By Jeff Price
I started on the TuneCore journey about six years ago, and we were able to change the global music industry. We now get to change it for songwriters.
I co-ran a label called spinART Records for a little over 17 years. I got to release bands like The Pixies, Apples In Stereo, Echo & The Bunnymen, Clem Snide, The Eels, The Technical Jed, The Fastbacks, Bis, and many others, some of which you may have heard of, others not, but they all mattered to me. I loved what I did.
Music was my passion. The artists I listened to helped define and inspire me. In 1990, the year I graduated college, I was invited by my high school friend Joel to help release a compilation CD called “One Last Kiss.” I took him up on the offer and got to go on a two decade ride of working with, and for, the coolest people on the planet.
Along the way I met two gentlemen, Gene and Bob. It was 1996, they had an idea that had never been done before; they wanted to create a music store on the Internet where people could buy music as downloads from a website they called eMusic. This pre-dated the original Napster by three years and iTunes by almost six. There were no iPods, iPhones, iPads or smartphones. Creative labs had a portable 20 meg MP3 player. Walmart was still the number one music retail outlet, and the only way artists could be one of the 50 titles on their shelf was by being signed to a major record label. I began working with eMusic. I was lucky to be there at the birth of the digital music industry. I learned a lot, in particular, no longer did a band need access to an infrastructure that made 5” circular plastic discs and shipped them to Walmart and Tower Records. All a band needed was a way to get their music file onto Apple’s hard drive.
Move forward in time, iTunes was the place the world started to go to buy music. Digital began to explode. Through my work with eMusic, I got to know and understand this new digital music space. Through my label, I also knew the old music industry. I watched artists give up so much to just gain access. It wasn’t right, I wanted to fix it, shove the gatekeepers out of the way, remove the bullies, make things right.
In October 2005, I called my friends Gary and Peter with an idea. They loved it, they quit their jobs and we got to work. Twelve weeks later, TuneCore was born. For the first time, for a simple flat annual fee, all artists could have access to global distribution, keep all of their rights, and get all the money from the sale of their music. There were no more gatekeepers saying they could not be let in. I did not think about it like this at the time, but we got to democratize an industry.
And now, six years later, TuneCore is the world’s largest music distributor. It distributes more music in one month than EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner combined distribute over 80 years.
In the last three years, TuneCore Artists have sold over 400 million units of music and earned over $174 million dollars from the sale of their recordings. Each second, three songs from TuneCore Artists sell via download and nine songs are streamed via paid streaming services. In 2011 alone, TuneCore Artists are on track to earn over $100 million dollars from the downloads and paid streams of their recordings.
Move forward in time, my friend George turned me on to an article about the six legal sub-copyrights a songwriter gets when he or she writes a song. Every time a song is streamed, downloaded and/or publicly performed, the songwriter makes money. I began to read more and learned about the archaic, byzantine rules of where a songwriter’s money went and how they were able to collect it. Turns out, they couldn’t. The digital music stores pay the songwriter money to over 200 songwriter collection agencies around the world, on every continent, with names like JASRAC, SAMRO, GEMA, AAS, SGAE, SOCAN, SIAE and so on. There the money sits, uncollected, unidentified as to whose it is. After a period of time, it is given to other music companies based on their market share.
This infuriates me.
I began to dig deeper and learned more about how the money flowed, how it was earned, what the royalty rates were, and who set these rates. My long time lawyer and friend Josh suggested I speak with Jamie, the then EVP of Music Publishing Administration for the largest independent music publishing company in the world, Bug Music Publishing. We had dinner. I learned more from him. I asked him to come to TuneCore and help me build a system that could get our songwriters their money. He left Bug after working there for almost 20 years and took the job as President TuneCore Songwriter Publishing Administration. In the next months he set up the global collection infrastructure that would allow us to register songs and then show up at these agencies’ doors to get our songwriters their money.
I learned more from Jamie. I met his former boss Fred Bourgoise. In 1973, Fred co-founded Bug Music Publishing to help independent songwriters get their money; the TuneCore of its time. Fred began to advise me and further teach me the nuances of the songwriter royalty industry. He joined the TuneCore Board of Directors.
Jamie dug into the data to identify how much TuneCore songwriters earned; it looked to be over $100 million dollars.
I was stunned.
I now had two goals:
- Get TuneCore songwriters their money before it got given away to others.
- Cut out the middleman wherever I could so we could get more money back more quickly, with more transparency to songwriters.
Jamie worked with our tech team to show them what needed to be built, and they built an incredibly complex system incredibly quickly.
That system has now launched. The global registration and collection infrastructure is in place, the staff has been hired, and today we are throwing the switch making it available to the world.
The press release below went out today, Wednesday, November 2nd, at 6AM Eastern. The day all songwriters can now gain access to their money.
The revolution continues…
( To learn more about the service go to: tunecore.com/songwriters )
———————————————————————————————————————————————
TUNECORE SONGWRITER SERVICE LAUNCHES NOVEMBER 2,
UNLOCKS TENS OF MILLIONS FOR ARTISTS AND SONGWRITERS
ACADEMY AWARD WINNER, NINE INCH NAILS WRITER
TRENT REZNOR SIGNS ON
Six years ago, TuneCore changed the music industry with the launch of its music distribution service. On November 2nd, with the launch of its Songwriter Publishing Administration Service, it is again revolutionizing the music business. For the first time, at the click of a button, any songwriter can have music publishing that:
-globally registers their copyrights
-collects money that is rightfully theirs
-protects and polices their copyrights and songs
-issues licenses on their behalf
Each time a song is downloaded or streamed, songwriters earn money. TuneCore’s Songwriter Service, by going direct with the digital music services, globally retrieves this money for songwriters’, procuring more money for them more quickly and with greater transparency than any other service. This applies to both songwriters presently in the system and those who will have their earnings collected for the very first time, a group that is 98% of the world’s songwriters.
