Distribution: Why “Keep 100% of Your Royalties” is a lie.
You have probably seen the promise that you will “Keep 100% of your royalties” when taking up a subscription-based distribution deal with...
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Oct 11, 20192 min read
Record your next release in Iceland and get 25% of your costs reimbursed by the State Treasury!
Several countries around the world offer incentives to get movies and TV shows filmed and produced in their country. It’s usually some...
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Jul 21, 201935 min read
Mime & Punishment? The rise and fall of Milli Vanilli
On the 21st of July 1989, during a “live” performance for MTV the playback device failed and began to skip. Not only did it halt the...
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Jul 11, 201910 min read
PledgeMusic goes bankrupt, other sites in decline. What is the future for crowdfunding in the music
In early May 2019 music crowdfunding website PledgeMusic announced it was officially entering bankruptcy. Most of the artists who were...
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May 27, 20198 min read
Bittersweet Victory: Why The Rolling Stones owned 100% of a song they didn’t write and how the
At the 2019 Ivor Novello Awards, Richard Ashcroft announced that after 22 years the dispute over his song, “Bittersweet Symphony” was...
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Feb 24, 20199 min read
Who should you join? (In order to make sure you are paid everything you are entitled to)
Aside from the distributors and retailers of music, there are a huge number of societies, organisations and companies that collect and...
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Jan 10, 20195 min read
The Possible Effects of Brexit on Independent Artists from the UK
As March 29th, 2019 approaches, with no Brexit deal in sight, it’s still unclear what will actually happen if the UK leaves the EU as...
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Jan 10, 20193 min read
UK Distributor dumps independent labels with “Dear John” style letters (that in some cas
A well known UK distributor early last year starting dumping independent labels, sending some the following letter. “Dear “label name...
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Dec 19, 20186 min read
The Truth About Spotify. Part 3.
What Not To Do As the modern music industry is in constant change, with many of the platforms and resources we now rely on in their...
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Dec 17, 20186 min read
The Truth about Spotify. Part 2
In part 1, I went over the basic principles of how Spotify works and addressed some of the talking points around the audio streaming...
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Nov 21, 20187 min read
The Truth about Spotify. Part 1
Streaming accounts for 37% of all the revenue from recorded music and with over 220million subscribers and a market share of 36% Spotify...
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Nov 11, 20183 min read
Picking a Distributor
One of the most important decisions you will have to make as a self-releasing artist and/or independent record label is which digital...
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Oct 15, 20183 min read
Trump Signs “Music Modernization Act” but the USA is still decades behind the rest of th
On the 11th October 2018, President Trump signed the Music Modernization Act (MMA), or the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music...
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Aug 12, 20184 min read
Bandcamp: 9 Reasons every self-releasing artist should have one.
I first started selling music online, independently, around 2005. At that time there were almost none of the tools and resources...
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Aug 10, 20182 min read
PPL and PRS for Music launch joint venture
And now on centre stage…TheMusicLicence You may have seen in the music press that PPL and PRS for Music have launched a joint venture,...
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Aug 1, 20186 min read
Unhappy with your PRS and PPL royalties? 6 Things you can do today to increase your future payments.
0n June 29th, PPL made their main annual distribution of royalties to its members. More than £150million was paid out, a 12% increase on...
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Jul 2, 20185 min read
Self-Release Checklist: 8 Essentials you must have before you release your music yourself.
So you’ve finally finished mixing your latest project and you’re ready to release it, or are you? I’ve met a lot of people who spent...
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Jun 24, 20184 min read
You are not just a self-releasing artist, you are an independent record company… here’s
One of the mandatory questions on the PPL rightsholder registration form is “label name”. Quite often people would get stuck on this...
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Apr 1, 20188 min read
The $25billion question…What is music copyright?
When a song is written, and then recorded, there are two copyrights involved. The owners of these copyrights get control over the works...
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Jan 28, 20187 min read
The lowdown on plagiarism in the music industry, and how to protect yourself.
A question I get asked a lot is how to “copyright” your songs, or generally protect them. The question isn’t as straightforward as it...
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