American Songwriter » BIZ

Buy Your Own Damn Music: Read An Excerpt From Hack Your Hit

American Songwriter — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:15:04 +0000

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The following is an excerpt from Jay Frank's Hack Your Hit: Free and Cheap Marketing Tips For Musicians, available January 31. Frank is also the author of Futurehit.DNA, and the Owner and CEO of DigSin, a music company which provides its subscribers with free music. Before creating DigSin, Frank served as the Senior Vice President of Music Strategy for CMT, and as the Vice President of Music Programming and Label Relations for Yahoo! Music.

Buying your own downloads is much like watching your own video. If you’re not going to do it, who else will? Granted, watching your own video is a little different, because doing that doesn’t cost you anything. You log on, go to the website address and watch. Not a penny spent. Downloads are another matter. If you’re going to buy your own music, it’s going to cost you a dollar.

Or does it? You have to remember that this is your music. Let’s assume that you’re not signed to a big record company, and you placed the music up for sale yourself. This means, of course, that you get paid for each download. When you buy a 99-cent download, 70 cents comes back to you, so that download only costs you 29 cents. You’ll spend 10 times that amount on a Starbucks coffee to wake yourself up before rehearsal.

But why should you buy your own music in the first place? One reason is logistical: it’s quality control. You may have done everything you were supposed to with your digital distributor to get your music uploaded into their system. You tested and listened to the song, and it all sounded fine. However, in a world where the distributor is dealing with thousands of songs weekly and each service ingests tens of thousands of songs, errors can and do occur. One way to confirm that your music made it in there correctly and in one piece is by buying and listening to it yourself.

So, what difference does that one copy make? In the purest sense, not much. Just as with watching a video, buying a copy of your song takes you only 0.0001% of the way to becoming Platinum. But here’s a startling fact: Now that most music is released independently, an overwhelming majority of titles fail to sell even 100 downloads. Looking at it another way, 100 copies will catapult you to the top percentile of independent musicians. So in a practical sense, one copy gets you 1% of your way there – a meaningful percentage. Sounds great, except ... people forget one thing. iTunes is, of course, not the only store that sells your music. In the US, you can also sell music on Amazon, Rhapsody, eMusic, Verizon, Nokia, Bandcamp, Music Unlimited and many more destinations. The Orchard aggregation service alone distributes music to 660 retail outlets in 75 countries!

Now, I wouldn’t expect you to go around the world and buy from each outlet. That might be good and ambitious, but I’m not sure that will accomplish much. Also, for those of you reading outside of the U.S., I’m focused on the American market mostly because I know it best. I can’t say for certain how much what I’m about to say applies to your market. For now, let’s just assume that you are buying from U.S.-based stores.

For most artists, despite demonstrating the ability to make something with online music, getting signed to a major record company is the ultimate goal. Labels study several metrics to ascertain whether or not an artist is having any significant impact. One of those is SoundScan, which combines all digital sales into one neat, easy-to-read format. If you want to impress record companies, your SoundScan tally needs to be of a decent size. Selling 100 copies on your own won’t get you signed. However, since so few artists achieve this goal, 100 copies at least puts you on their radar if your music comes across their desk.

With that in mind, if you buy your music from 10 outlets in the U.S., you’re now counted as 10 copies in SoundScan. That’s 10% towards that first goal, and the net cost to you is only three dollars. Sacrifice one latte for one day. If you’re in a band, get the other members to do it, too. Then, let’s say everyone gets their boyfriend or girlfriend to do the same. In a four-piece band, you’ve now sold 80 copies. Suddenly, that first 100-copy hurdle doesn’t seem so insurmountable. And this is before you start bugging your parents to do the same thing.

You can see how quickly this can add up. Spend 10 bucks now, get seven bucks back later, and improve the likelihood of showing up on record company radars. Even if you don’t right away, you’ll have a better story than most artists for a label to see once you do. Just give up the fancy coffee for a day.

Now, shall we go one level deeper? I think we shall! How about coordinating this effort so that everyone is buying your music on the same day? Perhaps the first day your music comes out. It’s naturally a dream for everyone to get on those iTunes sales charts. However, iTunes comprises a huge majority of digital sales, so even one of its sub-charts is likely out of your grasp until you get some real momentum. On the other hand, the other sites don’t get nearly as much traffic or sales. Most artists don’t realize that people actually buy music on a subscription site like Rhapsody. Yet a sale on Rhapsody generates the same money as one on iTunes and looks exactly the same to a record company as an iTunes or SoundScan sale. And it could be a whole lot easier to appear on these charts, especially the sub-genre ones.

