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. and if you're not signed, there is *no* *way* to sell, other than individually, via the online sources that sell by the track.

What about CD Baby/iTunes?

Actually, that's not true. For covers, you pay money to the copyright holder and you can publish your songs commercially. For an in-depth (but not legal advice!) breakdown in plain English, I recommend CD Baby's How to Legally Sell Downloads of Cover Songs.

However, I'm not sure that it applies to video games:

This Compulsory License is only available for sales in the United States. Other uses of masters, such as streaming, conditional downloads, and the like, are not subject to a Compulsory License. A separate license from the publisher is needed in those cases.

$.10 per song? Boy do you have the wrong distribution company. With cdbaby, an artist gets $.60 per song, $6.50 per album.
http://cdbaby.net/dd-faq2

Here is a good analysis by a music lawyer of how the royalties get whittled down to zero. Here is a detailed article about how it works. Here is the detailed Courtney Love presentation. Some more information on how it works. Here is a report by the Recording Artists' Coalition.

You don't know what it means. All music in the USA falls under a compulsory license of some kind or another. That is a license system set up by law where you don't have to get individual permission for a work, but you have permission for all works if you follow the rules. Want to sell covered songs of someone else's work for profit? Then follow the steps outlined in http://cdbaby.net/dd-covers and you can. Yes, that's right, for an explicit fee that they don't get to negotiate, you can buy rights. It's essentially coded into law. Almost every country has it. It just happens that the broadcast rights in Russia include point-to-point Internet copies. And those rates are low. That the Russian law isn't what an American company would like doesn't matter. It is legal.

It is also 100% legal for an American in Russia to buy all they wanted under this fully licensed and legal process, and cary it back home in their cary on. However, one point that is not settled is whether an American can, while sitting in the USA, download a song. It is legal for the Russian to sell it and transfer it, but if the transaction happens in the US, then the US resident is breaking the law because the compulsory license they are going through only applies in Russia. However, if the point of sale is determined to be in Russia, then anyone in the US buying from those servers is 100% legal in all senses of the law, American, Russian, and international laws. It would take a Constitutional Amendment to change the US law because of current rulings on importing something to the US that was previously exported. But don't let the truth get in the way of your wife-rape fantasies.

Anyone who wants to can get their stuff on iTMS through CD Baby. http://cdbaby.net/dd-partners

I would forget CD Baby - just run the math for their own numbers - $65 million for 150,000 artists, works out to an average of $433 per artist. $35 intial fee + 9% of $433 ($38.97) really works out to 20%. Given that their figures are based on 9 years, its doubtful you'll even see your initial outlay the first year or two. Even worse if they keep $4/physical cd.

In other words, most of their sales are from people who signed up with them, then told other people "you can buy my stuff online -check it out." They could have made the same revenue selling it to those same people directly.

Checking the "important details page" confirms this:

The stores have to BUY it one-way from the distributor if they want to sell it. (This is IMPORTANT for you to understand!)

The distributor will not be accepting returns, which means stores will consider this a special-order item.

In other words : your fans won't just find it sitting in the bins at any of these stores. Your fan will have to talk to the person at the counter, and place a special-order for it.

Being available in a database won't make hundreds of stores order it. Usually the store will only order your CD from Super D if someone has already come into their store and paid for a special-order of your CD in advance. Unless you are doing a special promotion with a store to get them to buy a few copies then send your fans to that store to purchase it.

Keep at it - you might not find something that works, but if you don't continue to look, you dfinitely won't.

It's called covering a song. You do not need anyone's permission to cover their song, all you have to do is send them a notification and pay something like 9.1 cents per album sold.

I have no idea what statute this is covered under, but it's common knowledge to musicians.

Here is a page on CDBaby that discusses cover songs:

http://cdbaby.net/dd-covers

For live performances, musicians are not required to pay for the performance rights. This is the responsibility of the venue.

Start playing a new game. Make your own music.

Yes, by all means make your own music. Write music and share it with friends. Play music for friends. Let them play your music. You play theirs. Record it. Upload it. Make CD-R's and sell them here.

The record cartels want to control music. Don't let them have yours.

However, I am not sure that you can refuse to allow someone to cover your song in any case, there are compulsory licensing rights in some situations and you get a statutory payment.

If you record a cover version of a song, (meaning your performance of a song that has been released in the U.S. with consent of the copyright owner), you are entitled by law to release your recording commercially, and the owner of the copyright to the song cannot prevent you from doing so.

