This blog is a combination of articles from Tunecore and the Mac Observer article by Bryan Chaffin
This is great news for the independent artist, now we have distribution in Brazil and South America. All we have to do now is figure out how to get people to discover our music! Once people find out about Fantazzmo, I know they'll love our music!
Hey, if it was easy...everyone would be doing it!!!!
Fantazzmo 1: Enter the Fantazz
NOW AVAILABLE IN BRAZIL & SOUTH AMERICA
Territories include: Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Apple announced on Tuesday the long-delayed launch of the iTunes Store, as well as the somewhat unexpected launch of iTunes Match, in Brazil. The company said it was launching the store with 20 million songs
The iTunes Store is also launching with “over a thousand” movies to rent or purchase, some of which are being offered in HD. 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures are all on board for the rollout of movies in Brazil.
Brazil is the world’s 7th largest economy, making it the primary target for Apple in South America. The reason behind the delay has reportedly been the difficulty of managing local royalty payments, and in November is was reported that Apple had found a local solution provider to manage that process in time for a December launch.
Related: It’s December.
In addition to Brazil, Apple said that iTunes Stores are coming to 15 other South American countries, including: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.
Music on the iTunes Store is being offered in the same 256kbps, DRM-free AAC format in the the U.S. iTunes Store. Local accounts will require a valid credit card with a Brazilian billion address.
Running a band is the same as running a business. You invest time, labor, capital & intelligence in the hopes of getting desired results. You have to plan ahead diligently and make projections, preparations, consult with those with more experience and always remember the most important thing, your product, in this case, the music.
The music is the most important part, you can never lose sight of that. At the end of the day you want to make sure you have a great body of work, if you do, then it was all worth it.
Fantazzmo is planning 2012 and ready to come out swinging!!!
I recently found out about Next Big Sound from from the Bob Lefsetz Blog, the Lefsetz Letter, I checked it out for myself and it really is a valuable site for the independent artist. We can view how fans engage with our social sites, how they find out about us, where they are from, what regions are getting the most activity and gauge the success of our marketing efforts.
I recommend every independent artist take advantage of the basic free plan if nothing else. Yes, you can view your stats on Facebook Insights, Blog, band website, etc, but you can also link all of those and more to form a one stop shop for all you band's data.
Over the course of history, it was decided that people who made their ideas tangible –like songwriters– should make money. So they made up a bunch of really esoteric, hard to understand rules (aka laws) on how it should all work. The foundation for these laws can actually be found in the United States Constitution. The rules built on this concept get updated from time to time, but ultimately the foundation of the six legal rights that a person gets when he or she creates a copyrighted work, by making a song tangible (meaning it’s recorded or written down) are the basis for all the rules, laws and money made in the music industry.
Which, if you think about it, is a bit weird, because, what is it that is actually being sold when someone buys “music?” A buyer walks out of the store with some sort of device (like a vinyl record, CD or digital download) and plops it onto a machine. That machine “plays” the device, causing a speaker to vibrate in such a way that sound waves move through the air to our ears. Our ears detect these sound waves, and transmit them to our brains as electrical impulses. Our brains interpret these impulses and we “hear” the music.
In other words, unlike food or clothes, there is nothing tangible to a song beyond the intangible memory of what you just heard. The sound of music always lives in the past.
And yet, the governments of the world (acting on behalf of their constituents; in theory at least) decided that these transmissions of sound waves, and the people who wrote the songs, are so valuable and important, that they created a complex set of laws and regulations. These laws require that licenses be granted and payments be made to the people/entities controlling the rights to the recordings of the songs (usually called a “record label”) and the lyrics and melody of the song (usually called the “songwriter” or “music publisher”).
These rules and regulations tie together, regulate, and give basis for a global consortium of tens of millions of record labels, artists, songwriters, music publishers, performing rights organizations, and mechanical royalty collection agencies, to generate and collect and administer over $23 billion dollars.
And the governments of the world take this stuff very, very seriously. So much so, that there is an entire shadow economy built around an infrastructure of copyright boards, judges, copyright police, congressional committees, and teams of lawyers that are supposed to be the experts in knowing all the rules, and, in some cases, set royalty rates as to what these innovative creators should be paid.