The beauty about claiming a chart position is that you only have to do it once. Many times you’ll see an ad about the No. 1 movie in America. It may actually be No. 1 only for a week and then sink like a stone because the movie stinks. But they can never take away the fact that it was at one moment in time a No. 1 movie. Same thing with albums. I’ve seen many an album over the years debut at No. 1, only to plummet and be forgotten a month later. Those records may never sell much, but in a marketplace context, achieving that position is a key attribute that will attract attention.

My first book, Futurehit.DNA, is one I can honestly market as a No. 1 Songwriting book on Amazon. I doubt that it is still No. 1, as Amazon updates its stats every hour. So how long was I at the top? Even if it was for as little as an hour, it gives me at least one un-manipulated screen grab of dominance. For the record, I was No. 1 for longer than an hour, but not as long as a month. But does it matter?

Note that I didn’t go for the impossible. A niche book like Futurehit.DNA had essentially zero chance of being the biggest-selling book across all of Amazon, even for an hour. I didn’t bother chasing that. I focused on a relevant sub- genre that made a difference in my marketing efforts. No need to sell thousands of copies in a concentrated period of time to accomplish my goal. I didn’t even need hundreds.

This is how choosing your sub-genres when you distribute your music becomes important. You need to pick terms that accurately describe your music. But you should also be cognizant of the sub-genre chart where you want to look good. So choose descriptions that you can plan on promoting once you get a good position from coordinating your own internal sales efforts.

Focus the efforts of everyone on your team on these sites, and then start watching regularly for the chart positioning. Amazon tends to have the most impact, so refresh the site hourly and see what happens. Make sure you take a screen grab to document your chart position; you’ll want to promote that to your fans later on. The aura of a hit will make them feel excited about being a fan of an artist who is getting bigger by the day. It may also spur them to buy the song, as many people only feel comfortable purchasing what others have bought. Strange, I know, but true. That’s why so many people gravitate to sources such as the iTunes chart to decide to buy.

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t rank No. 1. Even on the sub-genre chart, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to get a No. 1-selling song, but that’s OK. In your development period, it’s good enough to say that you had a top 10 or top 20 release. Getting a screen grab showing you on a chart between two big-name artists is also worth its weight in gold. No matter where you peak on the chart, for however short a time, take that figure and spin it as positively as you can. Almost any story can be turned into a good one.

Finally, it’s best to buy your individual songs than your full album. Album sales are certainly nice, but right now you’re playing a quantity game. If you can buy three or four tracks on your album, that makes the overall number on the album look good. If you can achieve 100 sales of each track on your album, you’ve sold 1,000 downloads. If you bought 100 albums, you’ve sold 100 downloads. Which one sounds better? Not to mention cheaper!

Report: SoundExchange Doled Out $292 Million In Royalties In 2011

Carrie Acree — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:22:00 +0000

SoundExchange, a non-profit performance rights group that collects royalties from various hosts for streaming sound recordings, reported last quarter as their most successful yet. During the fourth quarter of 2011, more than 18,000 payments by satellite radio, Internet radio, and cable television music channels equaled out to a distribution of $89.5 million. As a record-breaking quarter for SoundExchange, this addition to the year-end royalty payment totaled $292 million. Not only is this a 17 percent increase from 2010, but this large improvement for SoundExchange is only one of many enhancements to the company made in this past year. In order to ensure continuous growth, SoundExchange hired new employees for its executive and technical teams and broke ground on a data and claims department. These additions were a perfect counter action to the registration of 15,300 new artists, labels, and copyright holders. Wanting to improve the royalties process as a whole, SoundExchange increased technical capabilities and established new agreements with foreign complements, while furthering existing relationships. President Michael Huppe assures continuous growth, stating, “We’re optimistic about the industry’s future, and about the tremendous value SoundExchange promises to deliver in the years to come.” To learn more, visit www.soundexchange.com

Getting Your Music Licensed: A Q&A with Sarah Gavigan

Riley Schilling Moore — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:33:52 +0000

