical/tangible about it. While the Internet and digitization allow us to share things more rapidly (and more cost effectively), there is an important element of physicality that is lacking. This tangible item is often referred to as a “social object;” something that can be held, looked at, shared, put on a wall, talked about, explained…something that can be remarked on.

Artists, even in an era of digitized files, must understand that fans crave the physical experience. No one can hang an mp3 on their dorm room wall—as an external manifestation of their internal values—in the way you could hang a vinyl jacket on a wall. And remember, the person hanging this vinyl jacket on the wall wants more than anything for someone to ask about it, and thus give them the opportunity to remark upon something they are passionate about…markets are conversations. This provides them the opportunity to be an evangelist—to turn someone on—for something they love.

Can this happen online? Of course. Music, films, books, businesses spread online at a pace that no one could have conceived even fifteen years ago. However, in order to increase your odds, it’s essential you understand how these things occur. They occur when you shift the burden of promotion from yourself to your fans; you provide them with an architecture of participation; and your work is remarkable.

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MARCH 29, 2012 · 3 Comments and 16 Reactions in Artist Marketing,Marketing & Promotion,The Industry

The New A&R At SXSW

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:25:00 GMT

March 15, 2012

The New A&R At SXSW

By George Howard
(follow George on Twitter)

I’ve seen SXSW change drastically over the nearly 20 years I’ve been attending. Unfortunately, many of those who attend—both performers and labels—have not changed with it. As we approach SXSW 2012, I’d like to offer a few suggestions on how you can make the most of your time there.

As most reading this are likely performers, it’s important to realize that if you’re heading to SXSW in the hopes that some A&R person will sign you, you’re deluding yourself and wasting your (and the A&R person’s) time.

While there was a time (the 90s) where this happened a lot, and, yes, artists will get signed out of this year’s SXSW, the likelihood of it happening without a tremendous amount of other factors coming into play is pretty much non-existent.

So, what can you do to maximize your time there?

You need to first get in the mindset that your music career is like a start-up business (by the way, businesses often remain in the start-up stage for a number of years). To this end, rather than viewing SXSW as a way of selling your business (i.e. getting someone to sign you, which, again, ain’t gonna happen), look at it as a way of accelerating/growing your career.

You do this by focusing on a few specific things. First, view SXSW as a way to acquire knowledge and connections. There are fantastic panels throughout. Not-so-subtle plug for the TuneCore panels. Attend these panels. Listen, learn, interact. Also download our booklets that we’ve prepared for SXSW.

In terms of connections, seek out those people who share your values. This could be other performers, people in the industry, and, yes, fans. By this I mean: get out there and hear music; hang out at the various hotel lobbies and talk to people, and, of course, if you’re performing, talk to those who are out to see you, and try to forge relationships. As I’ve written, in order to find those who share your principles, make sure you know your own.

Once you’ve identified people who share your values (whether potential fans or those in the industry) find ways to connect that allow for the relationship to grow. You do this by talking, seeing if there is value-alignment, and then exchanging something. If you’re connecting with a fan, that exchange should be your music for their email address (better yet, if there’s really value alignment, give them a CD/drop card for themselves and a second one for them to give to one of their friends).

If you’re connecting with someone in the industry, do not give them one of your CDs, unless they ask for it. Please don’t ask them if they want one. Please don’t just hand them one. If they want to hear your music, they will ask you. Likely, they will want to listen to it online, so be sure to have some sort of business card with a URL to your website where your music can be heard. Don’t have a business card, or a website? You really need to question if you’re treating your career like a business or a hobby. Again, please do not give people CDs unless they explicitly ask for one. Here’s the thing: they won’t.

SXSW is an opportunity for you to begin—as I’ve recently written about–thinking about A&R differently. It’s no longer about meeting some A&R person, and forcing a CD in the vague hopes that this will mean something. Rather, it’s about Attracting & Retaining relationships with those people who share your values.

To be clear, these people you attract and retain may very well be A&R people. However, remember that relationships (and markets) are conversations. Sure, go to the panel where the A&R people are speaking, and, if in fact one of them seems to align with your values, see if you can’t at least thank them for their time, and tell them you appreciated what they said. Do not give them a CD during this conversation.

The funny thing about networking is that it’s most effective when you do something for someone without asking for anything in return. In this way, seeds of a relationship are sown. These seeds—perhaps scattered among fans, A&R people, media companies, managers, agents, club bookers, etc.—need to be nurtured over time before any thing of value grows.

SXSW is a place where seeds can be effectively and easily sewn. Who knows how, when, or if they will take root, but if you think in terms of A&R as attracting and retaining relationships with people who share your values, these relationships will be far more durable than whatever might come of you foisting an unsolicited CD on an already-overburdened A&R (in the historic sense of the word) person or other gatekeeper.

For those of you coming to SXSW, I’d love to meet you at the TuneCore panels and live distribution times. For those of you who aren’t coming, download the our guides, and look for ways you can do the new A&R (attraction and retention) wherever you are.

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MARCH 15, 2012 · 0 Comments and 24 Reactions in Artist Marketing,Marketing & Promotion,The Industry

13 Different Ways To Make Money From Your Songs

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:15:00 GMT

March 15, 2012

13 Different Ways To Make Money From Your Songs

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By Jeff Price & Jamie Purpora

In today’s world your songs can generate money and royalties via the traditional “Physical/Analog” music industry or the new “Digital” music industry. There are in fact 13 different and specifics ways that you as a songwriter can make this money off of your songs.

Note – each income stream and type of royalty is generated off the original recording of a song (i.e. the Beatles version of Paul McCartney’s song “Yesterday”) or off of a cover of the song (i.e. if multiple artists cover the song, the song becomes an “x” factor multiplier for revenue). In the case of “Yesterday,” there are over 25,000 covers.

