Ditto Music Is Now Offering Free, Emergency Accounts to Tunecore Artists…
Ditto Music Is Now Offering Free, Emergency Accounts to Tunecore Artists…
The following is a note from Ditto Music CEO Lee Parsons, whose company is now offering free, emergency accounts to affected Tunecore customers.
“Tunecore is a US company, so they might feel that with a high percentage of their customer base in the US, and from CEO Jeff Price’s statement it appears that they think that this won’t be a big problem and it is their decision what they do with your music.
Well, from my years as a struggling musician, I know how stressful releasing music is, and I know that the slightest misstep by your distributor can cause major headaches. And its not fair. You’ve paid your money in good faith, and you expect your distributor to provide you with a service, or at least to notify you prior to your music being removed.
From what we can gather, and the guys at Tunecore can feel free to correct us here, but it seems that Tunecore no longer has an active contract with Amazon for UK and Europe.
We have checked with two publishers this morning and Amazon MCPS/PRS HAS been paid for Europe and UK, so your argument does not add up. This post on the Tunecore forum from the 25th shows a customer asking why their music was not on Amazon UK/EU and Peter Wells, Tunecore CEO knowing nothing about it.
Your music had already been pulled by Amazon a week ago, before Jeff released this statement.
I can only imagine how I would feel if this happened to my music.
So I’m opening the door to ALL TuneCore customers who previously had releases on Amazon and offering you FREE distribution to Amazon UK and Europe.
You won’t need to pull your Tunecore releases, you won’t have to pay any subscription charges, and we never take any percentage of your royalties. This a gesture from us, as fellow musicians, to help you out of a situation that is not your fault.
Here is all you need to do.
1. Go to www.dittomusic.com
2. Create a free account and upload your music and artwork. You can use your current ISRC/barcodes or we will assign new ones for you – free of charge.
3. When you get to the checkout, enter this code AQPGAEJB (in block capitals).
4. Your music will be live on Amazon UK/EU in 2/3 working days – free of charge, no subscription.
I have put a team on standby to rush your content to Amazon and they will be here over the weekend to take any support calls regarding your content.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me personally at lee@dittomusic.com.”
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Bullshit
Thursday, February 02, 2012It is not a TuneCore vs Amazon issue. It is musicians vs Amazon.
Don’t believe me? OK! Then why do you think Amazon is using your band/artist name to create fake pages on their catalog?
(note: you got to be selling some minimum numbers for this to happen to you, I have no idea what the threashold might be for the Amazon bots to go after you)
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Yup
Thursday, February 02, 2012Cue the rest of the vultures….
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Ray
Thursday, February 02, 2012What are you even talking about? Are you a TuneCore employee?
Seems like every other distributor is not having any sort of issue with Amazon MP3.
We can all agree that removing all music in those territories (without telling the artists) is not in the best interest of indie artists. I’m tired of hearing the word “transparency” in every other sentence. It’s usually an indication that something is not right. Like you’re trying to convince us of something you’re not. What’s the real story?
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raymond
Thursday, February 02, 2012why don’t other companies have the same problem with amazon?
is this happening with universal, cdbaby, warner bros?
can someone clarify why it’s just tunecore?
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Really
Friday, February 03, 2012So Lee wants everyone to use Ditto Music… even though in the article he slags off Tunecore’s Peter Wells.. What a terrible businessman and business!
Plus its known Ditto and Tunecore hate each other.. http://tunecore.websitetoolbox.com/post/Why-choose-Tunecore-over-Dittomusic-5628079
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missing
Thursday, February 02, 2012Maybe I’ll move to Ditto because Tunecore isn’t working with Rdio either. wtf?
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Vultures
Thursday, February 02, 2012I think it’s pretty clear that “bullshit” is someone from Tunecore.
I didn’t sign up to Tunecore to enter into a personal fight against Amazon, conveniantly a few weeks after Tunecore launches a service that, “heyho”- just happens to collect royalties for artists. And that Tunecore service just happens to cost $50 and 20% fof your earnings.
I have fans in Europe!! I want my music on Amazon!!
I don’t believe we are seeing any “transparency” here. Nothing about Jeff’s statement adds up. Why Amazon? Why not any of the other stores? Why just in the UK and Europe? He said they didnt know their contract had ended. WTF???
There was no discussion when yearly renewal fees were almost doubled either. Im losing faith in Tunecore, fast.
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jeffpriceiscrazy
Thursday, February 02, 2012We got a great taste of Mr. Price at DMFW in 2010, when he flipped out and started yelling at Ted Cohen about some meaningless comment Ted made years prior. The man is unstable. I would not do business with the man. I certainly would not rely on him to negotiate with anyone on my behalf.
He probably got upset at some insignificant thing and tanked the whole renegotiation.
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Steven Corn
Thursday, February 02, 2012This seems obviously related to Jeff’s new publishing admin program. I presume that most of Tunecore’s artists are not affiliated with the MCPS, GEMA or other European societies for the publishing side of their songs. Since Jeff is now pushing a $50 service to collect those royalties, he’s probably trying to force Amazon to pay Tunecore directly for mechanical royalties instead of paying the societies.
Then Jeff can pay those royalties back to the artists that signed up to have Tunecore collect their PUBLISHING royalties and Jeff will look like the hero.
It’s quite likely that Amazon UK/Eur said no way, we’ll only deal with the societies. That leaves Jeff in the unenviable position of actually having to do work to register all the works from the artists that want to use his new service. Thus lowering his profit margin considerably.
End result: the artist are now missing their publishing royalties AND their digital sales.
Bonehead move, Jeff.
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@Steven
Thursday, February 02, 2012Out of everything i have read I think you have just hit the nail on the head with a sledgehammer.
I’d put money on it
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Finally the real story!
Thursday, February 02, 2012I agree. That explanation is the only one that makes sense in light of all the moves TuneCore has been making lately. TuneCore played hardball to collect those royalties and Amazon said no. That’s why no other distributor is having issues.
I appreciate that they have been working hard to educate the US artists on the differences in foreign royalty collection, but I have a feeling these things are going to take time to work out. It’s not going to be solved overnight.
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DMN Sponsor?
Friday, February 03, 2012Can the rest of us get our marketing ploys headlined with DMN?
Naturally Ditto is hopng to steal business from TC by giving them this one thing for free and then charging them for their nxt releases on other stores with their insanely complex pricing model. per store, per release, per this, per that.
Great marketing move from ditto, but rather disturbing that it gets a free headline like this.
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Really?
Friday, February 03, 2012Is everything that gets mentioned here getting free press then?
It’s music news, deal with it
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Eehr
Friday, February 03, 2012Of course not. but then this article reads like a users manual complete with links and four simple steps etc. Not many real editors would let this kind of “reporting” slip by their desks.
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