Digital Distribution

David Matthew

In this thread it would be great to get feedback on people's shared experience with digital distribution; for example, how they fared with their chosen distributor (be it Cdbaby, Tunecore, Reverbnation etc).

I also wanted other musicians' opinions on the following website I found out about recently (a tip off at gearslutz sent me there): it's called Hotrhythms, and seems like a great idea. If it got more exposure, surely no musician could afford to ignore it (seeing as it costs nothing anyway...). Check it out, and if you come across any other interesting channels/methods of distro, please post it!

Thanks.

maccored

i have always found tunecore to be great. You do have to be able to sell product to make it worthwhile, but it does the whole digital distro thing quite well.

David Matthew

maccored wrote: »

i have always found tunecore to be great. You do have to be able to sell product to make it worthwhile, but it does the whole digital distro thing quite well.

I had been toying with Tunecore before I finally settled on Reverbnation - the free widgets and extensive statistics did it for me. Though I suppose because Reverbnation offer a lot more than distro, you could still use another channel for that, while keeping a Reverbnation account open.

miju

Am interested in peoples opinions on what attracts them to a digital dist website and what extra things they like.

I run Irelands only Digital Dist for indie Irish bands AFAIK and while we have widgets available and distribute to 600 stores we are aware of a need to greatly improve on certain things.

So keen eye kept on this thread

stevood

Downloadmusic.ie took 80% of our sales. Thats €270 from €350. Lesson learned.

Used tunecore also and they were good. Still to receive money but thats a 3 month waiting.

miju

stevood wrote: »

Downloadmusic.ie took 80% of our sales. Thats €270 from €350. Lesson learned.

Used tunecore also and they were good. Still to receive money but thats a 3 month waiting.

I'm gonna try stay neutral bearing in mind my interests have been declared above. 80% is complete and utter daylight robbery and exploitation of an artist especially bearing in mind it's a simple download store who also charge you to upload music in the first place, it's strange that people sign up for that kind of thing in the first place.

To put it in context iTunes takes about $0.30 from each sale with the rest going towards the artist. And before anyone cites economies of scale etc theres other Irish operators with similiar (and a bit cheaper) rates to iTunes

maccored

David Matthew wrote: »

I had been toying with Tunecore before I finally settled on Reverbnation - the free widgets and extensive statistics did it for me. Though I suppose because Reverbnation offer a lot more than distro, you could still use another channel for that, while keeping a Reverbnation account open.

I dont think the two are comparitable though I havent used reverbnations paid for service. I assume it would do much the same as tunecore. Otherwise though I find revernation a tad bit dead, badly designed back end and pretty sluggish which tunecore cant compete with as it only concentrates on digital sales via itunes, napster etc etc

miju wrote:

Am interested in peoples opinions on what attracts them to a digital dist website and what extra things they like.

Decent digital distro coverage to as many popular online stores as possible and the idea of web 2-ish type social sharing options to get music and video viral. Reverbnation kinda do this but their site is a bit of a nightmare if you ask me.

miju

maccored wrote: »

Decent digital distro coverage to as many popular online stores as possible and the idea of web 2-ish type social sharing options to get music and video viral. Reverbnation kinda do this but their site is a bit of a nightmare if you ask me.

Cheers for that, so your talking about maybe a flash player for Facebook and Myspace where you can sell tickets to gigs and your MP3's as well as the same on your own website.

Currently all sales figures from all sites are tracked through a control panel culmatively. Would a culmative summary be better or would you prefer to see a filter on one of these types of sites?

maccored

i sent you a bit of beta feedback a while ago - kinda covered what I'd been thinking - but yeah ... the whole widget idea where you can just copy some code and paste it into any site and the info is pulled directly off the main site. the revernation one is nice as it reflects any changes you make on the main reverb page.

David Matthew

miju wrote: »

Am interested in peoples opinions on what attracts them to a digital dist website and what extra things they like.

The most important thing for me is a set of widgets that essentially do a lot of the work for you. If you used Reverbnation's widgets as a model and tried to improve them, you'll be doing very well. Important thing for me is to integrate all the crucial aspects of an artist's profile into a streamlined interface that fans can click through, much like a 'mini' website.