Sarah Gavigan is a music licensing consultant who has placed thousands of indie and unsigned artists to television commercials over the course of her 20-year career. She has also worked as a talent agent, and taught music licensing at UCLA. Gavigan currently leads interactive music licensing workshops through her online educational community GetYourMusicLicensed.com. We caught up with her in Nashville recently. How did you get into music licensing? It was by accident. I spent the majority of my career in the commercial production world representing cinematographers – essentially, I was an agent. I ended up representing a collective of directors from Iceland that were also in a band signed to Warner Brothers called Gus Gus. And just from being around them, I found myself around a lot of other indie musicians, most directly at the 1999 Iceland Airway Conference. I started to look around and I saw that there was no one really representing independent record labels and artists to advertisers. I formed a company in 2000 to represent independent record labels and artists to advertisers. We did thousands of licenses and made millions of dollars for indie artists. It was a really exciting time, because it was right at the shift of the industry. Digital was coming in and things were changing rapidly. People had very polarizing views on music licensing. In some cases, I was looked down upon and in other cases I was revered for what I was doing. It was a pretty exciting time to be in the eye of the storm. What does a typical day of work look like for you? On average, I’ve got two or three projects going on. For me, a project is anything from a web film, or television commercial or a branding project – it could be a young fashion brand wants to get involved in music so I’m coming up with ideas for them on how to do that. Of the time I spend as a music supervisor, I would say half of that time I spend searching and organizing. So I get 500 some odd emails a week from major record labels, indie record labels and unsolicited emails coming in, saying, “Hey, listen to my music.” So from there starts a pretty in-depth cataloguing system that I work on with my interns and my assistants. We file through everything and we start to tag and catalogue it in our own system. So we’ll hear something and we may not find something that’s right for it right now, but we’ll put it into a playlist, so that when a job like that comes up, we’ll go to that playlist. So a lot of my time is spent organizing and listening and trying to make sure I have my finger on pulse with what’s going on. The other half of my time is spent managing and negotiating on paperwork. I think everyone thinks that music supervision is being a D.J. It is not being a D.J. It is so much more than choosing a song. It comes down to getting the deal done fairly. What makes a certain type of music more licensable? Are there certain genres that are more licensable? Or just specific songs? I think really it’s about the DNA of a song. I’ve attended a lot of songwriters’ workshops in the last couple years really to understand how musicians are learning to write songs, and if you think about how songs were written 50 years ago, they were written so simply. They weren’t complicated and it doesn’t mean music is any less for it. One thing I say to musicians that I work with, if you’re going to write lyrics for licensing, the less it means the more it works. That’s my mantra. We have to tell stories in 30 or 60 seconds. Even though it’s on the TV, we have to tell the story that quickly, so the music has to admit something that fast. We end up using instrumentals more often than not and that’s why. It seems like more artists have become interested in getting their music licensed. Have you noticed a big shift in this in the last few years? I’d say that the shift is seismic, and for a lot of reasons. The number one reason is that it’s the number one source of revenue in the music industry. The last time I checked it was 2009 that I started hearing that it was the number one source. Secondly, the advertising industry flipped out when the internet started to change things. “Oh my god, television's dead,” they said. No, television’s not dead, but what it’s done is it’s created more opportunity for content, and brands are taking advantage of that. What’s the best way for an independent band or artist –without a lot of contacts – to get placement in a television commercial? First, you need to watch a lot of television. It seems like a strange thing to say but you need to understand the marketplace. You need to understand what music is being used and you have to assess your own music or where it sits in that lineup, and then it becomes about diligent research. I’m a true believer that mass marketing is not only wrong but dangerous for artists in the music licensing world. We get pummeled with so many e-mails. The only ones that make it through that list are the ones that truly catch our attention, and a mass e-mail doesn’t do that. It’s not personal; it doesn’t speak to who I am. If you do a little bit of research on me, you understand that I generally use a specific kind of music over and over again. Music supervisors are around. We broadcast our work every day. So know something about that person. Do your homework before you contact them, and you’ll have a much greater chance of getting through.

Independent, Artist-Owned Labels Surge

Bobby Herb — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:05:10 +0000

Update (1/9/12): Bon Iver's Justin Vernon is launching his own label, Chigliak Records.

