TuneCorner

Universal Music Group, TuneCore and You by Jeff Price

Jeff Price is the Founder and CEO of TuneCore

Today, TuneCore announced a new partnership with Universal distribution and its record labels Interscope, Universal Republic, Island/DefJam, Motown, Geffen and more

So let me answer the big question right out the gate - no, we are not now owned by Universal.  This was a deal I did solely to provide artists more choices and options, the details of which you can read below.

In a nutshell, in addition to regular old TuneCore.com, we will also be hosting and serving websites for Universal labels that provide artists distribution while taking none of the artists rights or revenues.  At these label portal sites, you not only get distribution but also extra things from each label.  We do not yet know what the "extra things" are as each label will be creating their own.  These extra things could be musician services, marketing, promotion, information, opportunities etc.

The costs at these site will be the exact same as the costs at TuneCore.com and TuneCore will provide all the Artist Support as it does now.

However, this we do know now, if you choose to get your distribution via one of the label portal sites (as opposed to TuneCore.com), not only do you get the extra things, but you will have a direct line into that label.  This means the label will probably be aware of you, have heard your music, be up to speed on the success you are having, etc.  The label can reach out to you to offer more marketing, promotion, physical distribution and anything else.  If they do, you can choose to talk with them, tell them no, tell them yes, tell them you will get back to them or simply decide to continue to do what you had been doing to that point in time,

There are no extra strings.

The reason we did this deal is provide you more choices and options to pursue your passion and goals.

Some of you may want the direct in and a pre-existing relationship with a label, others will not.  Some of you may not yet know what is best but would prefer not to say no to an option you don't have.  This relationship with Universal was created to allow you to choose what you want.

In addition, Guitar Center (who get a lot of credit for helping us develop and grow TuneCore over the past three years) has allowed us to place TuneCore Artists CDs into Guitar Center stores sitting right next to CDs from Universal artists like Guns n Roses, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc.

The details on this are also being sort through right now.  I'll make sure to blog and email them out as soon as we lock it down.

As I stated many times before, its our goal to provide you with as much information and as many opportunities as possible.  And I have to say, this relationship excites the hell out of me!!

Expect the first label portal sites to go live in October.  More to come as we figure it out..... the full press release can be found here: http://www.shorefire.com/index.php?a=pressrelease&o=3131

In the mean time, keep changing the world!

Making Your Release Unique by Jake Smith

Jake Smith is a TuneCore Customer Support Representative and editor of the weekly newsletter

A few months ago, I wrote an article called "Marketing Outside The Box", in which I discussed artists (most of whom had been on a major label at one point) who had come up with a unique way of making their content available.  Radiohead gave away "In Rainbows" on their website and allowed fans to pay whatever they thought was a worthy price.  Jill Sobule let fans contribute money before recording her album in exchange for prizes of different tiers (the lowest tier guaranteed a copy of her CD when available and a higher tier earned fans a private house concert).  Of course in discussing "outside the box" techniques, we had to mention Nine Inch Nails:

"Nine Inch Nails (with some help from TuneCore) offered their album Ghosts I-IV in a number of different formats, including 9 free tracks on BitTorrent sites, all 36 tracks on Amazon, and then multiple physical packages including a limited pressing $300 deluxe version."

Now, I would agree that the above ideas are all fun, buzz-worthy, groundbreaking, etc., however Jill Sobule, Radiohead and Trent Reznor were already well known artists before they made such creative leaps from said box.  If I, Jake Smith, have an upcoming release will anybody (aside from my mother - God bless her soul) be willing to pay $300 for a deluxe version of my album? No.

Trent Reznor wrote a post on the NIN forum today which addresses this exact issue.  You can read his full article here.  Highlights include:

• Set your goals: Do you want to be a megastar and share the rights to all your content with a major label, or do you want to forge your own way?
• "Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY", as your goal should be to reach as many new fans as possible.
• Sell your physical product on Amazon
• My personal favorite, "Use TuneCore to get your music everywhere".
• Follow the lead of the Beastie Boys and make your content available in as many formats as your fans could possibly want it.

