MOTUnation.com

nk_e wrote:I found it very informative. Thank you for taking the time!

daniel.sneed wrote:Thanx for sharing this extended experience.

Thanks for letting me know, good luck in your own ventures.

BKK-OZ wrote:Well, I hope my post was of some interest to you guys

Thank you BKK for taking the time to do your post. It's very helpful.

I'm turning Japanese!

It is over a year later, but your article is still one I will refer people to. I found it immensely clear and insightful, so thanks!

Terry

thanks so much BK! I intend major work with these sites and you've made it relatively easy!

mike e

I meant to thank you earlier for posting this, and thought that I had. It is very helpful.

I too do not expect or need to generate income from my own music, but I do want to make it easy for people to access, discover, and listen to, whether through indirect contact or because they know me.

I have been using DropBox, but many have complained about its limitations and have asked me to post on SoundCloud, but I've been nervous due to sound quality (worse than MP3 as I recall) as well as lack of control over packaging, liner notes, comments, photos or artwork, updates/remixes, downloads, and not knowing the legality of posting cover songs (for example).

I think BandCamp makes more sense for me, and one project I have been in has a presence on CD Baby, but as the requests that I keep getting from friends is specifically for SoundCloud, I am looking into that some more tonight, as I have almost eight album's worth of material ready to go (not final mixes/masters in most cases though).

I could have sworn that I'd heard of yet another new service that has come along since this posting, but can't think of it off-hand. All of the books on self-publishing are too old by now to talk about these options also, so I think we're stuck with the web as our sole source of information.

Oh wow, how sucky:

https://soundcloud.com/pro

Only three hours of upload time for the free account, six hours for the $7/month account, and $15/month for unlimited.

I'd have no choice but to go for the latter, but I suppose one could just limit what's posted there to a hodgepodge of highlights vs. being album-oriented, and use another site for full albums.

Bandcamp looks very artist-friendly, and it's free to sign up:

https://bandcamp.com/artists

Their policies last changed mid-2015, which is an eternity in today's world and gives me faith that one could depend on them for stable terms of engagement.

I don't feel like reading and analyzing their terms at the moment, as I am deep in creative mode, but the only major thing that hit me was the obvious clause about copyright infringement, so I am guessing they can't deal with royalties and permissions and you have to do that first via TAXI e.g.

So, to summarize, it looks like BandCamp is a good way to go for finished product, and a nice and flexible alternative to CD Baby as you can set inconsistent prices that make sense for the material and length (e.g. an Interlude shouldn't cost the same as a Song).

Whereas, SoundCloud might be a better place to put interim versions, covers that you haven't cleared yet (since you aren't charging, it shouldn't matter?), and singles and excerpts vs. albums and complete works (operas etc.).

mhschmieder wrote:So, to summarize, it looks like BandCamp is a good way to go for finished product, and a nice and flexible alternative to CD Baby as you can set inconsistent prices that make sense for the material and length (e.g. an Interlude shouldn't cost the same as a Song).

Whereas, SoundCloud might be a better place to put interim versions, covers that you haven't cleared yet (since you aren't charging, it shouldn't matter?), and singles and excerpts vs. albums and complete works (operas etc.).

SoundCloud has that nice easy-embedding feature that embeds a player automatically across many platforms and social media sites. So, very easy sharing. Also, people can download (if you permit that in your options) the same quality file as you uploaded, even WAV, etc. at any quality they allow.

One that had recently been brought to my attention via that post is https://www.reverbnation.com/ (no relation to this place!) I haven't done any more than to sign up, but there you are.

I think BandCamp is definitely one of the most artist-friendly outlets we have. Have to agree there. I've not been organized enough to make "albums" out of my collections yet, though!

If you have to copyright a bunch of tunes, use a "Collection Copyright" -- one fee covers as many pieces as you've included in the "Collection".

Terry

Terry, thanks for the info -- very useful!

I like albums because they give me the necessary focus to complete things -- otherwise I have 900+ compositions that languish for years in a mock-up state (or not) up to 90-95% "done".

When I was doing cues for videos, live theatre, jingles, etc., the one-off works had their own deadlines, so it was the same sort of self-imposed pressure and focus.

Just took a quick look at ReverbNation and they seem to be taking a similar approach to BandCamp, with perhaps more emphasis on pushing shows vs. recordings and albums.

If I can use Soundcloud to properly host liner notes and the like, where I can inform people of track order and concepts etc., and if I can find out how they deal with cover song copyrights, that will probably be my first stop, as I am not yet registered as a business, and only have precedent such as MySpace to claim my project name (which is also taken in Belorus as I recall, but that page went silent/unreachable about a year ago).

mhschmieder wrote:and if I can find out how they deal with cover song copyrights,

I don't know if it is still the one-stop cover-rights spot that it used to be, but the Harry Fox Agency (https://www.harryfox.com/) used to be where all that kind of rights stuff was handled by everyone I knew. They are a rights clearing house for people doing covers.

Terry

Yeah, I was getting TAXI and Harry Fox confused.

The Harry Fox site sends you to SongFile if your distribution needs are fairly low:

http://www.songfile.com

They have an FAQ's page that is quite helpful:

https://secure.harryfox.com/songfile/faq.jsp#faq14

It's going to take me awhile to go through all the details, but it looks like it's going to be too expensive to do cover songs unless I sell them, as it's a penny per stream or nine cents per physical distribution.

Well, better safe than sorry. I'll continue to use DropBox for my covers, for now, as I do NOT want to spends a lot of time on the business side at this moment as I have years worth of unfinished projects at work and at home that I really want to put a wrap on, without unnecessary distractions.

It's good to have the targets in mind though. I'll read about "fair use", and also about copyrights on original arrangements of prior work to see if that gives me some sort of partial "out".

It seems safe to go ahead with Soundcloud for my originals, at least. As long as I protect them first (one of the reasons I have stuck with DropBox so far, as I have text files in addition to audio files and include copyright information -- even though not officially registered -- for timestamp precedent).

That part was fast enough to review quickly; I would not be exempt under "fair use" clauses, and at least in the case of my Broadway send-up of AC/DC (which borrows motifs from "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Live and Let Die", amongst others) -- as they are partial anyway and meant to be used as a medley -- I would have to contact publishers for permission to do a derivative work.

Not sure if my banjo-based arrangement of the synth-pop hit "Popcorn" would fall under "derivative work" or simply be thought of as a different arrangement, as the main melody remains intact and complete. My klezmer arrangement of New Order's "Confusion" might require clearance though, as I go into a New Orleans fast-time bit in the second half.

And here I thought there was less work involved from the business side, with covers than originals, since the publisher and registration already exist.

mhschmieder wrote:It seems safe to go ahead with Soundcloud for my originals, at least. As long as I protect them first (one of the reasons I have stuck with DropBox so far, as I have text files in addition to audio files and include copyright information -- even though not officially registered -- for timestamp precedent).

Don't laugh at the HTML layout, but much of this article I wrote way, way back in 1995 still applies today (of course, the dollar amounts for physical royalties no longer apply...)

Music Business Primer (1995-97)

This used to be a pretty popular article gleaning thousands of hits a week back then (and continuing that way for years), and was included in two "Best of the Web" collections back then. There was not much info back then on the web yet!

I thought to share it because of what you said about your Dropbox version of the "Poor Man's Copyright". Basically -- they do not work.

Terry