As the presence of major labels has begun to dwindle, a surge in independent, artist-owned labels and publishing houses has taken place to fill in the missing piece still needed to fulfill the many tasks and operations involved in releasing a record. Following suit with this trend is Brendan Benson – songwriter, producer, and co-founder of The Raconteurs – with the launch of his new Nashville-based record label and publishing company, ReadyMade. Having plenty of experience under his belt after multiple solo releases over the years and producing 5 albums in 2011 alone, Benson teamed up with manager Emily White to make the dream label he envisioned back in the 90s into a reality. In creating ReadyMade, Benson and White have focused on creating an outlet for well-tailored and creative releases. As White stated, “We wanted a way for Brendan to be able to create music when and how he wants and be able to put out the music sans any barriers. The answer to what we were looking for is Readymade.” With the 2012 slated releases of Benson’s new album What Kind of World, Young Hines’ Give Me My Change, and the Benson produced album from The Lost Brothers under the ReadyMade name, you can expect to hear a lot from ReadyMade in the coming months.

Benson isn’t the only one taking the DIY approach to releases these days though. Artists all over the world are following suit. But what is the point of a release if your music isn’t getting any attention? That’s where Jay Frank comes in. On February 1, 2012, Jay Frank –- music industry executive, blogger, and author –- will be releasing his newest book, Hack Your Hit: Free and Cheap Marketing Tips for Musicians in unison with the launch of his own record label, DigSin, which will be implementing all of the “hacks,” tips, and tricks outlined in the book to create buzz and attention around the label’s releases. With Hack Your Hit, readers can gain insight on ways to not only successfully market new music in the digital age, but to do it quickly and efficiently by utilizing online tools, maximizing social media, nurturing fans, and using other unique marketing techniques outlined throughout the book.

Also hopping aboard the DIY train in 2012 is Ben Kweller. Having spent the last 15 years working with various major labels as most artists of his stature have, the singer-songwriter has announced he will be releasing his latest album Go Fly A Kite on his Austin-based label, The Noise Company. Partnering with Alternative Distribution Alliance, Kweller is set to release his album on February 7.

"There's a lot of geeky stuff involved, but as a die-hard music junkie and record collector, these things get me excited!" says Kweller. "It's the real deal, not just an artist self-releasing his music. We have a real staff, real funding, real distribution, and I look forward to eventually helping other artists achieve their goals too."

A Chat With Twilight Music Supervisor Alexandra Patsavas

Evan Schlansky — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:15:22 +0000

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Ever wonder how to land a job in music supervision? We asked Alexandra Patsavas, whose worked on Mad Men, Grey's Anatomy, and the massively popular Twilight series, and also runs the indie rock label Chop Shop Records (Anya Marina, The Republic Tigers). Did you make a lot of mix tapes when you were younger? Indeed... for every occasion. I am still at it, now just professionally. Are you a musician yourself? Just a hobbyist. I sang in choirs and played a bit of piano and clarinet. How did you break into the music supervising business -- what were you doing before? I have been music supervising most of my career, initially as a coordinator at Concorde Films in 1995. Prior to that, I worked as a college promoter, specializing in alternative booking in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, an agent trainee and in the Film and Television department at BMI. How do people break in now - is it any different? Although a much more difficult field to get started in as A + R opportunities are on the wane, the actual “breaking in” remains the same -- interning/assisting at a music supervision company, network or studio. Do you have a mentor or someone you look up to the most in the music supervision business? I learned so much from the first music supervisor I worked for, Paul Di Franco. He was an incredibly generous boss. How much music listening do you in a typical month to scout for new songs? Quite a bit. I have always been extremely interested in unsigned indie artists and I am always on the lookout for Chop Shop Records as well. What are the qualities that makes a song appropriate for film or TV? An interesting lyric, a memorable vocal line –- the ability to tell/sell a moment with sounds. Have you experienced much Twilight mania first hand? Yes, I have been to quite a few of the pre-release events over the years, especially if soundtrack artists are involved. It is a privilege to work on a project with a positive and enthusiastic fan base. What were some of the trials and tribulations of putting the latest Twilight soundtrack together? Only the masses of excellent (and unreleased) submissions we get at the Chop Shop offices for each film. Scores of truly memorable tracks and only 15-20 places in the movie. It was really wonderful working with Bill Condon – I am eagerly awaiting Breaking Dawn 2. What have you learned from the success of Twilight over the years? We tend to select a mix of established and respected alternative artists and performers that are less known but always the song that is selected is the best to tell the story. I do believe that is why these OST’s connect so strongly with the audience. They are hearing the songs for the first time, certainly and often are experiencing the bands for the first time as they watch the film. Heady stuff. With synchronicity of music and film, such as The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon -- is it just coincidence, or cosmic coincidence? Coincidence helped by, certain um, mind expanders so to speak. What's next for you? Looking forward to films Breaking Dawn 2, Perks of Being A Wallflower and Fun Size as well as the TV I love working on.