Should we take this quickie post from Trent Reznor as gospel?  Definitely not, I know plenty of TuneCore users who have done great without giving their songs away (unless you consider MySpace streams giving the music away) and who sell only digital files without a physical component.  However, with so many artists fighting for attention, it can't hurt to spend some time thinking about how to make your releases unique.  I often think of two examples:

One was from an artist named Peter Mulvey who rode his bike to every gig instead of driving as a way to raise environmental awareness.  He filmed a short video about the experience and got some good press as a result.  The other was from a cool group I saw play in Asheville, NC called 'Hope For Agoldensummer' who constructed their own fabric covered, hand-bound, screen printed limited edition CD for sale on their website.  Because these artists demonstrated a passion beyond simply songwriting and recording, I felt more connected to what they had to offer musically.

What are your guys' thoughts?  Do you agree with Trent that the only way to become "Lady GaGa/U2" famous is to sign with a major label, or will artists eventually be able to reach those heights on their own? Do you think you should provide music for free as a way of reaching a larger audience, in addition to making it available for sale?  As a new or developing artist, what ideas can you think of to make your release more noteworthy?  Let me know!

TuneCore, Drake, and Charts by Jeff Price

Jeff Price is the Founder and CEO of TuneCore

A TuneCore Artist named Drake used TuneCore to distribute his music about 14 days ago.  Since then, he has sold over 300,000 copies of his single  “Best I Ever Had”.
 
As far as I can tell, Drake is the best selling unsigned artist of all time.  Congratulations Drake! (In an ironic twist, Drake did a deal with Universal about 10 days after he used TuneCore to distribute his music).
 
This also goes to show how confused things are out there in the world. “Unsigned” artists selling more songs than signed artists is becoming more of the rule than the exception.  Artists selling less music are making more money then signed artists.  Many Artists, using social networking sites, a video uploaded to YouTube and their Facebook page, are becoming more popular then artists getting hundreds of thousands of marketing dollars put behind them.  Without playing a single gig, some bands are selling more music than bands that have been touring for months.

 

 
Media outlets, newspapers like the New York Times, aren’t even sure how to talk about what is going on.  The best selling Music Downloads chart in the Monday, June 29th New York Times Business Section shows Drake charting at #4 (between Sean Kingston and Lady Gaga) and mistakenly lists TuneCore as the record label.  TuneCore is such a new/unique concept that they don’t know how to even refer to us.  But that’s the point, things are changing so rapidly that the traditional tried and true charts are now wrong and there is uncertainty as to what the chart represents.

 

 
Take for example the TuneCore Artist Nevershoutnever.  When he was still “unsigned” (he is now signed to Warner) he sold hundreds of thousands of songs in a 45 day period off of a collection of EPs /demos and, in a six month period, over 30,000 t-shirts through the regional Hot Topic program.  By my calculation, based on the number of songs he sold across his releases, he is outselling many of the Billboard Top 40 artists.  So what is it the Billboard charts now represent?  They certainly do not represent fame as there are a LOT of very famous bands that sell out huge gigs but sell very few albums. It does not represent wealth as artists can make money in a multitude of ways; from endorsement deals to gig income, merch sales, etc.  It does not represent the best sellers as music fans buy songs from an artist across a swatch of releases as opposed to just one group of songs from one album.
 
So what does the Billboard chart represent?  And what criteria should be put together to create new charts that reflect more of what is going on in the world. 
 
The fundamental reality is this: some TuneCore Artists are selling more music, making more money and becoming more popular than the artists that appear in the charts.  If there is going to continue to be a chart that is supposed to reflect the “Top” bands (not even sure what that means) it MUST take into consideration the way the world is working.
 
Many small start-up companies and the non-music people running them have taken a stab at creating their own charts – a random and nonsensical combination or how many MySpace friends, how many free streams your widget gets combined with some “weighted average” of your songs sales and a proprietary system that has some magic formula that spits out some answer.  This could not be further off the mark. Charts should reflect what artists are “popular”, the problem is, popularity used to be tied directly into how many copies an artist’s album sold, and this is a dying, if not already dead, model.    Perhaps the answer is popularity means people are willing to pay you for your art in some way
 
I honestly don’t have the answer (yet) but I do know that we are indeed living in amazing times!