We’ve broken these income types into two categories:

-Physical/Analog Songwriter Royalties and Revenue
-Digital Songwriter Royalties and Revenue

Click here to download our newest TuneCore Survival Manual: 13 Different Ways To Make Money From Your Music

MARCH 15, 2012 · 4 Comments and 0 Reactions in Jeff's Postings,Music Publishing & Copyright,Songwriting,The Industry,Web/Tech

Aviom A-16II

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:07:52 GMT

Product Description for the Aviom A-16II

The A-16II allows individual performers to create custom monitor mixes tailored to their individual needs. Designed for use in live performance or in the studio, the A-16II Personal Mixer gives each performer control over channel volume, grouping, pan, stereo spread, and master volume and tone. Every Personal Mixer in a system can create a unique monitor mix for a performer. Users can save and recall up to sixteen custom mixes as presets in their Personal Mixer.
Stereo output for wired or wireless
The stereo output from the A-16II can be used to drive wired or wireless in-the-ear monitors, headphones, powered floor wedges, an amplifier, or spot monitors.
The A-16II Personal Mixer is fully compatible with all Pro16 Series products, including Aviom's digital interface card for Yamaha digital mixing consoles. Support for Aviom monitor mixing is available in the form of console interface cards from an ever- increasing list of digital console manufact...

The New A&R: Attraction & Retention

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:16:52 GMT

March 1, 2012

The New A&R: Attraction & Retention

By George Howard
(Follow George on Twitter)

The concept of A&R has undergone several changes over the years. Originally it was a term signifying the effort of individuals who, prior to the era when most performers also wrote (or co-wrote) their own material, would try to match songs with performers; hence its now-anachronistic meaning of “artist and repertoire.” After the singer-songwriter revolution of the 70s, the role of A&R morphed to be more about finding new “talent” and signing them to the labels. In the era of consolidation from the 90s onward, A&R has expanded from “just” finding talent to also being active in the conception and execution of the marketing strategy for the artist the A&R person signs.

I propose that we’re now at a place and time where A&R must evolve once again. This time, however, I propose a radical shift.

Whereas before, A&R (artist and repertoire) was largely related to finding artists and then working in some capacity to raise their profile, the new A&R looks the other way. As artists no longer need labels (not to say that labels can’t add value; just that they are not the requirement they once were), there is no reason for A&R people to try to match an artist with a label. Now that artists can (if they so choose) act as their own label, and/or work with a small team (manager, etc.) to raise their profile, it’s the artists themselves who must focus on A&R. However, the A&R that they should be focused on has nothing to do with finding and signing artists. The new A&R is about Attraction and Retention.

Rather than looking to find artists and create relationships with them, the artist who is taking charge of his career must find and keep (attract and retain) fans/evangelists for their work.

All businesses succeed for the same reason: they attract and retain. While—via sales pricing or gimmicks—companies can attract customers, it’s the retention part that—over time—will allow a business to become profitable. Most people when asked what makes a business successful answer by citing “profit” as the key metric. It’s crucial to understand, for bands and any business, that profits are a byproduct of attraction and retention over time.

Think about a company like Amazon. For the first several years of its existence it lost money on virtually every item it sold. While on the surface, this seems an amazingly insane business model, what Amazon was doing was, via convenience, referrals, and, yes, low prices, attracting customers who—feeling they were receiving value from their experience—kept coming back. Amazon attracted and retained customers at such a rate that they were able to create economies of scale that took them from losing money on every item shipped, to eventually, breaking even, and then profiting on orders.

Bands must think in these terms as well. What are you doing to not only attract customers, but keep them coming back for more? These are key metrics. One of the single-worst things that a business (or band….is there a difference?) can do is attract a customer, and then lose that customer after only one transaction. If, for instance, a band puts in all the time and money to build a website, make a CD, play a show, etc., and goes through all the marketing effort to make a person aware of the band’s output, and even compels that person to purchase something from the band (or visit their site), and that person only makes one purchase/visit, the band has lost.

In every consumer transaction there is a series of steps that a customer goes through, often called the Customer Journey: Awareness, Consideration, Trial, Purchase, and Re-purchase. It’s this final step, Re-purchase, that matters most to band/business. There are costs all along the customer journey (both in terms of time and money) that are not recovered if the customer purchases once, but doesn’t repurchase.

This is why retention is so crucial. It’s through retention (Re-purchase) where profit can finally be realized. This is because, while the cost (time and money) required to acquire the customer and compel him or her to make an initial purchase, is massive, the cost for the Re-purchase is incremental at most (i.e. there are no costs related to acquisition, marketing, etc.; whatever costs exist are related to the transaction itself (credit card fees, costs of goods sold, etc.)—hence, incremental costs).

Practically speaking, we’re talking about loyalty. It relates to an internet meme of a few years back that’s compelling in its simplicity, even as it’s frustratingly elusive to achieve: 1000 True Fans. The theory goes something like this. You are better off trying to acquire 1000 true fans who will—over the course of a year—spend $100 apiece for some work product you create (could be a t-shirt, download, subscription, ticket, etc.). If you do this, you will gross $100,000 per year.

The reason this is compelling is because it’s much more approachable to think about acquiring 1000 true fans, each spending $100, to make $100,000 than it is to try to acquire 100,000 fans who net you $1.00 per fan (i.e. the traditional record business model).

The reason this is frustratingly elusive to achieve is that to arrive at 1000 fans willing to part with $100 each over the course of a year, you likely would need to have well over 100,000 fans in your “funnel.” That is, 100,000 or so fans that you have email addresses for, etc.

In any case, difficult or not (and what isn’t difficult that’s of value), the idea behind the 1000 True Fans meme is instructive as it shows the importance of retention of fans. Arguably, retention is more important than attraction; however, you, of course, must focus on both.