Spotify Opens Platform To New Music Apps

Davis Inman — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:16:38 +0000

One argument against Spotify has been that while its playlist-driven approach is great for discovering new music from friends, it's not so great for learning more about said new music. In an Apple-style mystery press conference on Wednesday, Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek admitted, "We know that users want more information about the music they're listening to." Last week, Spotify announced that they had a "new direction," and there were a number of good guesses as to what it would be. Evolver.fm and AllThingsD both came to the conclusion that Spotify would introduce an API for developers to build apps outside of Spotify that would leverage its catalog. That would mean that things like music blogs or iPad apps could access Spotify's 15 million song catalog and integrate it into their products. But, as it turns out, it's the other way around. On Wednesday, Spotify became a platform for developers to build inside of, not outside of. Partners like Rolling Stone, Songkick, and The Guardian will have their own apps within the Spotify desktop product. These partners and others will be able to curate music and provide new information and features for users. The most obvious analogy to Spotify's new direction is Facebook, which also allows developers to create interesting apps within their platform. It will be interesting to see how many apps are developed inside of Spotify and how many new users it helps to attract. Apparently, anyone can build an app but it must be approved by Spotify. Spotify Platform beta is being previewed today and rolled out in December, with plans for mobile in the future (if things go well).

Google’s Two-Front Music Play

Davis Inman — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:04:38 +0000

On Wednesday, Google announced a revamped Google Music that features both a full music store and a distribution service for artists.

Let's take a moment to trace the recent evolution of the major digital music stores.

In May, Google first launched a music product, called Music Beta. Failing to negotiate licenses with record labels, Music Beta was a passive locker, allowing users to store and access their own music on Google's servers for free. In March, Amazon had previously launched a similar music product called Cloud Player.

In June, Apple announced their new music services, iCloud and iTunes Match, which let users store music in the cloud for a yearly fee of $24.99.

So now what's playing?

Rumors about a Google Music service have been going on for years, and they have always seemed to be fraught with problems.

When Music Beta did finally launch, there was no store component. Now Google has licensed 8 million songs, and users can store up to 20,000 more for free. That's $24.99 cheaper than paying Apple to store 25,000 songs. The Huffington Post has a nice graphic, comparing what you get on each of those services as well as Amazon.

Google Music also has a social component, where users can share one play per song with their friends on Google +, which sounds a lot like the recent Rdio and Spotify integrations on Facebook. Basically, it's another massive bet that music is the most social thing on the internet.

The Google Music store is run through the Android Market. Songs downloaded from the store can then be played on web browsers and mobile devices.

How do I sell my music on Google?

The really groundbreaking aspect of the new Google Music is an "Artist Hub."

In the past, artists had to go through a digital distributor like TuneCore in order to get their music on services like iTunes, Amazon, and streaming services like Rdio and Spotify. Now, musicians who do not have deals through a label or digital distributor can sell their music through Google for a one-time fee of $25 and a 70/30 profit share with Google.

Why didn't anyone else think of this? It's digital distribution and direct-to-fan, all in one.

For TuneCore's worldwide distribution (Google Music is only available in the U.S. right now), TuneCore does not take any of the money an artist earns from selling their music. Instead, they charge upfront fees: $49.99 a year for an album distribution and $9.99 a year to distribute a single or ringtone. With TuneCore, you'll get digital distribution to a lot more outlets. But, since Google has such an enormous reach, if their model catches on as a go-to destinations for fans to buy music, there will be a huge incentive for emerging artists to just sell directly through Google.

Direct-to-fan services like Topspin enable artists to set up their own store, plus sell other merch bundles and manage email campaigns and lists. Topspin offers more services, but Google Music is essentially another spin on the direct-to-fan business. You'll be selling your music directly to the fan in a way that you haven't been able to do yet with the other major music stores.