Share your thoughts here on the TuneCore blog.

 

The Failure of the Internet by Tom Silverman

Tom Silverman is the founder and president of the record label Tommy Boy Records, and co-founder of the independent film and television company Tommy Boy Films. Silverman co-founded Dance Music Report magazine, which ran from 1978 to 1992, and he co-founded the Dance Music Hall of Fame, which existed from 2003 to 2005.  He is runs the New Music Seminar in New York City which you can learn more about here.

Editor's Note: This article is an opinion piece that does not necessarily reflect the views of TuneCore.  Let your voice be heard in this discussion by visiting the TuneCore blog.

Twelve years ago the advent of the internet gave great promise to artists that music would finally be democratized and artists would have equal access to distribution and great worldwide exposure on the web. We believed that finally the cream would rise to the top and great artists would no longer be limited by record labels or the lack of them or the lack of radio play or video exposure.  Now every artist can get their video on YouTube, their music on MySpace, their blog on FaceBook and get their Tweet on too. Now every artist can join TuneCore and get their music distributed to the most important download sites around the world.

Why has that promise been such a miserable failure? Why are less American artists breaking through than ever before? With 5 million artist MySpace pages, why are almost all of the new artists that are breaking still on established labels?

Back in the 80’s I ran a music conference that became the biggest and most influential in the world. It was called the New Music Seminar. It was the ultimate networking experience where most of the people running the music business today got their start. It was so successful that it spawned SXSW, Winter Music Conference, Canadian Music Week, In the City, and CMJ to mention the most famous. 15 years later I was approached by one of the New Music Seminar associates to reincarnate the event. I had been asked to bring back NMS at least 10 times over the last seven years but I didn’t feel like the right time.

But this time was different.  I had spoken on four panels this year in Toronto, Kingston, Jamaica, New York, and San Diego and each time, the audience was filled with artists looking for someone to give them real advice and information that would make a difference in their careers. But each time the panel was charged with debating some music industry issue like digital rights management or synch placements or the future of music on mobile phones…hardly the stuff the audience wanted or needed to hear about. 

Meanwhile, I had been reading blogs by Kevin Kelly and Seth Godin while attending all the traditional record industry events like the Grammy’s and NARM and attending RIAA board meetings. I recognized a dichotomy forming between what the record industry leaders were saying and doing and what was actually happening in the market place. Finally the light bulb went on. In an instant, I saw the future of the music business and it was nothing like what the record company leaders were predicting. It was even different that the technological soothsayers were predicting.

Infused with enthusiasm like never before, I plunged into preparation for the first New Music Seminar in 15 years. A New Music Seminar sole focused on the real needs of the artists and their representatives as we leave the old model and enter the new music business. 

This year’s NMS will focus on four critical concepts.

• The advent of a new paradigm that includes a new definition of success. Forget sending CDs to labels or making music that can get played on radio. It’s a whole new day.
• Introduction to the new science of Fan Relationship Management and the Fan Relationship Pyramid.  Knowing your fans and managing the flow of your creative to them based on their levels of fanaticism.
• The Creative Quartet and Radical Differentiation; differentiating yourself in both skills and uniqueness in the four important areas:

1. The Songs
2. The Recordings
3. The Statement and the Look
4. The Show

• The show and the tour. How to break through the elusive 300 ticket mark and move on to lasting success.

Extrapolating the latest data and incorporating the newest (and most ancient) philosophies, we will explore not only what to do but how to think differently in ways that will change your life as an artist and help turn your avocation into a vocation. The people you meet and network at the New Music Seminar will help you create  opportunities for new businesses and creative collaborations.

TuneCore broke records last week with sales of Drake and he should be an inspiration to the rest of the TuneCore artists that success is possible. The New Music Seminar is dedicated to helping the cream rise to the top.  We will challenge the technologists to improve the tools that will help artists achieve critical mass and the reach and frequency of exposure they need to become successful. We will find the artists that are becoming successful doing it themselves and help promote them to greater exposure and success so they may become an example for those still struggling to make it.  We will give artists and their team tools and a new perspective to rise above the noise floor of obscurity and make it in the new music business.

