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Hi All,
The state51 Conspiracy is one of the label names used by one of our compilation album development partners here at AudioSparx.
Part of their external distribution is that your music is placed on YouTube and earns ad-generated revenue for plays that occur. This is exactly the same way many other ad-revenue-based streaming websites work, including Spotify. There is no difference except that there is a visual component in addition to the audio component. But otherwise, it is just earnings-per-play, plain and simple, and probably actually earns more per play than any other streaming sites since video ads can be displayed rather than strictly audio ads as occurs on Spotify, etc.
If you want to earn B2C-related money for streaming plays of your music, there is no good reason to opt out of our external digital distribution.
Regards,
Lee
Hi Alan,
AudioSparx definitely has made extensive efforts to try to resolve the problem. We have contacted Warner Records repeatedly both via email and phone calls. We have had I’m certain not less than at least 30 different communications with Warner trying to get in touch with someone who would help resolve the problem. This includes from me and other staff members here as well.
We have continued to get the runaround from Warner mostly it seems due to their own confusion at Warner about who would be able to help with the problem, and their own lack of familiarity with how YouTube works, and a failure to acknowledge that they had in part in the problem or its resolution. We have actually escalated it to Warner’s legal department and have been still working on it. This has been going on for several months and has been complicated by various people at Warner going on summer vacation.
To portray this as AudioSparx having been unhelpful is not an accurate representation of the situation in our view — you are simply not aware of what we have been doing and the roadblocks we’ve been hitting.
I’m glad to hear you got it resolved. It was by far one of the most complicated YouTube Content ID-related situations we have encountered in all of our years in business. Now that it is resolved, we will close the case out.
Regards,
Lee Johnson
lee@audiosparx.comHi All,
In general yes you should register your music at SoundExchange. However, for participants at AudioSparx and RadioSparx, make sure to opt-out of SoundExchange’s international mandate. Their international mandate is highly-overreaching and provides SoundExchange exclusive control of all licensing of public performance rights for your music outside the USA. So, it is critical that you make sure to opt out of all foreign country participation at SoundExchange so you do not turn over exclusive control of your music to SoundExchange for licensing outside the US.
For SoundExchange members, AudioSparx does actually require that you and any rightsholders for your music opt out of SE’s International Mandate as a condition to participate at AudioSparx, so that we can direct license your music for public performance uses outside the USA.
Regards,
Lee Johnson
lee@audiosparx.comHi Guys,
It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. The reason we have prior to now recommended moving your PRO affiliation strictly to a US PRO (and discontinuing with your non-US PRO) is because the US societies permit direct licensing, whereas the European PROs have historically not permitted it.
However, there is a new VERY IMPORTANT European Directive concerning how the music societies in Europe are required to conduct themselves. This affects both composer/author/lyricist societies as well as artist/performer/producer societies as well. This new directive, which was issued in 2014, is scheduled to take full effect on April 10, 2016.
This new directive (link here: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32014L0026) mandates that European societies MUST allow rightholders (i.e you) to remove any category of rights from your society that you wish to control yourself, such as for example, licensing music for use as commercial background music in our RadioSparx web site. And you can leave the rest of the categories of rights that you wish for the society to manage with the society.
Long story short, for our European composers and artists, this directive has the effect of now allowing you to simultaneously participate in the statutory licensing services that the societies provide (for TV/Film/Commercial broadcast performance royalties, etc.), while also participating in the direct licensing services that we offer worldwide via RadioSparx, including our licensing within Europe. Hence, there is now no longer a need for you to move your PRO affiliation to the US.
This is all very new, and is pending transposition into local law within each country, however, we believe that there is no reason that you cannot immediately request such a withdrawal of “specific categories of rights”
We ask that our European artists and composers immediately now notify your society that you wish to participate in our direct-licensed commercial background music service (RadioSparx) and ask them which category of rights it is that you need to remove from the society to make this possible.We are hoping that, as a result of this new directive, the European societies will adjust themselves now to function in the same way that the US societies do, to permit their statutory licensing to operate in tandem and in parallel with your own direct licensing. If they do this, it will allow for a much more harmonious marketplace and start to eliminate the on-going wars that the European society’s current monopolistic exclusive-control stance is perpetuating.