Also, if Google Music does become a major platform, it could effectively cut out the digital distributors like TuneCore and CD Baby. It's unclear whether TuneCore will be distributing their clients' music to Google's store. If you're already a TuneCore client, it might not be very attractive to have to shuck out an extra $25 a year just to get your songs on Google Music.

It's pretty exciting to see Google creating a music product that is really meaningful and brings a fresh insight into the space.

The Georgia Theatre: Rebuilt And Ready To Rock

Laurie Costarides — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:01:02 +0000

Almost exactly one year ago, music venue owner Wilmot Greene stood on a dirt floor between four charred brick walls that had once made up a musical icon. It had already been over a year since the Georgia Theatre had burnt down on June 19, 2009 in Athens, Georgia, but he was still fighting to revive it. After a fire gutted the 100-year-old building, Greene didn’t think he would be able to bring it back. “I didn’t think it would be possible to rebuild. I just knew the numbers probably wouldn’t work,” Greene said. The insurance money was only enough to pay off the debt owed on the building, leaving no money to rebuild. However, the community of Athens could not stand losing the icon that made it the music scene it is today. Since becoming a music venue in 1989, the building is considered home to acts such as R.E.M., the B-52's, Widespread Panic, Drive-By Truckers, and the Zac Brown Band. “People started announcing that they would donate and there was no way I could really stop them.” When donations began pouring in from fans and artists alike, Greene began to understand he had a responsibility to rebuild. “Zac Brown called and told me he was going to do this benefit show, but I couldn’t build it back and he basically wasn’t going to allow for it to not be built back. That’s what turned the tide. Once he announced that benefit show, I didn’t have an option to not rebuild. So really, Zac Brown deserves a lot of the credit for us building it back.” Greene said. On that note, Greene began the rebuilding effort. Benefit concerts were hosted at various venues in Athens and Atlanta. The music fans weren’t going to take “No” for an answer. Touting the Georgia Theatre logo and advertising the effort to “rebuild”, numerous concerts were held in honor of the lost music icon, with fans in attendance not only for a good time, but for a good cause. After two years of struggle, a premiere music venue stands where a local dive had once existed. The new building still possesses the “soul” of the original one, but has revamped its image by adding a rooftop bar and restaurant, as well as all new equipment and a more spacious layout. To reintroduce the venue to the community, the Georgia Theatre held a two-week reopening celebration kicking off on August 1st, featuring Drive By Truckers, Gillian Welch, Big Boi, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones as well as many others. The reopening served to prove that not only is the beloved venue back in action, but it is now an even greater destination for artists than before. Now, more than three months after opening night, the Georgia Theatre has shown no signs of slowing down. Within a month, the venue hosted Widespread Panic’s annual Tunes For Tots charity event, Yonder Mountain String Band, Railroad Earth, Keller Williams, Lucinda Williams, and Robert Earl Keen as some of its main headliners drawing crowds of all ages and varieties. For many acts, they are experiencing their first theater experience, but for others they are simply returning to a long-lost love. Though the venue has burst back into the music scene with a bang, Greene hopes the town continues to be supportive, as there is still a lot of work to be done to keep the theater afloat. “A lot of people didn’t believe we could do it, but we did. You can live in a small city and still see great music. I just hope the city will continue to support a venue like this. We’re doing what we love, but more importantly, we’re doing what other people love. That’s a really cool thing-- to make other people happy.”

Trent Reznor Endorses TuneCore’s New Songwriter Service

Riley Schilling Moore — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:55:40 +0000

TuneCore, the online music distributor for artists like Beck, Bjork, Aretha Franklin and Jay-Z is launching its Songwriter Publishing Administrative Service today. The new service will be an opportunity for writers to issue licenses, protect copyrights and songs, collect money and register their copyrights around the globe. CEO Jeff Price proudly remarks that “no longer will songwriters be shut out of a system. In addition to letting artists get their money in a direct and transparent manner our team is also getting the artists their earnings faster and matching up millions of uncollected dollars with their rightful owners.” Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is one of several hundred songwriters who have already signed up for the beta testing period of the service, registering his new project How To Destroy Angels. TuneCore believes the service will get these writers “more money in a shorter period of time.” Because the service works directly with digital music services, it eliminates the liaisons used by other services, thus allowing significant increase in songwriter’s earnings. Songwriters can join TuneCore for the one time fee of $49.99 and 10% of all money collected by TuneCore. At present, the service is available exclusively to artists using the TuneCore distribution service, but TuneCore aims to open the service to any rights holder very soon. For more information, visit http://pub.help.tunecore.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/180/ HOW IT WORKS: The TuneCore Songwriter Publishing Administration Service enables any songwriter to sign up for global publishing administration immediately. It will: 1. Register songwriter's songs with organizations that use and track their copyrights so they know they exist, what songs are theirs and what money belongs to them. 2. Issue any licenses needed and handle any requests for the use of a songwriter's songs in TV shows, movies, commercials and other media, and negotiate any licenses with TuneCore's in-house Film & Visual Media department to get them the best possible terms. 3. Represent the songwriter and aggressively pursue all of their songwriting earnings. 4. Get songwriter's existing "found" money back before it is given to someone else. 5. Police the world on the songwriter's behalf to find illegal usage or copyright violation and make it stop and/or get the songwriter paid.

