Tag Archive for 'Napster'

Tunecore: The DIY Solution for Digital Music Distribution

Tunecore. This gem of a company is quite frankly the only solution that DIY musicians will ever need for digital music (and video) distribution. Two of the most obvious reasons why: 1) Get 100% of the royalties and 2) Keep all your rights.

Not only is Tunecore the largest distributer in the world, touting artists like Nine Inch Nails, Jay-Z, Joan Jett, Aretha Franklin, and Public Enemy, but they are also the preferred partner for many of the top digital stores due to their speed, reliability, and low costs.

For artists there is no better deal because they keep every penny from every sale of their songs. And Tunecore sales are up in the neighborhood of $45 million so far. Now, that’s a lot of pennies.

On top of that, the process couldn’t be easier. Instead of submitting music to a ton of different places, Tunecore does all the work for you. They push your music to iTunes, AmazonMP3, eMusic, Rhapsody, Napster, Aimee Street, and others, give you access to Access to Interscope, Island Def Jam, Republic, Motown Records, and can even make your song available to buy and play on Rock Band. You also get physical on-demand distribution on Amazon, get paid for your streams on MySpace, and get a streaming music player with your music for your webpage. Merry freakin’ Christmas, people! If you ask nicely, they might come over and tuck you into bed at night too.

Ok, maybe they won’t show up at your door, but you can definitely always reach them. In addition to 24/7 access to your account (where you can add or remove stores, review iTunes sales trending reports, withdraw your money, view or download your accounting, create a streaming media player or get an iTunes store link on your artist page), there are also dedicated Artist Support Reps there to hold your hand throughout the process. Then again, Tunecore was founded on the philosophy of never taking advantage of an artist, so that shouldn’t be surprising. Their motto is “Sell Your Music, Not Your Soul.”

Tunecore should also be your new best friend because they’ve got friends in high places. Like, thanks to their partnership with Universal Music Group, they can help artists get their music licensed for TV, movies, and video games. Try doing that on your own. It’ll be tough. They’re also in cahoots with the folks at Guitar Center and House of Blues, which could bode well for your future.

As if all that weren’t enough, Tunecore also insists on hooking you up with freebies like free digital cover art, free CD artwork (for Amazon’s Disc on Demand store), free streaming music widgets, and even free bar codes, UPCs and TuneCore song identifiers (TCSI).

You’re probably wondering what the catch is by now. It all seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? They must charge like a zillion dollars, right? Nope. For $9.99, you can push your single to all 19 stores. And for $46.99 you can push your album (unlimited songs) to all 19 stores. Holy crapola that’s cheap. Another option – for the picky among you – is the “a la carte” album option that, for $59.58, let’s you select your songs and select your stores. By the way, signing up is free.

Another cool feature is the custom widget. Add your songs, band photo, tour dates, streams from Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. Be strategic and put the widget on your blog, website, Facebook, MySpace or wherever so that your fans can buy your music, see your videos, become a fan, and most importantly share your goodies with their friends.

If you do well with Tunecore, they will even grant you some super exclusive opportunities. For example: Sell 100 songs on iTunes within 30 days and get guaranteed gigs at The Roxy in LA or at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC. Or if you become a Tunecore Top 10 best seller, you can get your CD in over 200 Guitar Center stores next to U2, Jimi Hendrix, and other greats, plus guaranteed in-store music play. Not. Too. Shabby. They’ve always got crazy deals and promotions going. Check out the current ones.

So what are you waiting for? Don’t just make your hot sister stand there and sell your CDs at your next local show. And don’t be that creep following rockstars around LA hoping to slip one of them a demo. Just go to Tunecore, for Pete’s sake. They’ll welcome you with open arms and propel you and your music to a level you couldn’t reach on your own. Sign up for Tunecore today!

RIAA Screws Musicians!

In a news item that probably shouldn’t surprise us all that much given the recent history of the recording industry and their increasingly desperate attempts to control something that is spiraling quickly out of control, it turns out that the settlements the RIAA has collected from lawsuits with Napster and other file sharing communities have never made it to the artists. Over $400 million dollars, supposedly collected because the artists were losing revenue off of pirated material, has been horded or squandered by the powers that be. While we talk frequently about the diminishing rights of the artists, the new models of distribution and the idea that the record industry is changing rapidly, let us not forget that huge amounts of control still reside with the dinosaurs of the music industry who will do anything to make a buck, even if it’s robbing the exact same artists they claim their legal actions help. Thanks to the consumerist for the update

DRM War Update: QTrax

It should come as no surprise that people are still trying to get free music on the internet. Piracy and file swapping happens daily on massive levels that would probably turn a record executive green if they were fully aware of at least 50% of the volume. Luckily for the rest of the new and frontiersman-like recording industry, record executives are like mushrooms…they eat shit and grow in the dark, and in the end, you’re never sure which one is going to poison you or take you on a funky and psychedelic expedition. Similarly of good fortune for all of us…eating mushrooms isn’t mandatory or necessary anymore.

While the ultimate fate of DRM in general and player/company identified DRM specifically is still up in the air, there are a number of companies out there attempting to torpedo the industry by offering free mp3 downloads. Through deals with the major labels that tie-in to ad revenue generated by the site, these sites are offering songs, sometimes DRM protected, sometimes not. One of the big players that was geared to take the internet music download scene by storm this week was QTrax, a French based company that held a gala event this past weekend as a launch party. Apparently, they didn’t get the memo that the Warner group has not authorized the site to provide music from its label. Universal and EMI have also announced that they had no licensing deal ready yet and were still working on it. Not sure how a “free” music download site got to the point of throwing a launch party before it had wrapped up licensing and distribution sales with the major labels, but somehow they did. Guess it speaks to the necessity of having a solid business plan in place.

What I find more interesting is that not only is this site trying to provide music for free with the labels’ consent, but they’re allegedly trying to take a bite out of Apple, claiming that their music files will play on iPods. This would indeed be a big step as the only current music files that can play on the pod is either DRM-free or Apple FairPlay DRM tracks. How QTrax figures their DRM songs will make it onto the iPod is beyond me, but it will certainly be worth watching if and when the company starts allowing downloads.

No. I'm Not Going to Write About Radiohead.

Because everyone already has.

Plus, if you haven’t already heard about the band’s little social experiment, then you probably live in a cave. Or under a rock. Or under a rock IN a cave…Nothing against cavemen or flintstone types. You guys rock. (Pun totally intended.)

But, just in case you seriously don’t know what I’m talking about, click here or here. Or for NIN fans, here…They are almost as cool for being next in line.

Personally, I think this is the start of something big. And who better to lead the way than that obscure little quintet called Radiohead. The music industry is indeed evolving. This guy (who I stumbled across on Slashdot) seems to thinks so too. If your attention span is too short for his whole blog post, here are my favorite quotes:

“…they commenced suing Napster. We [Winamp] were naive to be sure, but we were genuinely surprised by the approach. Suing Napster without offering an alternative just seemed like a denial of fact. Napster didn’t invent the ability to do P2P, it was inherent in TCP/IP. It was like throwing Newton in jail for popularizing the concept of gravity.”

“Convenience wins, hubris loses.”

I don’t think any of us know where this whole consumer-name-the-price and divorce-your-record-label thing will lead, but I dig their audacity and forward thinkingness.

Ah, crap. I just wrote about Radiohead.