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- Behind the music: In praise of Songtrust
A new service helps US artists track how their music is used worldwide and collect royalties. And it's coming to the UK ...
The internet has given emerging artists the chance to get their songs heard all over the world, without the need for a record or publishing deal. New services are launched every month to capitalise on this plethora of DIY artists. There are services to "pimp out" your Facebook pages, to manage your mailing list, to distribute your music to platforms such as Spotify, iTunes and Pandora. This costs artists hundreds of pounds a month, yet often little thought is given to how they can keep track of and collect royalties owed. As Joe Kennedy, CEO of internet radio service Pandora, recently put it: "The good news is that the internet is global but the bad news is that copyright law is country by country."
If you're a UK-based songwriter, whose music is released only in this country, joining PRS for Music should give you all the help you need. For music released internationally, however, the PRS relies on other bodies to collect royalties for its members and then forward revenuefor the PRS to distribute. If these other collection organisations don't have big enough copyright data libraries and can't match the royalties with a particular writer, though, they go into the "blackbox" of unattributable revenue and get distributed to local publishers.
If you're a songwriter with a publishing deal, you're in luck – not just because publishers tend to give advance royalty payments, but if they want to recoup the advance they've paid out and get their own percentage of revenue, it's in their interest to track any royalties owed. Major publishers have offices around the world that have direct relationships with their local collection societies and make sure catalogues of songs are registered correctly and looked after. This week, EMI Publishing even announced that it is taking back the digital licensing rights for almost 200,000 of its most popular songs from the US collection society ASCAP so it they can license them directly to audio streaming music services, streaming music video services and cloud services.
But publishing deals are hard to come by, unless you already have substantial revenue flowing in. So what happens to songwriters who don't? Do they have to get affiliated with up to 52 collection societies? And, if so, how would they get enough time to write music? If someone is owed between £500 and £5,000, why shouldn't they be able to collect it? Justin Kalifowitz, president of US company Downtown Music Publishing says he's come up with a solution: Songtrust.
Downtown, a traditional publisher, looks after the song catalogues of Mötley Crüe, Seal and Trevor Horn, as well as songwriters for artists such as Britney Spears, Black Eyed Peas and Bruno Mars. "I started Songtrust because, during the 10 years I've worked in publishing, I've met plenty of amazing songwriters that I wasn't able to sign [to a traditional publishing deal], because of lack of scale," Kalifowitz says. For a flat fee, Songtrust offers writers the same access to collection societies and royalty streams as it does to the songwriters signed to Downtown. "Most writers start on a monthly fee of $10," he continues. "At the top end you'd be paying $200 a year – that's the highest level. It depends on how many songs you register and where you're selling your music. We wouldn't charge you for collecting royalties in your home territory, just for the places where it's impossible for you to collect right now."
Kalifowitz singles out the PRS as the European society his company is most impressed with, "because of their desire to create something stronger for independent publishers and independent copyright holders – almost challenging what the majors are doing".
Songtrust doesn't just collect royalties for its users – it also helps them get their songs placed in television shows. TV stations such as ESPN, the Travel Channel and National Geographic don't have the budgets to license music on a song-by-song basis, and many independent artists can't get their songs used by these channels as they only do blanket licences with individual publishers. As Downtown Music has blanket licences with more than 300 production companies, Songtrust lets users take advantage of those licences, too.
"They'll get an email that says, for example: 'We've agreed a deal with National Geographic. Their rate is $100 per use, plus you'll get your performance royalties from ASCAP six to nine months after the airing. Are you interested – yes or no?' With ESPN we don't get upfront payment. It's all based on performance royalties. It's all case-by-case," Kalifowitz explains.
At the moment Songtrust is only open to US-based songwriters, but in June it will flick the switch on European writers being able to use them for collecting royalties in the US. It's also looking to open offices outside of the US. "The first territory we'll expand to is the UK. Music is a huge deal in the UK, so for us it's incredibly important to be there."
Of all the services offered to DIY artists out there, this seems like one worth trying out.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Live classical music every night in your home ... and with bells on
From Strauss at the Southbank, Marian motets in Sherbourne Abbey, and Prokofiev's piano concerto in Manchester, it's been an exciting week for Radio 3's listeners - and presenters
Renaissance motets in honour of the Virgin Mary sung under the vaulted ceiling of a Dorset abbey; Strauss's Four Last Songs performed by one of the world's greatest sopranos, and a 23-year old Korean launching himself calmly and confidently into one of the trickiest of all piano concertos. I've had an amazing musical week so far, and, more to the point, I hope hundreds of thousands of Radio 3 listeners have as well.
On Tuesday we launched Radio 3 Live in Concert, and from here on in, evenings on the radio will never be the same again. Five nights a week we'll be broadcasting, live, the very best of British and international music making. BBC microphones will hang above stages at concerts and recitals in halls from Poole to Aberdeen; visits to the UK's music festivals will take us even further afield.