To summarize, A&R must take on a new meaning for you in today’s artist-centric music business. No longer do we need gatekeepers of talent, scouring the clubs and college radio playlists, looking for the next “big thing.” This old-school A&R is largely over. Instead, artists (and those who work with them) must re-conceive of A&R to focus on the attraction and retention of fans. Doing so creates real, genuine, durable connections between the artist and their fans. It will be these connections that provide artists with the means to continue making their art on their own terms even while the industry continues to arrive at sustainable business models.

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George Howard is the former president of Rykodisc. He currently advises numerous entertainment and non-entertainment firms and individuals. Additionally, he is the Executive Editor of Artists House Music and is an Associate Professor of Music Business/Management at Berklee. He is most easily found on Twitter at: twitter.com/gah650

MARCH 1, 2012 · 0 Comments and 0 Reactions in Artist Marketing,Marketing & Promotion,The Industry

The Global Songwriter Shell Game: Why The Major Music Companies Are Getting Your Royalties

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:11:13 GMT

March 1, 2012

The Global Songwriter Shell Game: Why The Major Music Companies Are Getting Your Royalties

By Jeff Price

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 (maddening?) 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 theTuneCore 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.

Here’s a step-by-step description of how this occurs:

THE ONE NEEDED SONGWRITER RIGHT AND ITS ROYALTY RATE FOR DIGITAL DOWNLOAD SALES IN THE UNITED STATES

In the United States, for digital music services to include a song for download (meaning a recording of your song that either you or someone else recorded) it must have one license from the songwriter:

The Right of Reproduction

In the United States, the government created something called a “Compulsory” license for the right of Reproduction: If the government’s set of rules (laws) are followed, the license cannot be denied, it’s “Compulsory.”

The royalties paid for each Reproduction are called “Mechanical Royalties.”

The U.S. Government also sets the “Mechanical Royalty” rate—this is called the “Statutory Rate.” The current statutory rate for a download of a song in the United States is $0.091; a little less than a dime (unless the song is over five minutes in which case the rate is formula based).

As an example, you write a song called “My Song.” A recording of “My Song” is placed into a digital download music service and sells 100 times. The songwriter is owed 100 x $0.091 = $9.10.

THE TWO NEEDED SONGWRITER RIGHTS AND THEIR ROYALTY RATES FOR DIGITAL DOWNLOAD SALES OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES

Outside of the United States, for digital music services to include your song (your recording of it or someone else covering it) it must have two rights/licenses from the songwriter:

1. The Right of Public Performance (aka the right of “Communication”)

2. The Right of Reproduction

In addition to needing this one extra right (Public Performance) there is no “compulsory license.” In other words, the songwriter can deny licenses.

Also different from the U.S.; there is no government-set statutory royalty rate; the songwriter can negotiate and set any royalty rate he or she wants. However, the average royalty rate for mechanical royalties outside the U.S. tends to be 8% – 11% of the amount the song was sold for.

HOW THE SONGWRITER GETS PAID FOR DOWNLOADS IN THE UNITED STATES

In the U.S. it is customary for the record label, NOT the digital music service, to pay the songwriter the owed mechanical royalties for downloads.

As an example, Columbia Records sells 100 copies of a recording of a songwriter’s song via download in the United States. Columbia Records then pays the songwriter (or publisher) the mechanical royalties.

Assuming the record label accounts to the songwriter accurately, the songwriter gets his or her royalties.

(If you use TuneCore for distribution, the songwriter royalties are included in the money you receive from download sales.)

HOW THE SONGWRITER GETS PAID FOR DOWNLOADS OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES

When a song sells outside of the United States, the digital music service does NOT pay songwriter royalties to the record label to pay the songwriter. Instead, the digital music service directly pays the person or entity that controls the songwriter’s rights.

(If you use TuneCore for distribution, the songwriter royalties are NOT included in the money you receive from download sales outside of the U.S.)

Herein lies the problem: where is the songwriter’s money?!

The answer gets even more confusing depending on whether or not a songwriter is affiliated with a performance rights organization like BMI/ASCAP/SESAC and even then, the songwriter is not getting all of his/her royalties.

Here are three scenarios to explain it further.

Scenario One: You are NOT a member of any collection agency/performance rights organization anywhere in the world

In this case, the digital store must get the two licenses and make royalty payments to you directly.

Therefore, if you ever had a recording of your song sell via download outside of the U.S., and you did not issue the license and get paid, the digital music service owes you money and hasinfringed on your copyright.

If the digital music service claims they paid your money to a local “collection agency,” that agency does not represent you and has no right to issue licenses or collect money on your behalf. The digital service must get the licenses from and make payments to you.

Scenario Two: You are a member of one of the U.S. based performance rights organizations (ASCAP/BMI/SESAC)

This scenario has a long, confusing explanation, but it’s vital songwriters understand it.

Recall, there are two rights needed by the digital music services outside of the U.S.:

- Reproduction

- Public Performance

ASCAP/BMI/SESAC (and other performance rights organizations) only represent Public Performances; they do not represent the right of Reproduction.

Therefore, the digital store must still go to the songwriter (or the entity that represents the right of Reproduction like a “publisher”) and get the license for, and make payments directly to the songwriter/publisher that controls this right.

If the digital music service does not do this, it is violating copyright law and not paying songwriters/publisher all of their royalties.

This digital music service cannot claim that it paid the songwriter’s money to a local collection agency in another country as that local collection agency does not represent the songwriter’s right of Reproduction, only Public Performance.

To make matters worse, the foreign collection agency actually dips into the songwriter’s Public Performance money and takes more than it is allowed to and then gives others what’s left.

Let me provide an example:

You are a member of ASCAP, BMI or SESAC. These three organizations are in a relationship with other performance rights organizations around the world to collect and pass back and forth Public Performance royalties.

Your song sells via download in Japan (the same scenario plays out in just about every country).

