Tunecore Review

TUNE CORE REVIEW:

Tune Core is a music distribution website for artists to get their work out to the masses and earn some cash. There is many other options so a critique of some of the differences between them all may be helpful. This entry is focused on Tunecore specifically. What exactly is Tunecore? Are they right for me as a producer? Why are they better then the other aggregates out there? These are some of the most common questions you may be asking yourself when you learn about music distribution. With the electronic scene growing more and more as a part of pop culture in America, this is a must have piece of knowledge for most artists that love to make music.

Why does this matter?

Winter Music Conference dates are popping up fast now! There is music to push if your hungry for growth as the rest of the industry! There is one week in a year that has 100’s of events each day for electronic music with great appeal! There are panels, seminars, workshops and many networking opportunities. Or you can just go for the pool parties, hotel events, beach and yacht parties and network that way! If you don’t now about WMC here is a link to more of an explanation. 

WMC - Sell your music here too!

So the money is coming soon with music distribution! Is your track on Itunes or amazon yet? Can you capitalize on this time of year as an artist and push your music at WMC? Make announcements during your set, have QR codes on your shirt, be the one who is more prepared! Some musicians have many goals and are looking for more then just the discount aggregate known as “Pump Audio”. Although it has lots of purpose to make some extra cash. Read about the perks of Pump in anearlier blog post. 

What is Tunecore?

Tunecore gets your music out there to places where people decide to buy music. Whether your signed or unsigned Tunecore can release your music if you want to make some cash. They keep track of your royalties when downloading and streaming take place and pay you the mechanical royalties as the writer. When you sign up fill in the song writer registration form, pay them, then put in your splits. If you wrote the whole thing it is 100% you. A split relates to how much of the song you own. The singer, lyric writer, other band members, etc. may change your decision on how to split the royalty. Once you realize the split it goes out around the world. Tunecore releases to Spotify, Amazon, Itunes, Deezer, and Myspace Music, just to name a few. They offer you weekly stats on your sales and show you what’s moving and what’s not. Keep in mind that reports show up 2 months after the actual sale is complete. Many customer reviews can be discarded based on the knowledge that they don’t have a tune being sold at all or simply have not found a way to promote properly. Tunecore isn’t making the music themselves… if your bad it doesn’t sell! They also have a Tunecore player if you plan to promote your music on Twitter or Facebook. Share your music with a YouTube video, build buzz, create a following, get likes, share links, be active and it will pay off!

How is Tunecore Different?

Some of the things can be done independently without Tunecore but will cost you a lot as an artist to register with publishing societies around the world. There are dues and fees and minimums to many networks that would be easier to simply join up with a service rather then build on your own from scratch (its costly and time consuming). They are also different because they have been more transparent then some other competitors. Tunecore will show you the ways to make money and want you to do the checking yourself. They state the obvious like how to promote your stuff! It’s not a game of hide and seek! They know what works and you follow the steps. You can also list with other distributors, $30 for two songs and get 100% of your music sales. There’s another option to pay $75 one time and list other songs at no charge as they keep a 10% of the publishing royalties on the music.

Tunecore REVIEWS

So the reviews are mixed and it would make sense to brush up on as many reviews as possible with a few review searches prior to purchasing. There is a decent amount of negative reviews on nearly all-aggregate distributors though. Not many like these companies and yet they are so helpful and lucrative for musicians! To save time I’ll let you know that Itunes has recently (June 2012) changed their review process according to Tunecore. There is a Tunecore message board, which you can check out on your own and see these updates for your own research. Without Tunecore Itunes is known to take anywhere up to 6 months to approve a song with no aggregate behind them. This is one of the perks of distributors like Tunecore or others with a reputation! As of June Itunes now decided to now review content manually prior to your release date. If there is no content issues it posts. Itunes suggests that it can now take 7-14 days to be approved with this process. Many negative reviews are specific to this topic, and Tunecore seems to be handling the issue to the best of their ability by educating their customers. They have little control over how Itunes does business and it is still much better then 'not using' an aggregate and taking 6 months (or possibly longer now) because you have no relationship with Itunes. Use the link provided to see details and make some judgments on the matter.

 

WMC Afternoon Delight 2013

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Winter Music Conference 2013

Afternoon Delight

Presented by Auburn Events, Dae, and D24K in association with media services NYC and Ocean Drive Sessions

8 Years of Award Winning Popsicle Sickle Licking Sun Soaked Bliss!

I’d like to highlight the Afternoon Delight Event coming up in March 2013 this year at winter music conference. What’s that? You haven’t heard of it?

You've guessed it, yup! They give away free pop-sickles at the event all day!  