The Copyright Act provides for what is called a "Compulsory License" for downloads and CD sales, which means that if you follow the steps set forth by statute, you can distribute your recording of that song on a CD or over the internet. This Compulsory License is only available for sales in the United States. Other uses of masters, such as streaming, conditional downloads, and the like, are not subject to a Compulsory License. A separate license from the publisher is needed in those cases.

Remember the difference in profit margin for a band per unit between selling a CD through a label (say, 20 cents, AFTER the money's gone through Hollywood accounting procedures... delivered whenever) and selling one's own CDs (say, at least $5 per unit) ... somebody selling 10K records a year probably won't earn out the advance with a label, but someone selling 10K records direct to the public will be making $50K/year off record sales alone. Plus, if one sells on the Net through someone like CDbaby can sell digital tracks through iTunes and MusicPlay as well.

Going through a label is the musical equivalent of playing the lottery... if your record sells multiplatinum, you will make more than you probably could through your own efforts. If it doesn't, you owe the record label money, you STILL have to deliver the records contracted for even if the label isn't going to market them.

I think the successful pop-rock musicians of the future are going to tour and sell recorded music direct to the public into niche markets they do a good job of selling into, and in a few years, the idea of anyone selling a million-plus CDs (or whatever replaces the format) or even a million of the same track is going to be looked at with blank incomprehension by everyone other than music historians.

You know what the RIAA is really afraid of with iTunes? Any band dedicated enough can get their merchandise sold there without going through a major label. The cost of recording a running a short run of a CD can run in the neighborhood of one thousand dollars. Definitely in the price range of most bands, particularly ones that are already gigging out and probably have more than that invested in microphones and cables. Most bands that are ready to record probably have well more than a thousand dollars "invested" in drinks at that point. True, iTunes requires that you are signed, but simply signing up through a distributor such as CD Baby will allow the artists to keep a good chunk of the money through sales, as well as allow the artist to keep the rights to the songs. Keeping the rights to your music is very important, both in terms of Artistic Merit (very hard to quantify) and in terms of long term financial longevity. Artists who give all the rights to the labels might be rich for a little while. Artists who manage to retain the rights to their music have the opportunity to become wealthy. Why is it that someone who retains their ownership of the music can become wealthy while the others simply get rich (assuming similar sales figures?) When the record companies take over ownership of the music, that means that a couple people high up will become extremely wealthy, while the rest trickles down to shareholders etc. iTunes and other digital distribution channels (including peer to peer!) give artists an alternative to the "fat cats" and so even if artists do sign with a major label, they have a pretty decent bargaining chip and can hold off on signing everything away for a couple years of living the big life of a rockstar.

I feel like this is the same story as "CD sales are declining!" The whole time you've heard that in the news for the past 6 years, physical CD sales for small independent artists has shot WAY up.

It's like you were looking at one of those stock charts that compares two different companies' stocks. The big famous artists would be that stock whose value has fallen from $100/share to $70/share. But the independent (mostly unknown) artists are like a $1 stock that is now at $5. It's more newsworthy to talk about the big visible stock falling, but the real story down here is in the huge boost that the indies have gotten from improved distribution / availability.

Check out this visual / geographic metaphor, too.

Orrin Hatch, songwriter and Republican senator from Utah, seems to be the only person in Washington with a progressive view of copyright law.

That would be this article by Steve Albini, which lays it out in real numbers:
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

See also Courtney Love's speech on "The Real Pirates" at http://www.cdbaby.net/articles/courtney_love.html

A related article:
http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.h tml

Second, there are many instances of Compulsory Licenses, where the creator can NOT refuse your use of their work. If you write and record a song, I have a legal right to cover it and distribute it commercially provided I pay you royalties. You can not refuse me and you don't even get to set the price (although you are free to accept a lower price or waive the fees, etc).

Chevy may not have the right to use the original Radiohead recording, but they DO have the legal right to record a cover of the song and use that. They'll have to pay, but Radiohead CAN'T refuse.

The purpose of Copyright law is not to give artists control, it is to give them an incentive to create.

This has already been done with Real's Harmony.

With each successive iPod update, Apple can keep breaking Harmony. Sure, they can come back and "fix" it again, only for it to be broken again.

Besides which, anyone can sell or deliver content on Apple's iPod now:

- They can deliver it in any number of media formats without DRM (since DRM is so evil, right?)

- If they really want DRM, any music provider not currently affiliated with a major label can distribute on iTunes to iPod via services like this

So, if we're to believe the putative reasons that FairPlay has been "reverse-engineered", it is actually to specifically enable and further the usage of DRM.