The digital store pays the songwriter’s money to the local collection agency in Japan (called JASRAC) for the right of Public Performance. JASRAC has the right to issue licenses and collect money for the songwriter’s Public Performance as the right of Public Performance was passed to it by ASCAP/BMI/SESAC.

Now here’s where it gets really screwed up:

JASRAC arbitrarily splits the money paid by the digital store between mechanical royalties and Public Performance. For example, JASRAC decides 70% of the money it got paid by the digital music service for Public Performance goes to mechanical royalties and 30% of the money goes to Public Performance royalties.

There is no basis in copyright law for how the split is determined. The split differs from country to country and from collection agency to collection agency. It is based on who sits on the board of directors at each collection agency. If there are more publishers on the board, the split goes more toward mechanicals; if there are more songwriters, the split favors Public Performance.

Important: JASRAC does not represent the songwriter for Reproduction and has no right to split the money paid to it by the digital store. Nevertheless, the collection agencies ignore this (and apparently so do many digital music services).

For the mechanical royalties, JASRAC takes around 15% of the songwriter’s money as an “administration” fee despite not administering it (not to mention it had no right to the money in the first place).

Then, as the songwriter never joined JASRAC to get the mechanical royalties that JASRAC had no right to collect, JASRAC gives the songwriter’s money to Warner Bros., EMI, Sony, Universal and others based on each company’s market share in that country.

In other words, they give some portion of the songwriter’s money from Public Performance away to other entities. Eerily close to stealing the songwriter’s money…

What gets even more messed up is that even if the songwriter decided he/she wanted to become a member of JASRAC to get the money JASRAC had no right to collect, JASRAC has a few rules that make this impossible:

-       The songwriter has to have a business in Japan.

-       The songwriter cannot be a member of any other performance rights organization in the world.

So in a nutshell:

The digital store has not gotten the right to Reproduction and has never paid the songwriter the money he/she is owed.

-The collection agency has has taken the songwriter’s Public Performance royalties, split them into two, taken a % of the royalty it does not represent and then has made it impossible for the songwriter to get what’s left over.
-Other entities that have no right to the songwriter’s royalties knowingly take the royalties from the collection agencies.

From the portion of the money JASRAC was legally allowed to collect and arbitrarily assign to the Public Performance royalty, it takes somewhere between 15% – 25% of it as an administrative fee (it is not clear how much as they will not reveal the exact % they take from a particular source) and then about 6 – 12 months later, JASRAC passes it back to ASCAP/BMI/SESAC.

ASCAP/BMI/SESAC then takes an international administrative fee of around 3.7% of what’s given to them and then splits the Public Performance royalty in half, assigning 50% of the money to the songwriter and 50% of the money to the “publisher” (side note: there is no basis in copyright law for this, but it was done to protect songwriters in publishing deals).

ASCAP/BMI/SESAC then pays the songwriter 50% of the leftover Public Performance royalty 6 – 12 months after having gotten it (almost two years after it was generated) and the other 50% gets sent to the publisher; if the songwriter is both the songwriter and publisher, the songwriter receives both payments. If the songwriter is in a publishing deal, the publisher payment goes to the other entity that takes another 10% – 50%. This entity then sits on it for another 3 – 6 months before finally sending the remaining royalty back to the songwriter close to over three years after it was generated.

No one can follow exactly what is going on due to the complexity, lack of transparency and audit trail, and time delays. In the process songwriters’ royalties are either being taken from them or not paid to them in the first place.

It’s one hell of a global copyright shell game that funnels songwriter money into the pockets of everyone but the songwriter.

Scenario Three: You are a member of a non-U.S. based collection agency

Non U.S. collection agencies vary country to country. For example, in Japan, JASRAC represents both Public Performance and Reproduction (mechanical royalties) whereas in Canada, SOCAN represents Public Performances and CMRRA represents the right of Reproduction (mechanical royalties).

You can join one or both or neither.

If you join both in your own country, you will get some portion of your owed royalties from sales in your own county and other countries that allow for Public Performance royalties to be passed back and forth via bi-lateral agreements. You will also get your mechanical royalties from other countries if your collection agency is a member of the BIEM organization (allows for mechanical royalties to be passed back and forth, not all collection agencies are members).

Along the way these organizations will dip, double dip and in some cases triple dip into your money, provide little to no transparency as to royalty rates of their administrative fees, and pay out the money one to two years after it was earned with no audit trail. No one knows if it’s the right amount—songwriters are just grateful to get something. And in some rare cases, songwriters will never get their money as it appears organizations may have embezzled it.

The problem is that 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 world of digital. The old songwriter collection and administration industry is not motivated to change the system, as the existing system allows them to take/earn hundreds of millions of dollars from other people’s royalties.

In regards to the new emerging digital music services, they 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.

The complexity of copyright law, the total lack of transparency, and the inability to audit anything, creates a perfect storm for global copyright infringement. The end result: hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples’ money getting siphoned off and/or not paid to the millions of rightful copyright holders.

This has to stop, and it’s why we launched the TuneCore Songwriter Service.

What You Can Do

First, spread the word that artists are not getting paid all of their royalties.

Next, directly contact digital music services and ask them for proof that they have the required licenses and are making the required payments.

They may attempt to suggest you do not understand the issue. Make it simple, tell them you want to see proof that they have the licenses for both Public Performance and Reproduction. If they can’t provide them, they don’t have these rights.

If they can provide them, look at who granted them the rights. If the entity granting them the rights is not authorized to do so, tell them.

Post the responses you get, share the information, have other artists contact them and ask the same questions and publicly post replies.

By working together as a collective voice, you will be heard.

Artists deserve to get their royalties: it truly should not be this hard.