It's an event you don't wanna miss! There's a lot of hype going on about the line up regardless and what will be coming up is constantly changing. The names in the line up are still on hold to be released. If you use Eventbrite you can learn what is available for the public. This event is still in the pre-sale stage but the publicity is high, and well worth looking into if your heading to WMC. It’s not on the official WMC List yet, so the info is for those who know to look for it and seek it out through places like Eventbrite. If you are not a frequent WMC goer, you may not know what I’m writing about in the slightest. So if you are interested in WMC, please seek out the earlier blog post titled “Winter Music Conference,” hopefully answering all your questions the topic. WMC is annual and is massive! Learn the basics on what the conference has to offer completely, where to go, when it started, the purpose, and of course the major difference to the event known as ULTRA (held at the same time). You can also Google the conference or just simply go to wintermusicconference.com for more information. Again Afternoon Delight is not on the official “The List” on the site yet.

The event, Afternoon Delight is an event that has been happening for 8 years now at WMC and going strong! Deep house has a strong cult like following and we know what we bring to the table, its our house. Afternoon Delight is in Miami during WMC and promoted heavily by Adam Auburn. Many are boasting Afternoon Delight and their heavy success each and every year at conference. Put it on your “To Do” list to network this year. For those that are interested in attending it usually sells out so remember Friday, March 22^nd 2013 and the line up is still being updated as I write this. This year it’s hosted at 960 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach at Ocean’s 10. If your planning on hitting conference, you can buy your tickets before the 31st of January and get an early bird special and save a little. March line ups are coming out quick at multiple venues (don’t rely on “The List”) and the pre-sales are filling up. There are many so keep your pen out and follow up on past successes to select where to be this year.

To inform those planning on attending the show, last years line up had some originators in the deep house scene step up and tear apart the dance floors. The line up last year was for Afternoon Delight was containing, Aaron Dae and DJ Dirty from Philadelphia, the originator Todd Terry, personal favorite moments from Claude Monet, Ron Carol, Andy Caldwell as well! How can you plan on missing this show? Every year it’s full of the network you should be uniting with and the people that know house music! If I haven’t swayed you maybe another post about some Dub Step is more up your ally.

Photo's from Last Year

Order TICKETS HERE

Promotional Support by: West Coast Soul Events, Lotus SF, BPMSession.com, Fusicology

Pump Audio Reveiw

Pump Audio Review

This blog outlines many angles and perspectives in the electronic dance music industry. If an artist needs cash and is just starting out there is always music aggregates. Pump Audio was highly recommended to me so I decided to review the site and look up what others are saying in regards.

What exactly is Pump Audio? Pump licenses your music through BMI, ASCAP and SEASAC and in turn networks you to a stream of others who will pay the royalties out for using the song. They are connecting you to film scores, television shows, commercials, and Internet syndicates to get you paid and help build your resume. The pump system creates a new market that hasn’t been around and creates new revenue opportunities. Pump claims to be owned by musicians who in return are to be for the musicians and their rights. They have the two main ways of getting the music out. One of the ways they do this is through a “Pump Box” which sits on many desktops. This box contains a catalog of numbers and those numbers are given to the song as industries exec's browse and purchase. Its indefinite licensing can be purchased cheap if you decide to grab something from the box. Another is the “Soundtrack Service” online. Recently launched in beta form it allows you to cycle through genre’s and track ID’s and listen and purchase like a store from small snippets.

So are you thinking about using Pump Audio? Now one thing to be known is you don’t’ want to advertise this to anyone. Why do I say this? It’s your music that goes out through Pump but they handle it in bulk with the license so it's sold for cheap. Your track is in a catalog under a Pump Audio ID number, that number is what they title your track when they re-license it. In some cases they make a name for it so people know what they are gonna hear, for instance “rave anthem” or “razor sharp tune”. It’s not the title they want, it’s the ability to find something for their commercial or tv show. Pumps clients want it cheap so we can’t complain, otherwise it wouldn’t get found.

As the writer should register the tune yourself through the same PRO’s such as BMI, ASCAP, and SEASAC. Those PRO’s pay you writer’s royalties at 100% for the original work. Also if you have no publishing company on file with the PRO Pump is a publishing company and will get paid those fees. If you decide to register as one then you save yourself the trouble. Pump does the bulk thing so you get 35%. It was a 50/50 split at one time but I suppose they have a industry name now and can charge a bit more. Actually the reason they did this is it’s no longer the original owners. Pump Audio recently was purchased by Getty Images for 47 million. Getty images is a photo stock licensing company which is a corporate giant. They have the new avenues to push the music with their network through NBC, MTV, BBC, etc and can now be pushing the music on a large scale.