Is this what the people who would applaud DVD Jon actually want? More DRM, and DRM that won't be guaranteed to work (in fact, will almost be guaranteed to NOT work) the next time an update comes out from the vendor, at that?

Well, not many labels directly, but CD Baby (the friendliest little record store on the internet (as well as one of the largest ones), selling only albums by independent artists), has a deal with iTunes (and a whole list of other online stores) for handling the submission to them for their artists. It costs $35 for a one-time setup fee (for distribution to all those other stores; I wouldn't be surprised if that's pretty much cost-price for the distribution), and then they take a 9% cut of whatever the online store pays. So 91% of the ~50-80% that the online store pays goes directly to the artist.

slashdot reported on it when the deal with iTunes started. If you want to know more, look up some of the posts made by Derek Sivers, who runs CD Baby and posts frequently here on slashdot.

now musicians are earning less than a dime.

And that's the fault of iTunes? Or is it the fault of the record companies who grabbed a cheap excuse to rob the artists further?

The real pirates are and always have been the record companies. The main reason they are so quick at finger pointing is that it serves to move attention away from themselves.

I assume you use CD Baby, since it says 91% in their Sell your CD section. It's a good deal. A friend's band uses them.

Of course, it's really only about 50% or so after Apple's cut, but still good.

CDBaby

I'm an Emusic subscriber and love them, but there are LOTS of legal services out there, these days, selling good ol' MP3s (or even FLAC/OGG) with no DRM

• audiolunchbox.com
• mp3tunes.com
• Many record labels like Magnatune and Bleep
• and the somewhat-legal allofmp3.com for the major-label stuff.

We keep a full list of them at cdbaby.net/dd-partners (in 10 languages!). Though that list is meant mainly for our musician clients, it's a good permalink for a constantly-updating list of digital music sellers, with a short description of each.

CDBaby has something similar to what you're looking for: http://cdbaby.net/dd

People pay for songs on iTunes because they want to feel like they are helping the artists (They're not BTW)

How do you figure? CDBaby pays out about 90% to their musicians (http://cdbaby.net/).

or they're scared enough to think that they actually might get caught for sharing music on p2p. People certainly don't use it for the "experience" or quality.

I use iTunes because it is convenient, legal, 128Kbit is good enough for me, and becaues musicians who have not screwwed themselves certainly do get money out of it.

I agree with you on radio play and booking large venues, but getting your music on iTunes seems to be relatively simple. The nice guys at CD Baby will take care of it for you- through their digital distrobution page. Not affiliated with CD Baby, just a fan of their service and of several bands discovered through them.

And what if an independent artist wanted to put their music on iTMS but didn't want any DRM. I wonder if Apple would go along with that or would Apple insist on DRM. Has anybody tried this? I'd be interested to know what Apple said. This would tell once and for all Apple's stance on the DRM issue.

I'm an artist, and have been doing a bit of looking around at possibly having some of my bands' material sold on iTunes through CDBaby http://cdbaby.net/ and to my knowledge, all iTunes content has DRM including independent artists' content.

Which is one of the biggest reasons why "looking at it" is as far as we've gotten.

Strat

Is anyone familiar with the terms for indie artists to get published on iTunes? Sounds like it could work pretty well given the low cost of distribution. Here comes the indie revolution... maybe. :)

I'm not sure how to do it through iTunes itself, but CD Baby will help you get your music on iTunes. More information is available here.

Except if they're on iTMS via cdbaby, in which case they get 91% of what cdbaby gets from Apple (don't remember how much that is, but IIRC Apple only takes about 10 cents per song or so).

If you look this "Partner Companies" page at cdbaby, you see that virtually all those services are paying them about the same amount per song, regardless of whether they're supposedly a flat or variable price service. Looks like they are happy to use the fixed price model when the "label" is interested in it.

I wonder if all the talk from the labels about iTMS "inevitably" going to variable pricint is really an attempt to defuse a move the other way, to fixed pricing at other services.

cdbaby.net/dd

This chart shows how much each of over 30 different paid music download outfits pay CD Baby, a digital music distributor for a number of indie labels. It's my understanding those services each pay all the labels and distributors who supply their tracks the same (so, for example, Apple pays 70 cents per individually downloaded track whether it's from some industry behemoth like Warner or BMI, or some tiny indie outfit). Note the prices paid by the download services to the wholesalers run from around 50 cents to 75 cents a track; note also that Apple already is near the high end of that range, at 70 cents a download. There's only one service that pays more than Apple, and only two others that pay as much as it does, and that's out of more than thirty different services. Apple's already paying more than almost any other player in music downloads, and they're the one selling more than all those others combined.