MARCH 1, 2012 · 9 Comments and 6 Reactions in Jeff's Postings,Music Publishing & Copyright,The Industry

repost of a year old article to check where we went to from there ; { The Loudness War is Over }

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 02:37:53 GMT

The Loudness War is Over

Feb 8, 2011 2:22 PM, By Greg Reierson

Making loud CDs will become just a bad memory.

Editor's note: Mastering engineer Greg Reierson, who owns and operates Rare Form Mastering in Minneapolis, submitted the following essay reflecting on the loudness wars of recent years and the future of music delivery to Mix magazine.

A Fletcher-Munson Loudness Curve

I was at the AES show in San Francisco last November and I came back with renewed hope for the future of the music industry—not just from a business perspective, but from a recording-quality perspective as well. Besides the usual discussions about gear and recording techniques, there was a lot of talk about high resolution digital downloads surpassing CDs as the dominant delivery format within the next few years. Optimism is growing as more and more engineers are seeing a way to finally get past the loudness war.

Wait, the loudness war is over? Well, there are still plenty of soldiers who still haven’t gotten the message but the wheels are in motion. It’s just a matter of time now.

Consider this: The current loudness war is a product of the CD format and the ability to play a song from CD “A” next to a song from CD “B”. Since the music industry has never adopted loudness standards (like the long established standards in film and broadcast) we’ve been left to fight it out for ourselves. No artist wants his or her music to sound quiet next to other music. It’s human nature. So just to make sure, we’ve made ’em loud—louder every year.

But here’s the thing: The future of music delivery is not the CD. Sure, the CD will be around for selling offstage and at gift shops, but the CD is on its way out as the dominant delivery format. How many young music buyers actually buy CDs? How many artists’ primary delivery format will be CDs when the recording school graduates of 2011 are in the prime of their careers 10 years from now?

File based delivery is the future. Whether it’s iTunes, Pandora, iPods or whatever, file based playback is how most people listen today and it will completely replace the CD in the very near future.

Okay, but how will this end the loudness war? Isn’t shuffle mode on my iPod about the same thing?

The solution is to find a way to automatically adjust the playback volume on a song-by-song (or album-by-album) basis. This can be accomplished by running an algorithm that determines the perceptual level of a given song or album and then digitally scaling the volume up or down to a standardized center. Many media players have crude implementations of this idea already in place. iTunes has Sound Check. Other players use Replay Gain, etc. While current implementation of these processes has room for improvement, more sophisticated software has been developed and the next generation of media players will be much better at it than they are today. These are not dumb processes that just apply a compressor or leveler. These are sophisticated algorithms that take a song’s (or a whole album’s) long-term dynamic attributes into account. With this sort of system in place, an early ’80s metal song, for example, will play back at the same perceived loudness as a metal song from this year. And more to the point: a crushed-for-the-sake-of-loudness mix will play back no louder than any other mix from a comparable genre in one’s library.

Think about that for a second. In fact, try it. Find a great sounding, un-crushed song of your choice. Something with punch and dynamics. You might have to go back a decade or two. Now find a modern, loud song of a similar genre. Put them both in your workstation and adjust the gain until each plays back at the same apparent loudness. What will you hear? You will hear that the dynamic song moves some air and has punch and excitement, while the loud mix has been robbed of its punch by the process that made it loud in the first place.

As more people start to use media players that are equipped with these new tools, and when they understand that a well-implemented solution has no compromises, over-compression and over-limiting purely for the sake of making loud CDs will become just a bad memory. Production techniques will serve the artistic needs of the music rather than sacrificing quality for the sake of loudness. This is how we will put an end to the loudness war and bring great sounding mixes back to every genre.

Besides lots of great albums from the last decade (and many re-masters in every genre) that have been run through the loudness mill, there will be two final casualties of this war. First are the software companies who are making a killing selling loudness in the form of a plug-in. Those products will soon be obsolete. Put your “maximizer,” “limiter” and “clipper” team to work on better things, such as algorithms that can better measure loudness for the next generation of media players.

The second casualty is the mixing or mastering engineer whose only real selling point (and sometimes only actual skill) is making songs louder. The jig is up! There’s just no value in that line of work any more. You’ll have to learn how to make songs sound better, which is not quite as easy as just making things louder.

The rest of the audio engineering and music listening world welcomes the end of the war. Now we can all get back to our regularly scheduled sessions, making great sounding music without that slap in the face at the end. Now recording and mixing engineers can focus on sound quality without having to push mixes past the point of reason. And now mastering engineers can focus on making those mixes sound their best out in the real world without having to unnecessarily limit and clip and crush, and [perform] all of the other compromises that have become part of the game. How’s that for retro, vintage, and old school?

Best of all, now the end listener can really hear music the way the artist hears it, with all of the punch and impact and much, much less of the distortion and processing artifacts that we’ve been living with for the past decade. This is awesome news if you love music!

There’s one more group that stands to gain big time: all of the young engineers who have not yet learned the bad habits of the past decade. They will begin their careers ahead of this new learning curve. Recording-school teachers are on the front lines. Let this be a tool to help their students understand that loudness is not really the reason we are all here. It’s the music. And the job just got a lot more fun!

There will still be people who want loud CDs, and that’s okay. Some styles of music really do sound best pushed to the limit. A good mastering engineer can make a loud CD from a great sounding dynamic mix. The good news is he will also be able to make a great sounding, dynamic master for any future format that comes along. There is no longer any valid reason to ruin a great sounding song for the sake of a dying format.

Now go out and spread the word. Tell your friends to experiment with Sound Check and Replay Gain and to watch for the new standards to take shape. Use these tools to help even the playing field for great sounding, dynamic mixes and our sonic universe will be a better place.

R.I.P. Loudness War. Pass it on.