TuneCore President Jeff Price points out, “No longer will songwriters be shut out of a system. In addition to letting artists get their money in a direct and transparent manner our team is also getting the artist their earnings faster and matching up millions of uncollected dollars with their rightful owners.”
Digital pioneer Trent Reznor, an early adopter to the TuneCore distribution system, has already signed up for the Songwriter Publishing Administration Service, including releases by Nine Inch Nails and his new project How To Destroy Angels. Several hundred other songwriters have also signed up during the beta testing and are now collecting their money from over 10,000 songs they wrote.
Price comments, “Once artists look under the hood and see how much more money we can get them in a shorter period of time and with transparency we think the service will take off as quickly as our digital distribution service did.”
HOW IT WORKS:
The TuneCore Songwriter Publishing Administration Service enables any songwriter to sign up for global publishing administration immediately.
It will:
1. Register songwriter’s songs with organizations that use and track their copyrights so they know they exist, what songs are theirs and what money belongs to them.
2. Issue any licenses needed and handle any requests for the use of a songwriter’s songs in TV shows, movies, commercials and other media, and negotiate any licenses with TuneCore’s in-house Film & Visual Media department to get them the best possible terms.
3. Represent the songwriter and aggressively pursue all of their songwriting earnings.
4. Get songwriter’s existing “found” money back before it is given to someone else.
5. Police the world on the songwriter’s behalf to find illegal usage or copyright violation and make it stop and/or get the songwriter paid.
By going direct with the digital music services, TuneCore eliminates multiple middlemen used by all other services thereby growing songwriter earnings by up to 25%.
TuneCore Songwriter Service costs a one-time payment of $49.99 for global registration plus 10% of the money TuneCore collects, the remaining 90% is distributed to the songwriter. Currently artists must be using TuneCore for distribution in order to sign up, but plans are in the works for any rights holder to be able to sign up in the near future.
TuneCore is now the largest distributor of music, artists and labels in the world. Its customers have sold over 400 million units of music and earned over a quarter billion dollars. Concurrently, more artists are making more money than ever before and digital music sales continue to rise.
WHO WE ARE:
Jamie Purpora, President TuneCore Music Publishing Administration
Jamie comes to TuneCore with 17 years of experience in music publishing administration at Bug Music Inc. Bug Music became one of the largest independent music publishers in the world and was named #99 in Inc. Magazine’s top 100 fastest growing private companies in 2009. From 1997-2001, Jamie was Director of Royalties and from 2001 -2011 he was Senior Vice President of Administration.
Jamie was responsible for overseeing publishing administration for Bug’s entire catalog, which consisted of over 300,000 copyrights. Clients included Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Iggy Pop, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Guess Who, The Kings of Leon, Johnny Cash, Ryan Adams, Wilco, Tradition Music, Average White Band, Del Shannon and the Trio/Quartet Music catalog. Jamie also served on the Publisher’s Technology Board at the Harry Fox Agency for the last three years.
Fred Bourgoise – Board Member/Advisor
Fred was co-architect of the groundbreaking worldwide music publishing administration service Bug Music. He was President and co-owner from 1976 until its 2006 sale to Spectrum Equity Investors. From its humble and committed beginning, Bug became the music administration gold standard and trusted island for publishers, songwriters, copyrights, and artists. While experiencing meteoric growth and success, Bug evolved into the largest independent music publisher in the pre-digital-download-streaming world, with offices in Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, London, and Munich, Germany. After the Spectrum purchase, Fred continued to serve as a consultant and board member for Bug until 2009.
Fred first assisted TuneCore in 2010 as a consultant. In June 2011 he was elected to the Board of Directors.
Nicholas Boski, Executive Vice President, Legal Affairs and General Counsel
Nicholas has spent several years working in the music and legal industries. A graduate of Georgetown Law, Nicholas was the proprietor of The Boski Law Firm PLLC, which specialized in music and new media law. Nicholas also spent time as a Contract and Royalties Analyst at Warner Music Group and three years as a commercial litigator a Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP.
Josh Grier
Josh Grier, a New York based entertainment attorney who has served as outside counsel for TuneCore since its inception, will expand his role with the company to advise on business affairs, corporate strategy and senior executive staffing for the new music publishing operations.
Julie Foist, Manager Film & Visual Media Licensing
Julie worked at Windswept/Bug Music Publishing for 5 years as Film & Visual Media Licensing Manager.
Jeremy Crowther, Registration Specialist
Jeremy Crowther comes to us with 15 years experience at Bug Music Inc. where he held the position of Director of Copyright for the last 8 years.
Megan Grosz, Publishing Administrator
Megan comes to us from Bug Music Inc., where she spent the last three years as New Client Administrator and as a Copyright Assistant. Previously, Megan was an assistant to Sheila E. and prior to that handled Mechanical Licensing at CMH Records.
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