Weekly Diaries
Job List
Our final goal is to release someone's music.
Faith’s jobs- will do the paperwork, for example, writing down the things that are said at the meetings and also researching what platforms do release on. She will also find out about other artists that releasing at the same time that we are. Also what labels that are around at the moment, and putting stuff on the website.
Morgan’s jobs- doing the posters and artwork for the website and the artists, work with faith in the website.
Elle’s jobs- taking charge of the audio stuff, such as doing the interviews with the artists and also doing the podcast. She will also do the social media posts.
Jen’s jobs- getting material off the artists. Talking to the artists if they are happy with what we are doing.
Week 2
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Things we need to research:
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We need to look up an example of people that are releasing music at the same time.
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Platforms we could use and where we could promote this.
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We need to add comments on how the research will affect our project.
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Lookup performance rights society.
Platforms we could release on:
Bandcamp:
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This review says that bandcamp provides the option to stream songs for free.
This is a revolutionary service it helps break down the barriers for self-released music across every genre of music.
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https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/08/where-to-share-the-costs-and-royalties-of-having-m.html - This was written in 2014
This also talks about Bandcamp and other platforms.
For the 10a month, an artist can upgrade to a Pro account.
The structure of the site allows for easy downloads as well as streaming. It also allows bands to name any price for a download.
It also allows bands to sell physical releases as well as merch, listed underneath the digital option.
They take 10% of all the merch sales and 15%of the downloads.
After a seller reaches to £5,000 in profit they cut it to 10%. It is all linked through paypal.
They have launched an artist-friendly business and design, making it a good choice for indie musicians.
There is only one real downside to it and that is no revenue generated from the album streams.
Not big on social media:
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Facebook - 297,525 people liked the page, 308,913 people follow this page.
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Instagram - 56.6K followers, the most-liked post has 3,139 likes on it.
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Twitter - 133K followers. Posts very regular.
PayPal also takes a small percentage.
Greater flexibility for design and artwork and on-page appearance.
Can embed players - (various formats) on other websites.
You can only upload.WAV or.AIFF file.
Good stats, even with the free version - details of where fits come from, sales, mailing list etc.
Soundcloud:
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Free accounts are only 2 hours of upload time. So to get anything out of it you have to pay.
Pro: 6 dollars a month or 55 dollars a year, it allows 4 hours worth of uploads.
Unlimited: 15 dollars a month or 135 dollars a year, unlimited uploads but are only allowed to add 30 hours of music each week.
Extend account: this allows for more downloads, analytic and lets a user spotlight five songs at the top of their profile.
Soundcloud does not have directly pay royalties for streams.
If you want to get paid you would have to partner up with non-profit sound exchanger and license your music.
This makes SoundCloud a tool for sharing instead of selling.
Limited on layout and design.
Good social media following:
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Facebook - 6,481,082 people liked their page, 6,590,911 follow them.
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Twitter - 2.4 million followers, they post very regularly.
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Instagram - 6984 followers, one post has 6,467 plays.
You can embed a player onto another platform.
Stats include likes, plays, messages, comments and downloads, basic information on listeners.
Youtube:
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In the UK, youtube does have a deal with the performance rights society, the video streaming company pays a lump sum for licensing, which is distributed among songwriters.
This means the popularity of the song makes little difference to the royalties.
The best bet for generating profit from youtube is by generating enough views to become a premium partner and earning money through advertising.
Youtube is very useful for sharing live performances.
Spotify:
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It does not directly cost to put music on Spotify, the service only uploads music from labels and distributors.
If you don’t have a label, then you’ll have to go through an artist aggregator.
Spotify does allow to put merch up for free on their profile, and no cut is taken from merch sales, however, only three items can be listed at a time.
iTunes:
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It has been a dominant distribution for the music - relying on downloads more than streams, also getting music on the program is fairly streamlined.
However, for smaller artists, the cost can sometimes trump the benefits.
Most artists need to use an aggregator to get their music posted, meaning that the payment plan with the aggregator will have to be used.
iTunes take about 30% of the money from sales.
This is a bit more costly than other services, the popularity of iTunes does make it appealing services.
Downloads from Itunes also easily go onto an iPod and other devices, which makes music readily accessible for fans.
Other options:
Rdio, beats music, Rhapsody, Napster and google play music, work on a similar modal to Spotify, but the latter 4 don’t have a freemium model, meaning royalty payments are typically higher. ( an accounting from an anonymous indie label shows that google play paying nine times what Spotify pays-even radio shows a significant per-stream increase from Spotify)
Deezer also works similarly to Spotify and is available in over 200 countries- just not us.
For our podcast we are going to put it out on different platforms :
https://bestcompany.com/streaming-music/company/mixcloud
From this website, We found out that:
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Mixcloud
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It allows users to upload, follow, and listen to radio shows, curated playlists, and podcasts, in addition to their own content.
It has a few notable users like Harvard Business School, TED Talks and most recently Barack Obama.
You can upload files of any size.
Mixcloud reported over 3 million active users and more than 500 thousand users registered through the Facebook application.
Services are free.
It is available all over the world.
Basic plan - free includes unlimited uploads, unlimited listing, basic profile customization, and basic statistics. users already enrolled in the basic plans are guaranteed perpetually free use of the service.
Premium plan - this is designed for the listeners. It costs $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year. This includes most features of the basic plan, in addition to early access to new features, a premium badge, no advertisements, and advanced profile customization.
Pro Plan - This is designed for uploaders. It includes most of the features of the premium plan, in addition to the pro badge, full statistics, scheduled uploading, and the ability to disable commenting, highlight the content, unlists certain content, and hide statistics.
They offer a 30 day trial for both premium and pro plans. When switching from a premium plan to a pro plan, Mixcloud will change the difference between the two, instead of the full pro price.
Users may followers certain stations, which then shows up on their feed.
This is only a streaming site, not a selling one.
Performing the right society
This information comes from:
https://www.prsformusic.com/what-we-do
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They pay royalties to their members when the member’s work is performed, broadcast, streamed, downloaded, reproduced, played in public or used in films and TV.
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They support their members by influencing policy, supporting and hosting awards and events, and investing in new technologies to ensure they are fit for the digital music age.
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They are committed to protecting the value of the music are ensuring their members are represented. It is why they are fighting music privacy and tackling the change that the digital has brought to the industry.
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They collect royalties through licensing agreements with music users. These licenses cover all kinds of music use, whether it for digital, broadcast of public performance.
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They work with the UK Government, Parlement, the European Commission, European Parliament and international bodies to influence public policy and legislation.
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PRS for Music is the home of the Performing Right Society (PRS) and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS). PRS collects when its members’ works are performed or communicated to the public. MCPS collects when its members’ work is copied.
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They collaborate closely with other organisations to create a supportive environment for music makers and an efficient network for licensing music.
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PRS pay members their performance royalties through four main distributions each year: in April,July, October and December. MCPS pays their mechanical royalties each month.
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They have been around for over 100 years, making sure that writers, composers and publishers are paid fairly for the use of their music. Its one reason that they are trusted by more than 135,000 music makers to manage their rights and royalty payments.
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PRS for music is home to the performing right society (PRS) and the mechanical-copyright protection society (MCPS), so you also have the option to join as a member of the of both or either one. The society that you join will depend on the royalties you’d like to earn.
Artists that are releasing the same type of music as us:
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My conclusion
As I was going through the research, I was looking at all the facts and I see there are positives and negatives about the different platforms. I think that the best platforms for this project would be either SoundCloud or Bandcamp because they will be the easiest to put music on, as there is such a short time frame. Spotify and Itunes would take time to put the music at this time.