Digital-Only Classical Label Takes On Rock And Roll

Davis Inman — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:19:13 +0000

X5 compilations have topped the iTunes classical music charts. Now they're taking on Sun Records catalog. X5 Music Group is a Stockholm-based music startup that is helping to rethink the way labels package and release albums digitally. X5 licenses classical music catalogs and creates attractively-priced digital albums that appeal to a younger demographic. X5's business model is so promising that it lured Scott Ambrose Reilly, a digital music executive with years of experience licensing music as the head of Amazon's MP3 Store, to lead their U.S. operations in a new New York office. Reilly says it's the "digital potential" that attracted him to join X5's team. "All the way back in 1995-96, when I was first doing digital promotions and downloads with bands, all the ways you thought [digital] might change the industry in the way that content was created - distribution changed - but a lot of the other things haven't really come to fruition." X5 was founded in 2003, and soon the founders started packaging content specifically for the digital marketplace, with a focus on the classical music genre. In May 2008, X5 released a compilation album entitled The 50 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music for $9.99 and the album has spent time at to the top of the iTunes classical music chart. Reilly says the reason he and other X5 executives believe the model has worked is because it's attracting new fans to classical music. "We don't think we sold a lot of classical music to a lot of classical fans," says Reilly. X5's three founders each had backgrounds as songwriters and producers in Sweden and had dabbled in the ringtone business. They decided early on that the new company's model would be exclusively digital. "As soon as they made that decision," says Reilly, "the future was all growth and innovation, which is exciting." One thing X5 hopes to help reshape is the music industry status quo around album releases. "The business model that we're still living under is the LP vinyl business model that got created at the end of the '60s," says Reilly. "An artist needs to not be married to that as the end-all-be-all of how people engage with their music." That means rethinking album lead times and street dates, and even the length of albums. Reilly says all of these things are still tied to physical world, instead of being packaged with digital-first in mind. But aren't even the most innovative artists still nostalgia buffs for the heyday of the music industry? When a fan bought their favorite group's new record at the local record shop and took it home? What about the days when you pulled the record out of the sleeve and gently dropped the needle on fresh vinyl, then sat down and rolled a joint on the LP sleeve and... just listened. "It's hard to know how it evolves," says Reilly about the business of releasing new music. "Is every Tuesday the structure that still makes sense? What artists should be thinking about is how do people listen to their music? You can't change that. Customers are going to buy their music the way they choose to. Your fans and the customer have to lead that discussion. The artists have to go to where the customers are already listening to music." Now X5 will try to apply their model to music outside the classical genre. They recently struck a deal with Nashville-based Sun Records, home to the early Sam Phillips Memphis rock and roll recordings of Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins. "Sun has done a good job of creating packages that service the Sun aficionados," says Reilly. "What we want to do is create albums that will appeal to people who know who Johnny Cash is but don't have any in their collection. Who maybe have never heard of Roscoe Gordon or only know Charlie Rich from his two mega hits that their parents used to listen to." As for branching out into new genres, Reilly, who was calling on potential clients in London when we spoke by Skype, says, "There's a lot to learn and there's a lot of opportunity." One side of the business that X5 has a clear grasp of is bringing classical music to new fans. In November, they will release a 24-track compilation called The Greatest Video Game Music, with the themes from "007: Blood Stone" and the popular app game "Angry Birds" performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. "We think we've brought a lot of young people into classical music. We're thinking: how do we take that even further?" asks Reilly. "Video games. There are great songs in video games."