A model widget should include: customization, music, video, pictures, bio, blog, links, store etc. And not take an age to load.

I think a crucial thing to keep in mind concerning the above is - offer the free widgets to entice artists. Don't have them activated only after distribution.

If you could compete with Reverbnation on the features side of things, I'd definitely consider switching over entirely.

downloadmusic

stevood wrote: »

Downloadmusic.ie took 80% of our sales. Thats €270 from €350. Lesson learned.

Used tunecore also and they were good. Still to receive money but thats a 3 month waiting.

downloadmusic.ie does not retain 80% of sales.

downloadmusic.ie allows artists sell music via SMS, in order that fans who do not have credit cards can buy music, and allows fans download tracks directly to their mobile phones.

From each €1 sale, downloadmusic.ie retains 4c.

The bulk of the sale (approx. 62c) is retained by the mobile phone company of the purchasing user. downloadmusic.ie has no control over this cost.

In addition, because Irish artists assign exclusive rights for their music to IMRO (which isn't the case in other jurisdictions) downloadmusic.ie is legally required to retain 8c of each sale to pay a royalty to IMRO. In theory, IMRO should pay this royalty to the artist at a later date.

downloadmusic.ie charges artists €1 per track to make their music available via SMS Payment and for Direct Full Track Download to mobile phones. This charge is only payable if sufficient sales revenues exists. It does not need to be paid upfront. No other distribution provider offers this service.

downloadmusic.ie also offers artists the opportunity to pre-release tracks whereby fans are sent an SMS reminder when the track becomes available. The cost of this SMS message is charged to the arists .

downloadmusic.ie pays artists on demand at a *maximum* time lag of 4 weeks.

If an artist is an IMRO member, chooses to pre-release their track and uploads multiple tracks, they will incur additional charges. All of these charges are discretionary.

miju

Quick question do you guys still keep 0.62 cent if an MP3 is purchased without a mobile phone and just payed for through a credit card and do you guys not pay IMRO a licensing fee per annum?

downloadmusic

miju wrote: »

Quick question do you guys still keep 0.62 cent if an MP3 is purchased without a mobile phone and just payed for through a credit card and do you guys not pay IMRO a licensing fee per annum?

All of the mobile phone companies retain different revenue shares, and PayPal charge 35c.

The amount we deduct is calculated on the mix of sales between the various mobile companies and PayPal. PayPal payments generally only account for 5% of sales of a track, so they don't have a big impact on the rate.

IMRO only offer a annual fee for certain types of business which have sales under a certain amount. We don't quality for this.

The IMRO situation is unique to Ireland, in that Irish artists are far less discerning in terms of the rights they assign to IMRO.

In the UK, we don't pay anything to the MCP-PRS, and pay the full amount to the artist. We can do this because UK artists only assign non-exclusive rights to MCP-PRS.

miju

downloadmusic wrote: »

All of the mobile phone companies retain different revenue shares, and PayPal charge 32c.

I thought paypal charged €0.10 including their % charge.

downloadmusic wrote: »

The IMRO situation is unique to Ireland, in that Irish artists are far less discerning in terms of the rights they assign to IMRO.

In this we most definitely agree artists in this country and way too blazé with the rights their assign away and it borders on wreckless at times.

downloadmusic wrote: »

IMRO only offer a annual fee for certain types of business which have sales under a certain amount. We don't quality for this.

I find this interesting from the time I was previously operating the largest indie site in Ireland which was twice as big as downloadmusic.ie's current statistics in terms of songs , purchases etc (and thats not me trying to be a smart arse / or trying one-up-manship I'm just using as a comparison I know about to aid discussion) our IMRO license was a set fee.

downloadmusic

miju wrote: »

I find this interesting from the time I was previously operating the largest indie site in Ireland which was twice as big as downloadmusic.ie's current statistics in terms of songs , purchases etc (and thats not me trying to be a smart arse / or trying one-up-manship I'm just using as a comparison I know about to aid discussion) our IMRO license was a set fee.