Greg Reierson is the owner/chief engineer at Rare Form Mastering in Minneapolis. Visit him at www.rareformmastering.com.

pro Tools

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:49:19 GMT

What The RIAA Won't Tell You TuneCore's Response to the NY Times Op-Ed by RIAA CEO Cary H. Sherman

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 04:23:19 GMT

February 16, 2012

What The RIAA Won’t Tell You – TuneCore’s Response to the NY Times Op-Ed by RIAA CEO Cary H. Sherman

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By Jeff Price

It’s difficult for me to write a response to the CEO of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) Mr. Sherman’s NY Times Op-Ed piece “What Wikipedia Won’t Tell You” that is not emotional. What should be a black and white conversation about respecting copyright is mired in the fact that the RIAA’s credibility has eroded as quickly as its control of the music industry.

Or said another way, the RIAA has become part of the problem of protecting copyright due to its occasional less than honest approach to things. You just can’t take what the RIAA says at face value as their agenda is not clear—is it to protect copyright or is it to protect the interests of its label members at any cost?

After all, this is the same organization that had the RIAA employee Mitch Glazer attempt to sneak language into a bill on Capitol Hill changing the definition of “work for hire,” depriving artists of their rights (there’s a great article about this in the Austin Chronicle).

Now add to this that as the RIAA demands that its label members’ copyrights be respected and properly compensated, its members have knowingly taken hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples’ songwriter royalties over the past few years. Knowingly taking money generated from the copyrights of others—aka “Black Box Money”—sounds eerily like stealing.

The RIAA used to be the singular voice of the music industry but no longer. The majority of music being distributed, bought, sold, shared and streamed is coming from outside the traditional industry. Case in point, TuneCore distributes more music into digital music stores in one month than all the major labels do combined in 100 years. TuneCore artists have sold over 500,000,000 units of music in the last few years and generated over a quarter billion dollars. Now add in other music services like TuneCore from around the globe and the numbers get even higher. Over 70% of all new music being bought is from artists not tied into the old industry.

The RIAA and its members are the voice of what the industry was, and an ever-shrinking part of what is. Stop fighting it and find a way to work with it before you are the odd man out.

As the Deputy Director of Future Of Music Coalition Casey Rae Hunter said more eloquently than I ever could:

“Artists have every right to be wary when powerful entertainment conglomerates push for policies that could undermine free expression, all the while claiming to speak for creators.”

There is no argument that the person or entity that control the copyright (be it an artist or a label), and only the person or entity that controls it, should have the right to do with it what they want.

However, if the original SOPA and PIPA bills were passed years ago, TuneCore most likely would not have existed, and power would still be concentrated with the old regime; they would have found a way to slow the market shift away from them. In the guise of “protecting copyright” the original SOPA bill would have provided the RIAA unilateral and almost unchecked power to kill the new emerging industry.

All the RIAA would have had to do is claim that music distributed by TuneCore was infringing on its label members’ copyrights. With limited to no due process, TuneCore could have been shut down just like Dajaz1.

And I can assure you, from time to time TuneCore gets illegitimate and wrongful claims of infringement by the RIAA (and some of its label members).

(On a side note, we have also had run-ins with the RIAA in regards to matters unrelated to copyright. These have been less than pleasant as they used a variety of techniques to try to get TuneCore to do some things they wanted).

I would love for there to be a “voice” that we could all get behind to protect and represent all those who control copyright. Unfortunately, the institution that could have played this role is the one that destroyed its own credibility with rather questionable moral moves (side note, if you have to resort to slight of hand and half truths to maintain power, its too late).

So could you please at least own up to your agenda—maintaining the pre-existing power structure. Although we may disagree, we can at least have an honest conversation.

And with that said, I will now wait for the phone call from the RIAA threatening to sue TuneCore for posting this blog article.

-Jeff

FEBRUARY 16, 2012 · 32 Comments and 10 Reactions in Jeff's Postings,Music Publishing & Copyright,The Industry

The Era Of Silencing Voices Is Ending: A response to the RIAA's Cary Sherman's Editorial in Favor of

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 04:19:48 GMT

February 16, 2012

The Era Of Silencing Voices Is Ending: A response to the RIAA’s Cary Sherman’s Editorial in Favor of SOPA

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By George Howard
(follow George on Twitter)

In a recent editorial, Cary Sherman (Chief Executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents music labels) makes the argument that in order to stop SOPA, websites like Google and Wikipedia are presenting lies in order to advance an agenda:

The hyperbolic mistruths, presented on the home pages of some of the world’s most popular Web sites, amounted to an abuse of trust and a misuse of power. When Wikipedia and Google purport to be neutral sources of information, but then exploit their stature to present information that is not only not neutral but affirmatively incomplete and misleading, they are duping their users into accepting as truth what are merely self-serving political declarations.

It is deeply troubling to read comments from the head of the RIAA accusing others of attempting to use their positions in order to advance an agenda that maintains a status quo.

Those who fear and have the most to lose with respect to technological innovation are the ones who will cling hardest to the models that support their livelihood. The RIAA—with their historic, ongoing and insistent reluctance to embrace any type of technological innovation that they deem a threat to their business model—is the poster child for this type of behavior.

Mr. Sherman states, for instance, that policy makers:

…knew that music sales in the United States are less than half of what they were in 1999, when the file-sharing site Napster emerged, and that direct employment in the industry had fallen by more than half since then, to less than 10,000.

One can only surmise from this statement that Mr. Sherman desires to go back to 1999 when technological developments did not have such an impact on the industry he represents, as they do today. Of course, he doesn’t mention the VAST amount of jobs created because of these technological innovations. Nor does he mention, as my colleague and TuneCore Founder/CEO, Jeff Price did in his article on SOPA, that the RIAA’s calculation of music sales is far from accurate or comprehensively complete:

The problem is that the bills lobbied for were done so by the RIAA, the organization that no longer represents the music industry.   The majority of today’s music is being created, distributed, bought, streamed and shared from artists outside of the RIAA label member system. The RIAA and its members are no longer the voice of the industry; they are the voice of what was, and an ever-shrinking part of what is.