I'm the lucky presenter who's had the responsibility of kicking it all off, and I've fronted each of this week's concerts. It's been a full-on first week; early starts, laptop out on the train as I write up my notes for the night ahead. We started on Tuesday with The Sixteen at Sherborne Abbey, singing music by the 16th-century composer Tomás Luis de Victoria. "Did we want the bells off?" asked the verger. After much debate, we decided we'd leave them on. Should the BBC really be responsible for silencing the bells of one of our finest churches? As Harry Christophers finished a Marian hymn, the clock struck eight. He paused, then calmly continued. A magical moment.
The next morning it was straight to London's Southbank, where the London Philharmonic was rehearsing. They later gave a brilliantly clean, unemotional account of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony under Vladimir Jurowski. And an anniversary to mark 60 years to the day since the first public concert at the Royal Festival Hall. After her performance of the Four Last Songs, soprano Christine Brewer joined me in the commentary box above the stage, and we pored over a copy of the programme for that first night, when Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was the star of the show. "By the way," Brewer added, "can I say hi to my family? They're all listening online back home in Lebanon, Illinois."
And now I'm in Manchester, where Mark Elder conducted the Hallé in Elgar's Enigma Variations last night. There was Sibelius's En Saga to begin, and then Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto, incredibly complicated to play, but nailed by Sunwook Kim. When I last met him, he was 17, and had just won the Leeds Piano Competition. We had to do his victory interview, via translator, in Korean. Now he's been living in London for five years, revelling in what he described to me as the "greatest musical city in the world". But Manchester seemed to come a close second last night.
What a week – and there's still the BBC Philharmonic playing Shostakovich Five tonight. Then next week there's the Vienna Piano Trio, Florilegium, Bach's B Minor Mass under Herreweghe … on and on the list goes. Radio 3 is living up to the demand of the old Musicians' Union slogan, that graced a million instrument cases – "Keep Music Live."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Music Weekly podcast: DELS and Dream Beach records
This week Rosie gets a lesson in Kurdish shredding and Kenyan country with Eddy Frankel, the man hoping to rebrand "world music" with his new label Dream Beach Records. He's also compiled a special Guardian playlist.
Alexis and Rosie are joined by Tim Jonze to discuss new music by Grimes, Washed Out and Graceful Exit in Singles Club.
And rapper DELs is in the studio to play Moonshining, from his new album Gob.
Talk to us by following us on Twitter and like our page on Facebook too.
Переслать - New music: Lady Gaga – Judas
It may not be as controversial as her previous efforts, but that doesn't stop the latest Gaga video from being brilliantly barmy
With typical understatement and modesty, Lady Gaga has described the video for her new single as "a motorcycle Fellini movie where the apostles are revolutionaries in a modern-day Jerusalem" – and she plays Mary Magdalene. Ever since the title of the single was announced a few months ago, the hype machine has pumped myths and speculation about the video: that it would be the most controversial video of all time, that it cost more than $10m to make, that it was her huge and damning religious statement. When it was announced that the video had been co-directed by Gaga, the alarm bells that had already started ringing following the Born This Way/Express Yourself debacle got even louder. Given the underwhelming start to the campaign for Gaga's new album – Born This Way missed out on the UK No 1 spot, Judas has fallen out of the UK top 20 after just three weeks and has underperformed in America – it was little surprise when this highly anticipated new video leaked a day before its premiere, and Judas's even status was undermined.
So what's it like? Fairly sedate, all things considered. The video opens with Gaga and the apostles driving on the motorway with the singer draped across "Jesus" (we know it's him because he's wearing a gold-plated crown of thorns), but from there it's a fairly straightforward dance video intercut with close-ups of Gaga singing to camera (a la Bad Romance) and a brilliantly barmy scene involving a golden gun that's actually a lipstick. This being Gaga, there's also a bit that bears no relation to the rest of the video, this time involving a wave knocking the singer off a rock. In many ways, the fact that Judas isn't particularly "controversial" and doesn't get weighed down by its own importance means that it's actually much more enjoyable as a music video.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Readers recommend: songs about divorce
This week's theme provides a sobering antidote to too much wedding fizz: is there a nice song for a decree nisi?
Last week we considered songs about weddings. With indecent haste we now ask you for songs about the end of the affair.
Breaking up is hard to do. But sometimes, it's also the right thing to do. It's an often bitter and bloody time, but it can also be one of renewal, a triumphant moment of independence and a celebration of personal freedom.
So let's hear some anthems for the decoupled, the freshly liberated exes.
The toolbox:
* Listen to others' suggestions and add yours to a collaborative Spotify playlist.
* Previously on Readers Recommend.
* Guide to "donds", "zedded", and other strange words used by some of the RR regulars (courtesy of the Marconium).
* The Marconium (blog containing a wealth of data on RR, including the songs that are "zedded").
* The 'Spill (blog for the RR community).
Please do:
* Post your nominations before midday on Tuesday if you wish them to be considered.
* Write a few lines advocating the merits of your choices.
But please don't:
* Post more than one third of the lyrics of any song.
* Dump lists of nominations. If you must post more than two or three at once, please attempt to justify your choices.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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