For any of you that try this “rights withdrawal” from any European societies, please send us an email to info@audiosparx.com and let us know what your experience is like.
Cheers,
Lee Johnson
lee@audiosparx.comCan someone please share the URL for the ASCAP Member Survey?
Any annual fee is greedy in the extreme.Thanks,
Lee
Hi John,
Our Music Cult license is NOT exclusive, only perpetual. While there are statistical and market advantages to listing music exclusively here at AudioSparx, we do not ever require it.
Regards,
Lee Johnson
http://www.audiosparx.comHi All,
We prefer if you would click the CONTACT link at AudioSparx so we can respond quickly to any questions.
If you decide to allow AudioSparx to administer publishing, we administer publishing ONLY for the music tracks you upload to our website, and only for the licenses we place. If we administer your tracks on a non-exclusive basis, then we retitle the track during registration at the PRO by appending “AALIBRARY” to the title. As performance royalties are earned, the composer(s) of the track receive the composer’s share, and AudioSparx receives the publisher’s share.
For detailed info, please log in and you can review an in-depth article at
http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/kb/article/show.cfm/kbarticle_iid.2398/aatemp.0
Regards,
Lee Johnson
http://www.audiosparx.comHi All,
We appreciate everyone’s thoughts on any program we start up here at AudioSparx.Our pay-per-click Track Campaign service simply offers vendors here a marketing tool they can utilize to get a brand new, dynamite track quickly in front of our clients with substantial visibility. While Track Campaigns have no guarantees of quick sales for anyone, it does provide a substantial benefit to both our clients and our vendors by providing a method for vendors here to be able to proactively raise the visibility of a new track that may be better than any other tracks in the niche that it is targeting. Without Track Campaigns, this capability does not exist.
Through our constant development work here, we strive to find new ways to feature everyone’s music, and each of you will find your tracks on many searches (like our Editor’s Picks lists, Vertical Marketing pages, Home Page rotations, Hollywood A List, our Vocal Music page, 100+ Playlists, etc.). We provide multiple different tools and reports and software capabilities for our vendors here to utilize to manage and market their tracks here. The Track Campaign service is simply one more tool, a proactive marketing tool, that you may find will benefit you if used judiciously to promote only your best new tracks. Track Campaigns can be utilized often for as little as one penny per click to bring highly relevant traffic and attention to a new track that a vendor uploads.
Many vendors here have indicated having good results with the occasional use of the campaigns; and as Michael L pointed out from his earlier experiences, he found it financially worthwhile in certain instances to invest a little marketing money to promote certain music from the back bins up closer to the cash register. We believe that, if used judiciously primarily as a tool to promote new music tracks, it raises the overall quality of the shopping experience for our clients, and provides a means for our vendors to draw meaningful attention to their new music releases.
By reintroducing Track Campaigns with key changes from our earlier implementation, we intend to fix the problems that existed in the earlier implementation. However, because of the competitive nature of the information, we will discuss these changes in detail later in a private KB article at AudioSparx rather than here in this public forum. We hope that each of you will keep an open mind and consider that Track Campaigns offer a valuable capability that, without the service, simply does not exist here.
Our web sites are definitely large marketplaces with a rapidly growing client base. Each year, our sales have consistently exceeded the year before, because we continue to innovate and offer new and exciting music to our clients. We advertise heavily and are constantly striving to improve everyone’s bottom line.
We now operate five websites, and here is a link that more fully provides an overview of our business. Please log in first to review this article:
http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/kb/article/show.cfm/kbarticle_iid.2064:
Before we relaunch our Track Campaign service, we will provide more information in a communiqué and in our KB that further explains how the new program will operate. In the meantime, we appreciate the opportunity to respond here at the MLR and send hopes to each of you for a Happy New Year and a big thanks for helping us rock the web.Regards,
Lee Johnson
lee@audiosparx.com
http://www.audiosparx.com