I have to say, I'm very impressed with the independent music scene in Australia. There's a great spirit of independence there, helped by Triple-J Radio, a gov't-sponsored nationwide radio that actually plays a lot of truly-independent local artists, QMusic - a gov't-sponsored non-profit to develop and help local musicians, AIR, the Association of Independent Record Labels, which is run by a few passionate punks in Brisbane.

(I'm SO impressed, in fact, that we're going to be setting up a CD Baby office in Australia in a couple months!)

Courtney Love told it best http://www.cdbaby.net/articles/courtney_love.html

"I know it would be contrary to their agreements with Apple Records, but if the music execs do go ahead with this, I think Apple should start selling music directly from the musicians rather than going through the labels."

iTunes already does this! Anybody can work with CDBaby. CDBaby takes only 9% of what they get from Apple, and gives the rest to the musican. The catch is, of course, that you must have the means to record, engineer and master your own tracks. Despite what folks say about Mac minis replacing million dollar studios, that's harder than it might sound.

The real trick making your favorite artists want to eschew the label route for the do-it-yourself method.

CDBaby already put a lot of their artists' catalog on iTunes...but there is some paperwork the artists need to fill out before they can do that. (i.e. assurring that the material is original, etc.) CDBaby even has its own ISRC identifier that it tacks on all the digital tracks that they sell. Check out their digital distribution info here: http://www.cdbaby.net/dd They also don't limit themselves to iTunes...and they take a 9% cut of whatever they get after fees. Not too shabby.

Magnatune goes direct...and lets the listener set the price per disc...which is an entirely different concept. Very cool indeed, but they're more selective about what goes up on their site. Plus, you can play the stuff before you buy it. Once it's bought...pick your distribution format.

Sure I can sell my music online, but oh yeah, I can't get on iTunes as [an] independent artist.

You haven't heard of CDBaby? They'll take 5 of our CDs to start, and then, provided we sell relatively well, they will get us listed on the iTunes Music Store under their agreement, with no obligation on our part. They take a very small (9%)cut. They have helped many indie bands get on iTunes.

Any independent label worth its salt will be able to give you some type of marketing push, and while it may not be the biggest marketing campaign in the history of music, it will probably be in the right magazines for your area and do some good for your band. Any musician who thinks they can just play music, without having some sense of the business end of things is not going to go very far.

It's really that simple. Independent artists need to realize the tools are here, now, and available to us. Places like Dmusic, myspace music, soundclick, last.fm, and iRate let us find great undiscovered music which usually leads to new bands to contact and perhaps play shows with when we come through their town.

Touring's also a large part of it, and unfortunately, most of us will have to fund our first few tours. This has to be done, using online tools only helps so much. A band that doesn't come to my city gets less of my money, because if I like them, I'm going to try to buy a shirt, CD or sticker from their own merch booth. I know they get the profits from that, and not necessarily from when I buy the CD at Tower or HMV, or even from the concert ticket proceeds. I want them to get my money, and being able to do this makes me feel like my cash is not going to waste.

As for me, I've done my research, and I'll be out pushing my band Tonmeister.
As an aside, what are some opinions on donation links on band sites? Tacky?

They have a digital distribution service that is quite appealing as well, you can still get your music into pay-for-download services for a cut of the profits, but you don't have to negotiate deals with a bunch of places yourself.

Depending on the musicians' needs, CDBaby may fit the bill. While more of a distributor than a publisher, they're one of the biggest online independents in the business and seem to have a pretty good rep.

I modded on this thread ... so anonymously, I had to point out that Indy bands can sign up with CDBaby to get on iTMS. I mean if you 'have' to have DRM, iTMS isn't holding you back.

http://cdbaby.net/dd

Since this will start with the AC penalty, I don't know if anyone will see it, but there you go. I think it pretty much undermines the GP's point about "evil Apple keeping indies off the iPods!"

Copyright has some very loose grey areas in the arena of performance. That's why college a capella groups get away with what they do. But performance is different from recording. The moment a group goes to record and or distribute, then things change and rights must be negotiated, even for interpreted covers.

This is completely incorrect. Performance royalties are covered through tracking by "the big three." Namely, ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC (it's complicated, but is well-explained here).

Covers are under mechincal royalty licenses, and cannot be controlled. Once a song has been published (which remains the writer's perogative), then a cover song can be made using the government-mandated royalty rate (currently it's, I believe, $.08 per copy for songs under five minutes, or $.0155 per minute per copy for song covers over five minutes, whichever is greater). Artists cannot, in fact, block covers of their songs for any reason. You can read more about making cover songs here.