However, in a move that could be construed as paradoxical (or, at the very least a “head scratcher”) these very same governments that created a way to assure that artists, songwriters and record labels can make money also decided that a songwriter/lable only gets these rights for 70 years after the death of the last surviving person who wrote the song (or ninety-five years from the date of publication in the case of a work for hire), after which point, all of the author’s rights get taken away, and the song becomes a “public domain” work, This means it’s available for anyone to use in any way they like without having to pay or negotiate anything with anyone.
Or put another way, 69 years and 364 days after the death of the last surviving writer, the people who control the rights to the song (like someone’s child or grandchildren) get to make money from the use of that song. The next day they don’t; one hell of a Monday to a Tuesday.
Which brings up the question as to why. Why give all of these rights and all of these rules for a set period of time? What is the reason that on that last magical day the very same hand that gave these rights decides it’s enough and takes them all away?
After all, when a song’s rights are stripped away from the person who wrote it, and the copyrights expire, many other people can make money off the recording and song. For example, at some point in time, the Beatles’ recordings and songs will enter the public domain, and when they do, anyone can release a Beatles album or cover Paul/John’s song without paying them. If someone buys that song or album physically from Amazon, a slew of people make money off the Beatles: Amazon makes money, the person who sold it makes money, the entity that made the cardboard box that the CD ships in makes money, the U.S. postal service makes money. The Beatles’ label, their estate, and John and Paul’s estates don’t make money from the sale.
Hardly seems fair.
On the other hand, what happens if Dr. Evil comes to life, only this time he has a trillion dollars at his disposal (don’t laugh too hard, there was a moment not too long ago when Bill Gates was worth a trillion dollars), and he decides he is going to buy the copyrights to all the recordings and songs in the world. Without a reversion of copyright, the world would be denied access to these creations. Corporations could hoard them forever, and perpetually deny or grant access at their whim. Put another way, corporations would have a complete and total stranglehold on culture (one could argue they already do, but that’s a different topic).
And thus the tension between the public good vs. copyright holders and creators comes to play with the government standing in between them, trying to come up with a solution that does not tip the scales too far on way or another.
The question I have relates to technology opening the flood gates to more creators: should there be a re-evaluation of this tension? I honestly don’t have the answer, and I truly can argue both sides of this equation. If it were me, and I wrote and recorded the song “Paperback Writer,” why the hell should I not be entitled to make money off the thing I created? Who the hell is the government to interfere with my rights and decide it’s been long enough for me, or my children, or their children’s children to make money off my creation. If I build a house, the government doesn’t get to take it away from me after a period of time and say it is “public domain.” Why is my song, my creation, thought less of than a house?
On the other hand, somehow it would just not feel right to me if Mozart’s great-great-great-great-great (not sure how many greats should go here) grandchildren got paid each and every time his Flute Concerto No. 2 In D Major – K. 314 was played and sold.
In other words, what is the place of public domain and the reversion of copyright in the new emerging digital music industry?
My concern is not over what the answer is, but instead who gets to shape the discussion. To this point in time, the creators themselves are the minority voice. The multi-national corporations that have gobbled up and/or “own” all of these songs and copyrights are the ones pulling the strings, lobbying for changes to the law. This would be fine if the creators of culture–aka artists–and corporations were in step with one another, but this is hardly the case.
Today’s world has allowed musicians and artists to break free of a system requiring them to relinquish their copyrights to pursue their dreams and ambitions. Together they are louder than any other music entity. The trick is allowing their voice to be heard. TuneCore is simply a megaphone, you are the voice.
Sign And Fail: How The Traditional Music Industry Killed Culture
(Reprint from Tunecore Blog)
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By George Howard
(follow George on Twitter)
We talk a lot about how this era of the music business is a particularly good one for the independent artist (by that, I mean an artist not signed to a label; someone who releases his/her own music either by him or herself or with a small team). The reasons for this are many, and largely due to technological advances: companies like TuneCore made it possible for you to have your music distributed world-wide very efficiently; Pro Tools (etc.) allows for the efficient creation of music; social media enables you (in theory) to promote your music directly to fans, etc…
However, one thing we don’t discuss often enough is that there is another reason why now is a fantastic time to release your own work. While it’s related to the above, it does stand apart enough to merit observation.
The bottom line is that a significant reason that now is a great time to release your own music is that the cost of failure is so low.