Performance Royalties Owed may be on the smaller side as an artist with Pump Audio but I leave it up to you! It’s another stream of capital and if you wanted to look at what sells and what doesn’t it may be useful. Musicians often wish they had a way to get their music out to the world, now they have great way to do that! It’s a nice resume builder to have your song be on MTV or BBC, so we shouldn’t be complaining about the money when we are just starting off any how. 

http://www.themusicsnob.com/2008/10/06/pump-audios-retitle-publishing-music-licensing/

http://www.pumpaudio.com/artists/index.php

A Charity Event Needed Assistance

Until There's a Cure There's a Dog :

Recently I had the opportunity of being one of the producers for a respected charity event called, “Until there’s a cure, there’s a dog”. This event took place on Saturday September 18^th 2012 and was held at the Orlando Civic Center. RachelleTravaglini and I put a lot of energy into this event as reps from Full Sail. She is one of Full Sail’s career development specialists for the EBMS program and I am known for large events in Philadelphia. Together we made quite the team!

Artist Alife Talent Agency

Artist Agency Review:

This blog post is a review of Artist ALife talent agency and what they stand for in our contemporary underground music culture today. Artist Alife is a newer agency I stumbled upon that just so happens to represent some extremely talented musicians. Alife focuses on talent management and international artist marketing in the electronic music scene. They center their artist roster in the electronic genre but also have an Artist Alife Urban Unit known to bridge the gaps in other genres such as hip-hop. The philosophies of the electronic culture and the hip-hop culture looked extremely different years ago. But today they are more alike then ever as they fuse into one anthers sound classifications. There is a seamless transition in these sub-cultures recently growing in today’s pop culture. So many pop icons are making this sound grow as they use loops from electronic producers. Daft Punk’s Harder Better Faster Stronger came into hip hop and from then on I am hearing more and more get looped in! As artists today fuse these genres talent agencies can divert from market segmentation to a new transition of the two genres. For Artist Alife that change alone makes the abilities of hiring and connecting artists and artist managers more diverse. Who would have thought “techno” and “hip-hop” would unite in the music cultures? This 5 year-old agency has the right idea on taking control through promotional efforts and taking marketing concepts for top artists in the industry and using it to lift off the newer names on their roster.

Steve Angelo V.S. DJ Sneak

Steve Angelo V.S. DJ Sneak

House Music Beef With DJ Sneak Plays Out in Steve Angelo’s Set: REALLY??

Now this is a review on an article that was recently written in the Houston Press by Dennis Romero on June 9^th.  Also there is so much controversy over these comments made by Sneak on Twitter that there was an interview done to save face. A one on one follow up interview was made to clear it up both sides, but only Sneak complied to complete the interview. Angelo refused to answer the same questions Sneak took on under the publication BIG SHOT. So if you haven't heard about it and you are wondering what I'm talking about, there is apparently some controversy going down about two amazing producers DJ Sneak and Steve Angelo. Steve Angelo is one third of Swedish House Mafia and rather well known for his remix by Robin S. “Show me Love”.  Let’s also add that Swedish House Mafia and Steve Angelo for that matter are very well known in the commercial house genre. It’s a more trendy club sound that can be ranked in the David Guetta realm with big build ups and vocal progressive tones. If you are a fan of Guetta then I suppose you enjoy listening to them. Then we have a funky bumpy L.A. producer, DJ Sneak that calls their music "fake house music" over Twitter. Not the most professional statements to tweet on I agree, and not many enjoy such slander. I know if someone called my music fake I wouldn't be so inclined to follow their music. But it's still an opinion, so Sneak doesn’t think it’s real house music, and what is real house music to Sneak? So many define house differently, even the writer Dennis Romero apparently, by his article in the Houston Press. In his reference, Steve Angelo get’s wind and plays EDC 2012 and drops a track with a sample “tear the club up” and another tune, “f**k haters”. This is meant to be some type of response to DJ Sneaks remarks on Twitter and at the end of Steve Angelo’s set hands the decks over to Erick Morillo, a New York Progressive House Legend. Steve Angelo announces him as “the guy who taught him how to DJ in clubs”. So Romero explains what's a Puerto Rican DJ compared to a "Colombian DJ. Then the article ends with a big, “Game Over” for DJ Sneak.

So Dennis, the article is a nice twist on some of this drama regarding these amazing musicians, but where are you going with this? It’s drama that really has nothing to do with what’s real

How To Book A Venue

WAYS TO RESEARCH AN EVENT:

How to book a venue!

When booking a venue for your next gig there are several ways to go about it. If you know that your going to put a lot of time into promoting this night you may wish to view multiple venues to fit your style. Figure out exactly what you want, imagine your crowd in the venue, take note to where the sound is. What is the quality in speakers, where does most of the sound hit, look for a booth or stage where you can see what you need to make the show happen with the right equipment.