As Venture Capitalist (and noted music fan) Bijan Sabet recently pointed out on his blog, with respect to another entity trying to cling to an outmoded business model:

Now Hollywood wants the nuclear option. They want to turn off sites that they don’t like or because of a few rogue users. They don’t want to give a take down notice and live with the rules of the DMCA—they just want to erase the site from the web along with data from the vast majority of users that don’t infringe.

Mr. Sabet does a nice job of presenting a counter-argument to Mr. Sherman’s seeming point of view that rejecting SOPA is illegal (“We all share the goal of a safe and legal Internet”), by referencing the current governing law, the DMCA:

I’m over simplifying things greatly but the basic DMCA deal was the following

1. Users take responsibility for content they upload
2. Content owners notify website owners of infringing material
3. Website owners receive the notice, review the notice and then take down any infringing content.

That is how the web operates.

The DMCA is, of course, not an easily-understood document, however it is the dispositive document when it comes to governing this ever-evolving technological world we find ourselves in.

The proponents of SOPA (essentially the RIAA and the MPAA) want to change the laws. Fair enough. There is a process to do this. What they didn’t rely upon, and what Mr. Sherman apparently rails against (Would they have cast their clicks?” he asks — who is “they?”) is an ever-increasingly vocal constituent who — because of the very same technology that Mr. Sherman seems so opposed to — is now better connected, informed, and able to make his or her voice heard than ever before. It is very possible, therefore, that Mr. Sherman not only desires to go back in time to an era where the industry he seeks to protect had a monopoly on what records were made, distributed, and promoted, but also a time when it was far easier to get legislation like SOPA passed without the type of public outcry that he must deal with today. In both cases, unfortunately for Mr. Sherman and others, he can no longer silence the voices.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

George Howard is the former president of Rykodisc. He currently advises numerous entertainment and non-entertainment firms and individuals. Additionally, he is the Executive Editor of Artists House Music and is an Associate Professor of Music Business/Management at Berklee. He is most easily found on Twitter at: twitter.com/gah650

FEBRUARY 16, 2012 · 1 Comment and 7 Reactions in Music Publishing & Copyright,The Industry,Web/Tech

Like X, But With (Wh)Y

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:06:06 GMT

February 2, 2012

Like X, But With (Wh)Y

By George Howard
(follow George on Twitter)

To paraphrase the worth-reading business writer Guy Kawasaki, in order for a company to succeed they must be able to describe themselves in terms of “Like X, but with Y.” So, for instance, you might be a maker of less-expensive noise cancelling headphones, and describe your product as, “Like those Bose headphones, but cheaper.” Essentially, this is shorthand for describing your competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is as important to music ventures as it is to any other type of business. However, businesses that are deeply tied to artistic endeavors have an even greater need to express not just the differentiator in terms of others in the industry (the “Y”), but also the very reason or purpose for creating the work in the first place (the “Why”). This article examines both to show that artists who are able to understand both the “Y” and the “Why,” have a higher chance of creating sustainable careers on their own terms than those who don’t.

To create competitive advantage you really only have two choices:

1. Do something better/differently than others doing a similar thing.
2. Do something cheaper than those doing a similar thing.

Doing something cheaper than others is dangerous because there’s always the risk of being undercut. Additionally, a race-to-the-bottom in terms of price has a tendency to devalue the entire market. We need look no further than the industry we love (the record industry) to see an example of this. By continuously undercutting ourselves down to a point where the price expectation of most customers is either at or near zero, we have nowhere left to go with respect to price. Like Craigslist.com (who has an effective price of zero ~99% of all ads on the site) no one can any longer compete on price. This has led to the commoditization of music, and thus companies trying to create value from things like user experience with respect to accessing the commodity (music). For example, when choosing between Spotify, rdio, eMusic, Napster, Mog, etc., we’re no longer picking one over the other based on access to music (they all essentially have the same catalog), but rather, we opt for one over the other because of the features (i.e. UX): one will have a better mobile app, one will have better integration with Facebook, etc…

What this means for artists is that they must find a way to stand out in the market via some other mechanism than price. With the “competitive advantage” of price ruled out, now more than ever, you must do something different or better than your competition.

Now, as Shakespeare wrote, “comparisons are odorous,” and certainly saying that one person’s music is “better” than another’s is pretty much the definition of subjectivity. So, it’s really not about being “better,” but it is about being remarkable. When you pull that word apart, you see that the emphasis is on “remark.” When something is remarkable, people tell others about it. Importantly, people only tell others about anything if this thing either vastly exceeds their expectations or vastly falls short of expectations. Something that simply meets your expectations is not remarkable, and thus, you don’t tell anyone.

How you become remarkable—how you become like some other artist, but with the competitive advantage of “Y”—is on you. In a recent article, I attempted to give some pointers with respect to looking to artists who are a step or so ahead of you in terms of career trajectory, and studying both what they’re doing well and not so well, so that you can learn from them, and apply (not steal) their approach. You can take a similar approach to looking for artists you deem as remarkable, and trying to figure out what makes them so. Certainly, writing great songs, and performing them powerfully is at the root of it.

Equally certain however is that simply copying some remarkable artist is not the way to go. While we’d all like to be Tom Waits or the Pixies or Miles Davis or Rakim, these people are who they are precisely because they are sui generis. You will look foolish trying to imitate them. It doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them, and understand (and relate to) their values. While someone like PJ Harvey or the band Sparklehorse don’t directly rip off Tom Waits, you can tell that both (and many others) have been influenced by him. And the manifestations of these influences in these artists’ music does help fans better contextualize them. Remember, Like X, but with Y. Sparklehorse is/was, like Tom Waits, but with more of a psychedelic/indie rock approach. Shitty description, I know, but you get the idea (how’s this: Arcade Fire is like Bruce Springsteen, but with more of an indie rock bent??)