Questions or comments? Share your thoughts here!

Recording a Band: Live vs. Overdubs by Cliff Goldmacher

Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, engineer and the owner of recording studios in Nashville and New York City.  When he’s not writing songs, Cliff is also a regular contributor to EQ Magazine and Pro Sound News as well as a number of online blogs.  He can be reached at cliff@cliffgoldmacher.com

When I’m hired by a band to produce their album, it’s often up to me to decide the best approach to take in the studio.  The principal choices are live (all the band members at the same time giving a “live” performance in the studio) versus overdubs (creating a band sound by tracking members of the band separately and then putting all the instrument parts together in the final mix).  By reading a little about the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches, hopefully you will be better able to decide which one will be best for your band.

Advantages of Tracking “Live”

If (and this is an important “if”) the band coming into the studio is well rehearsed and experienced, a “live” studio recording can be a great approach.  I put “live” in quotes because the recording studio (whether everyone plays at once or overdubs one or two at a time) is seldom a truly live experience.  Part of the reason that studio recordings sound as polished and detailed as they do has to do with the fact that the studio is a very controlled sonic environment.  There are isolation booths so that individual parts can be fixed without having everyone redo their parts and even if everyone is in one primary room to record, it’s not often set up like the stage of a local club or venue with an audience, applause and general room noise.  All this to say that what “live” really means is that the members of the band are given the opportunity to listen and respond to each other while they’re all playing together in the studio.   If, as I said earlier, the band is well rehearsed then this arrangement can produce excellent results.

Disadvantages of Tracking “Live”

The studio is, by its very nature, an intense and often stressful environment.  By tracking a band all together and hoping for a perfect (or almost perfect) take, you’ve added a lot of variables that wouldn’t ordinarily be present in an overdub scenario.  For example, if the drummer is having an off day, it could color everyone’s performance.  This is why I brought up the well-rehearsed and experienced qualifier in the earlier paragraph.  The more rehearsed the band members are, the less likely one member won’t be able to hold his or her own when the light goes red.  There are, of course, ways to minimize the risks in a live tracking scenario including isolating each instrument in its own room or booth so that individual fixes can be made after the keeper take is selected.  Also, by using a click track while recording, the engineer and/or producer can create a composite (or “comp”) performance by splicing together the best parts of several performances.

Advantages of Overdubs

Using the overdub approach, the band has the option of tracking different instruments separately.  This allows the band, for example, to get the drums and bass parts exactly right before overdubbing electric guitars or keyboards. It also allows the producer and/or band members to focus on one thing at a time and get it the way they want it before moving on. The way I generally approach sessions like this is to track the drums and bass with a scratch version of one additional instrument and a rough vocal so everyone knows where they are in the song.  It’s also useful to have a click track running in these sessions as it provides a common rhythmic link that everyone in the band can use to keep him or herself in time. Then, when the drums and bass are solid and provide a good foundation, we add acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards and finally vocals and harmony vocals. This lower pressure and increased focus on individual parts can lead to tighter arrangements and performances.

Disadvantages of Overdubs

The risk of tracking one or two instruments at a time is compromising the overall dynamics and feel of the track.  In other words, unless the musicians and singers have enough studio experience to be comfortable in what is a rather unnatural musical environment, the performances can sound lifeless and disjointed.  The way to combat this is to make sure that if your band isn’t overly experienced in the studio you use a producer who is.  A good producer will help guide the band members through the process and their performances to help capture the spontaneity and energy of a live performance in a less-than-live environment.

No One Way To Do It

There is no correct way to record a band.  There are multi-platinum selling examples of both approaches.  Ultimately, the decision should come down to what approach leaves your band the most relaxed and focused in the studio which will almost always lead to the best-sounding results.  You may need to try both approaches to see what works best for your band.  No matter which way you go, there is never a substitute for rehearsing your band as much as you possibly can before you start the actual recording process.  Going into the studio confident and well rehearsed will make the whole studio experience easier and more enjoyable for everyone involved.  Good luck!

Let us know your thoughts here on the TuneCore blog.