IMRO implemented a new JOL in January 2008.

PayPal Fees:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside&countries=EU

miju

downloadmusic wrote: »

IMRO implemented a new JOL in January 2008.

PayPal Fees:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside&countries=EU

I'm aware of the change in JOL and indeed the rates seemed to have stayed the same as previously which why I was curious as to why you guys aren't paying an annual fee to avoid 8% gross royalty fee but alas it's your website and I'm going to advise you on bringing cost down for yourselves so your artists can be getting a much better deal and return financially it may not be your main goal as I can appreciate it's a business.Also interesting Paypal charges you chose to quote as they aren't the norm for these types of sales they are usually €0.05 + 5% but if thats what you guys choose to charge for Paypal transactions then fairs fair.Look this thread is going off topic so downloadmusic can reply to my last post but after which I'd appreciate if it went back to more of the OP's original question after I hijacked it looking for some opinions.

downloadmusic

miju wrote: »

I'm aware of the change in JOL and indeed the rates seemed to have stayed the same as previously which why I was curious as to why you guys aren't paying an annual fee to avoid 8% gross royalty fee but alas it's your website and I'm going to advise you on bringing cost down for yourselves so your artists can be getting a much better deal and return financially it may not be your main goal as I can appreciate it's a business.Also interesting Paypal charges you chose to quote as they aren't the norm for these types of sales they are usually €0.05 + 5% but if thats what you guys choose to charge for Paypal transactions then fairs fair.Look this thread is going off topic so downloadmusic can reply to my last post but after which I'd appreciate if it went back to more of the OP's original question after I hijacked it looking for some opinions.

I've already stated that IMRO only allow you use a Limited JOL if your sales revenues are under a certain figure per year. We do not qualify for it.

http://www.imro.ie/content/limited-online-exploitation-licence

The licence we have to pay is this one.

http://www.imro.ie/content/joint-online-licence

If you believe that PayPal offers different rates than the ones I have referred to, please provide a link.

If you can't provide a link, I'd prefer if you stop implying that our costs are higher than they need to be.

miju

downloadmusic wrote: »

I've already stated that IMRO only allow you use a Limited JOL if your sales revenues are under a certain figure per year. We do not qualify for it.

http://www.imro.ie/content/limited-online-exploitation-licence

The licence we have to pay is this one.

http://www.imro.ie/content/joint-online-licence

If you believe that PayPal offers different rates than the ones I have referred to, please provide a link.

If you can't provide a link, I'd prefer if you stop implying that our costs are higher than they need to be.

Look I'm not starting a row I've not disagreed with you on the JOL or LOEL I was merely asking questions.

The links are there and freely available to Google so I'm not implying anything the fact is as I've stated Paypal charge significantly less than what your implying. Now like I said back on topic if you prefer conversation can be continued via PM

downloadmusic

miju wrote: »

Look I'm not starting a row I've not disagreed with you on the JOL or LOEL I was merely asking questions.

The links are there and freely available to Google so I'm not implying anything the fact is as I've stated Paypal charge significantly less than what your implying. Now like I said back on topic if you prefer conversation can be continued via PM

The PayPal charges are the charges I have provided a link to.

There are no other charges, as evidenced by your inability to provide a link to them.

My only interest in this thread is removing any misinformation that is being provided about our service.

miju

downloadmusic wrote: »

There are no other charges, as evidenced by your inability to provide a link to them.

LOL I'm not in the business of providing free advice to other businesses. But the information and charge rates are very easily found on the first page of Google.

To be frank in my opinion (and not boards) you've tried to appear open in your charges & rates but anyone with an idea of similiar charges will see otherwise indeed even IMRO confirmed for me today that the JOL rate for a site of your size is €0.06 not €0.08 as I suspected (and will gladly forward on email of same too).

I think it speaks volumes about downloadmusic.ie's attitude towards artists that you are more interested in trying to counter a valid point than trying to lower costs and give more cash to artists.

Thread locked as this is only going to continue.