So, while it’s OK to be influenced by an artist (and even wear these influences on your sleeve), what will really make you stand out and succeed over time is not the “Y,” but the “Why.” This “Why” is your purpose, your meaning, your drive to create, your vision, and your internal mandate for expression. In other words, it’s the reason you make art: because you can’t not make art. This level of authenticity shines through. Those true artists, those who can’t not make art, have all the “Why” they need. In essence, those with this type of purpose—a “Why” of authenticity—have an equation that goes something like this: Like X, but “real” or “genuine” or “authentic,” etc… You can fill in any number of artists who fit this bill of authenticity; artists whose purpose (their “Why”) is made clear every time they open their mouth to sing.

As an artist or as someone who works on the business side (or both), it’s imperative that you consider both your “Y” and your “Why.” While comparisons are indeed odorous, in a world full of clutter, it’s important to help customers contextualize what you do. When an artist says, “We’re influenced by [insert more famous artist here],” what they’re really saying is that they’re like [artist], but with some difference. They do this to help potential fans more quickly understand what they’re all about. In marketing we call this a “schema.”

You need to be able to—both in your own mind, and for the benefit of fans—quantify your competitive advantage. More importantly, you must be certain that you have the requisite purpose or belief (the “Why”); you must know that your music must be heard.

Knowing this is 90% of the battle (this knowledge will sustain you through the inevitable hard times), the other 10% is being able to make it clear and easy for people to understand how you’re different (the “Y”).

Please understand that I’m not trying to put artistry or creation into some kind of formula. Nor am I saying that all music must be neatly and easily categorized as like some other, but with a difference. Rather, I’m suggesting that you consider both your motivation for your choice to make music, as well as how best to make this motivation clear to those who might be predisposed to appreciate your work.

Not having the proper motivation is ultimately fatal. Having the proper motivation, but not presenting it clearly will make the journey towards a sustainable artistic career on your own terms a much longer and more difficult one.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

George Howard is the former president of Rykodisc. He currently advises numerous entertainment and non-entertainment firms and individuals. Additionally, he is the Executive Editor of Artists House Music and is an Associate Professor of Music Business/Management at Berklee. He is most easily found on Twitter at: twitter.com/gah650

FEBRUARY 2, 2012 · 0 Comments and 0 Reactions in Artist Marketing,Marketing & Promotion,The Industry

The Rules All Digital Music Services Must Follow

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:00:44 GMT

February 2, 2012

The Rules All Digital Music Services Must Follow

In order for a digital music service like AmazonMP3 and others to allow a song to be downloaded, it must get two separate licenses and make two separate payments.

The licenses are:

-One from the person or entity that controls the recordings (like a record label)
-One from the person or entity that represents the rights of the songwriter

The two songwriter rights needed by digital music stores to be able to sell your music outside of the United States are:

1. The Right of Communication (aka Public Performance)

2. The Right of Reproduction

When a song sells in the United States, a digital music service like Amazon pays the songwriter money to the record label and then the record label pays the songwriter.

When a song sells outside of the United States, a digital music store must get the licenses and pay the person or entity directly that controls the songwriter rights. The digital music service does not pay the money to the record label to pay the songwriter.

Therefore, any royalties paid to you by TuneCore distribution for the sale of your music and songs outside of the United States do NOT include the additional money owed to the songwriter. The digital music services outside of the US must get the necessary licenses and make payments to the person or entity that controls these rights.

The digital music service must pay a separate royalty to the person or entity that wrote the song for each sale outside the United States.

If an artist is affiliated with a performing rights organization in the US like ASCAP or BMI, it is only for the right of Public Performance, not for Reproduction, which is just one of the two needed songwriter licenses.

The digital music service still needs to obtain the second license (the right of Reproduction), and make payments to the person or entity that controls that right for the songwriter.

Outside of the United States, the amount of the second royalty that typically gets paid to the songwriter for the download of a song via a digital music service is between 8 – 10% of the purchase price.

Some digital music services might try to get the licenses and make payments to a local, third party that does not represent all the rights (or any of the rights) of the songwriter.

These local collection agencies hold onto the songwriter’s money, take over 20% of it, and give the rest of it away to others companies like Warner Bros., Universal, EMI, Sony and others based on what % of the “market” they control.

In many cases, these local collection agencies never had the right to issue licenses and take the songwriter’s money in the first place.

It is not known if digital music services know this and turn a blind eye.

But what we do know is this: for songwriters, the digital music services must obtain the two licenses from songwriters, and make payments to them each time a song is downloaded from their stores.

If they do not have these licenses and are not making these royalty payments, they are violating copyright law and not paying artists the money they are owed.

More reading: Learn why your music is currently unavailable in AmazonMP3 in the EU and the UK

FEBRUARY 2, 2012 · 2 comments in Music Publishing & Copyright,The Industry

ARTICLES ON MUSIC | R&R WORLD

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:16:42 GMT

January 2012 was a significant time for all internet users. We were forced to recall what the Internet is about and why it is so valuable and important to us. Definitely it was not the reaction the creators of SOPA and PIPA expected. In return they got probably the most massive protest in the history of Internet. So, on the 20th of January Congress shelved both acts. Is it time to breath out a sigh of relief and get back to our routines? I'd say no, it is not.
"If they return, we must be ready" - says sopastrike.com. Honestly, it sounds to me like more proof that every revolution is more about emotions than common sense. If we were against SOPA and forced the government to postopne its approval then of course it means we are great folks, proactive, intelligent etc. However what's next? There's nothing good and smart in just sitting and guessing whether SOPA will be back or not. Having something cancelled is not a big deal, really. A big deal is to offer an alternative immediately, or ...

'Ciao Monday' by Emm Gryner - YouTube

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:03:04 GMT