Let me explain. Historically, when you decided you wanted to be a musician and release records, you chose a very specific path. This path required you to, among other things, dedicate nearly all of your time and energy to essentially getting a record deal. What this meant was that you were forced to do everything in your power to attempt to get the attention of a series of gatekeepers (press, radio, managers, booking agents, club owners, label A&R people, etc…) in the hopes that they would give you a series of chances that would lead to a record deal. During that time, while you were attempting to get this series of chances, you needed to be monomaniacal with respect to your purpose. An inordinate amount of time, therefore, was spent not making music, but rather attempting to position yourself favorably in the eyes of these gatekeepers. Doing this, obviously, had a “cost.” This cost was not necessarily one measured in dollars (though, pre Pro Tools, it sure wasn’t cheap to record demos), but instead one measured in time/distraction. Economists call this “opportunity cost.”
In the off chance that you made all the right moves, and the stars lined up, and you were offered a record deal, your cost of failure just went through the roof. While the label I ran (for better, and, sometimes, for worse) frequently worked with artists who had had major label deals, a lot of the time, an artist who had a record deal, and, for whatever reason, didn’t sell enough records to be deemed a commercial success, was forever labeled as a pariah; never to be offered another deal.
Essentially, the cost of failure with respect to getting signed to a label, and then not selling records was being barred from ever competing again.
In both cases — the road leading to getting a record deal, and actually getting the deal — mis-steps along the way (real or perceived) had a huge cost associated with them. In essence, there was really only One Way, and if you veered from this path (or were thrown off the path), it was very hard to get back on.
In hindsight, this is sort of insane. In what other business is it expected that you come right out of the gate, fully-formed, and achieve success on your very first effort? While there are certainly vocations — from doctor to stock broker — where screw ups can bar you from the field, these (and most others) tend to not even let you into the field until you’ve been trained (medical school, MBA, etc…). Part of that training is learning from others and learning from mistakes.
The old music business didn’t allow for this. One could argue that this high cost of failure, one that deterred people from straying from a fairly narrow path (artistically and in a business sense). led to the homogenized nature of the music business during this era.
This is because, of course, it wasn’t just the artists who have a high cost of failure. Rather, it’s the executives at the labels as well. If you’re making a few hundred large a year, you will do almost anything to keep that money flow coming. This also means that you won’t do anything that puts your salary at risk. This leads to a culture where few, if any, are willing to push for anything innovative or new, and most feel it’s safer to repeat the status quo.
Arguably, the major labels are still caught in this cycle.
The good news is that most artists are largely indifferent to the old-school label system at this point, and an increasing number are working hard to find new ways to create music on their own terms and build sustainable careers. This is partly because the major labels (or any label) just aren’t viable (or appealing) options at this point, but it’s also, I would argue, because the cost of failure has come down dramatically.
As it’s now easier than ever to create and release music, artists are freed from the one-album-every-eighteen-months cycle that raised the stakes (and cost of failure) to such a scary degree.
What results is that artists are much more inclined to create a work and put it into the marketplace quickly. In so doing, they honor a time-tested management theory known as the Deming Cycle. W. Edward Deming developed a philosophy that revolutionized industries, and, like most revolutionary philosophies, it can be stated simply, but takes some time to understand and implement. At its core, the Deming cycle recommends a circular process beginning with “Plan,” moving to “Do,” then to “Check,” then to “Act,” and then back to “Plan.”
This can be understood as “Ready, Fire, Aim” as opposed to “Ready, Aim, Fire,” so long as you also understand that after you fire, you must check where your shot went, and adjust before you re-fire.
This approach demands iteration over cogitation. It demands that you move quickly to get something into the marketplace, because only in so doing can you truly understand if what you’re doing will have an impact. Importantly, it demands that you study closely the results that occur upon entering the market, and assumes that you will refine your efforts prior to re-introducing them into the market.
This method works best when the costs of failures are low enough so as not to be fatal. In the old music business, you essentially got one shot. There was no opportunity to refine anything. Now, given the tools at the disposal of just about every artist, and a culture that not only expects, but demands agility (see the preponderance of “betas”), it is incumbent upon you to get into the game, learn, and then refine.
I strongly believe that this not only results in a higher chance of success for artists, but also in a more diverse musical landscape. This is because no one, no one knows what the market wants, and for too long people thought they did. This resulted in a lot of music being put into the market just because it resembled something else that had been successful. With the Deming approach, and a low cost of failure, we are able to do what we should have been doing all along: create what is in our hearts, and then — if we so choose — continue to refine as people respond to our work.