The only way a cover could be blocked is if it's being translated into another medium (by that I mean synced to video, in which case the original artist must be compensated through a completely negotiable licensing agreement).

Really, the entire system is insane.

The itms is more varied when it comes to indie artists, but still not varied enough (how, for example, would I personally get my CD onto the itms if I made one?).

You can do it though CD Baby:
http://www.cdbaby.net/dd

I gotta admit that when we started doing digital distribution two years ago, I thought it would be just a small income stream for the musicians - some extra income, maybe $5k/month combined.

But our checks from Apple et al have been over $300,000 a month so far this year! And that's just for our catalog of mostly-unknown all-independent music. (And hey for the record, 91% of all that income goes directly to the musician.)

NOTE: a lot of this discovery of independent music is thanks to cover songs - another twist I never expected.

Yes us alpha-geeks here on Slashdot may get our music from allofmp3.com or SoulSeek or whatever, but there's definitely millions paying that 99-cents-per song, or $20/month subscription out there. I get to see the detailed sales reports every month.

(Personally, I'm so impressed with Yahoo Music Unlimited, that it's making me want to use Windows again!)

And how much is DIY going to cost up-front? How much more if one has to pay somebody else to set it up? And ... if nobody buys, the musician gets to eat the business loss.

Also, this is money a musician doesn't have to work for over and above uploading the track. No inventory hassles, no worries about bandwidth.

11 cents is also comparable to the 25 cent/album royalties which a band can expect for it's label.

I tell musicians to pick up on this via http://www.cdbaby.net/dd?f=1, they handle CD and digital distribution for musicians. IIRC, iTunes doesn't deal direct with non-RIAA labels.

BTW, CDBaby's numbers don't match yours, they's suggesting a musician is more likely to clear around 50 cents/track sale.

Signup for Garageband
www.garageband.com

Create CD at CafePress
www.cafepress.com

CD Baby Digital Distribution (get on iTunes!)
http://www.cdbaby.net/dd

DMUSIC
www.dmusic.com

Way off estimations...

iTunes, artists get 65 cents per download and minus a % if they go through a 3rd party like CD Baby (9%) and $6.50 - commission for an album sale.

That is of course, for independant musicians.

Really only the big guys are using DRM. There are lots of other smaller independent digital retailers selling music with no DRM at all. We send them the albums in FLAC, MP3, or OGG format.

Check out this list of companies that we distribute to. There's a link to each, and all of them have (or will have) the entire CD Baby Digital Distribution catalog of 30,000 albums (350,000 songs).

Really only the big guys are using DRM. There are lots of other smaller independent digital retailers selling music with no DRM at all. We send them the albums in FLAC, MP3, or OGG format.

Check out this list of companies that we distribute to. There's a link to each, and all of them have (or will have) the entire CD Baby Digital Distribution catalog of 30,000 albums (350,000 songs).

But then... digital distribution started last year with Apple iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, etc. All of these companies REQUIRED that the encoded file (AAC, WMA, etc) come from the master WAV file. Ack! Screwed! 9 months of ripping down the drain!

So... we finally realized what I was kicking myself for not realizing in the first place - and exactly what the story post mentions: hard drive storage is cheap. labor is expensive. rip the CD *once*, lossless, and NEVER have to rip it again. We wiped all our useless MP3 drives and started again: ripping all 78,000 CDs to FLAC format. Since it's a perfect digital copy of the master audio fles, and supports metadata tags, too, it's the perfect archiving format.

VERY easy to just script-up a bulk converter. http://perl.pattern.net/transcode is a great Perl solution. I posted my audio-converter scripts here, which include the use of SOX to make 30-second audio clips (since we needed that for work).

To all those here saying "MP3 is fine!" - you're being short sighted. In a few years there will be a newer better codec, and all your old MP3s will look as bad to your ears as your old 320x240 JPGs from 1995 look now. Go lossless. (FLAC, WAV, etc) - your future self will thank you.

probably doesn't apply for an uk'n..

but but here's a doc called "How to Legally Sell Downloads of Cover Songs" .

now being that most of these things are just cloned in other countries it might still be helpful for us outside usa.

iTMS doesn't generally deal with individuals because, well, there are just too many of them. If you're an Indie artist, you can sign up for iTMS via CD Baby (see link here), and if you're an Indie label a la Dischord, you can approach Apple and sign up directly without an intermediary.

As for browsing for non-RIAA music (if that's your thing), besides checking out the RIAA Radar, you can also start here. If anyone besides the Baby is doing those, replies are helpful.