IndieFlow Interview Groover – Result Driven Music Promotion Platform

If you have released music before, you are probably familiar with Spotify for Artists. Spotify offers a great, simple tool for artists to understand where streams are coming from , which playlists your songs have been added to and also gives you the ability to pitch to editorial playlists. But what about the other big streaming platforms out there? Did you know that there are more free tools offered to artists by other streaming platforms with hundreds of millions of listeners?

Take for example JioSaavn- the second largest streaming platform in India who claim to have 104 Million active users. You can pitch your music directly to their editorial playlists! How about  discovering how many Alexa users asked to listen to your track on Amazon Music for Artists through voice recognition? Or how many people Shazamed your songs on Apple Music for Artists?

We covered some of the tools out there from major streaming platforms that can help you get a better picture.

Here are a few tools for artists that are very much worth exploring:

Amazon for Artists

Amazon releases its “Amazon for Artists”, giving artists a pretty standard overview on their stats with a few extras. After requesting to claim your artist profile, you can login through your desktop or download the app. Worth noting- if you have more than one project, it will take a while to claim since you can only send out one profile claim at a time and each artist claim takes a couple days to approve.

 The stats on Amazon for artists are pretty much the same as what Spotify or Apple Music for Artists provide. What’s unique about Amazon for Artists is Alexa stats, which shows you how many people requested your song by voice recognition.These songs can be requested by the name of the song, artist or even by saying part of the lyrics!

Another cool thing about Amazon Music for Artists is that it can show you your superfans. Superfans are highly engaged fans that can’t stop listening to your music. The downside is that you won’t be able to engage with these fans. You will only see their numbers. Another cool thing to definitely take advantage of is the option to submit to editorial playlists is available. It can be a bit tedious though. Amazon encourages artists to submit to editorial playlists through their manager or label.

Alternatively you can send an email here: music-submissions@amazon.com and you will be directed to the correct department.

Anghami

Anghami is the leading streaming service in the Arab world. It’s market is spread across the Middle East and North Africa. Anghami also has its backend tool for artists. You can upload your content directly to Anghami without a distributor involved (just like you would with Youtube). Anghami gives a full backend system for users to upload, distribute directly, promote on the platform , receive stream reports and audience analytics. Nowadays, artists can also create a donation page to direct their fans to and allow them to donate funds.

Deezer Backstage

Deezer has pretty basic features at this point, allowing you to view streams and listeners stats as well as playlist additions.

Another thing you can do with Deezer backstage is edit your profile information, tour dates, and add your social media links.

AMP by Pandora

Pandora has acquired “Next Big Sound” in 2015 and from there launched AMP – a platform that helps artists grow their fan base by delivering insights on fan engagement, market to fans and to get to know them better.

A few interesting features that this tool will allow you to do:

• Connect your social media platforms to view stats.
• Add events manually through annotations in your “Reports” section. This allows you to note any events on specific dates and see how it impacted streams on those dates.
• Save and tailor reports depending on what you would like to see
• Data on how many spins you received, song skip rate, song completion rate, week by week comparison and more in depth insights.

In regards to Pandora’s way of to amplify your tracks and promote them, they are offering a few pretty cool options:

• Adding featured songs- you can decide which of your tracks are “featured”. Setting a song as “featured” allows you to get to a new audience based on the platform’s machine learning capabilities. Featured songs will “tell” pandora to play your song to listeners who are listening to similar songs. This is an 8 week process that can highly increase your numbers and it’s completely free.
• Set engaging audio messages to existing fans- You can record a short description about your track very easily through AMP. This will help give personal context to your listeners and can improve your click through rates.
• Add call to action buttons to help listeners engage with your content

Apple Music For Artists

Apple releases their answer to “Spotify for Artists” with an obvious upside on the user experience aspect as Apple knows to do best.

While information is pretty much the same (streams, locations, editorial playlist additions), what’s unique about Apple Music is that they present how many times your song was “Shazamed”.

Another cool thing about Apple Music for Artists is that they give you insights of milestones that your music has gone through. With Apple Music you cannot submit your music to editorial playlists unfortunately which brings us to one of the major benefits of the next tool.

Spotify For Artists

Spotify has become an ecosystem within itself. Thanks to the masses of users on Spotify and the game changing option to allow these users to generate followers through playlists, musicians are not only dependent solely on the good will of editorial playlists. This truly opens doors for independent musicians to get discovered by individuals who are completely loyal to their personal taste. The reason why we bring this up here, is because it is what makes Spotify stand out from the rest.

You could easily find influential curators (or submit to Spotify curators through tools like IndieFlow) and send your music directly to them. While an addition to an editorial playlist is pretty uncommon, getting added to privately curated playlists can be much more common and you can view exactly how many plays you got from each playlist. This can help in strategizing, building relationships with influential curators and track you how effective your last playlist campaign was.

Another cool feature that Spotify enables is the ability to use “Spotify for Artists” as a team with different roles and access permissions. You can easily share stats with your label, manager, team etc.  

YouTube for Artists

In addition to presenting data such as: demographics, avg. view duration, subscribers etc. With YouTube for Artists you have many more features that could help boost engagement, sell live tickets, customize your channel, and more.

Here are some YouTube best practices which we recommend every artist performs when submitting music to YouTube:

1. Consolidate all of your videos into one channel- You may have uploaded music to YouTube on your own, or through a distributor which could cause your content to be split across various channels and topics. YouTube for artists enables you to consolidate all of your content under one roof which helps gain control over all of your content. Heads up though, this can be enabled under the conditions below, and also be associated as a YouTube Partner directly or indirectly (through a label or manager).
2. Own and operate a YouTube channel that represents one artist or band
3. Have at least 3 official releases on YouTube delivered and distributed by a music distributor or label
4. Connect with fans through live streams, engaging content such as: gifs, polls etc, sell tickets directly to fans, customize your artist page layout, read private messages or view your channel’s subscriber list
5. With Youtube’s analytics you can view real time analytics, audience engagement, content engagement, revenue (if you’re in the Youtube Partner Program) and demographics of your audience. You can get all of this data on Youtube Studio both available on web or mobile app.  
6. Concerts and ticketing are available only in the United States, Canada, UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia. In order to sell concert tickets you need to add your events to any of the following: Ticketmaster, Eventbrite, See Tickets and AXS.

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Spotify is like an open source content machine in which both Spotify in-house editors and everyday users can curate content. Among the user generated playlists –  some Spotify user playlists that have gone insanely viral and have a massive fan base of hundreds of thousands of users.

As time went by, these user generated playlists have become an excellent way for new music to be heard. Spotify playlisters became influencers and a new eco-system was born.

Along with this great new power that these private curators suddenly had, came also a handful of responsibilities. Playlist curators had to start organizing, branding, bringing in new music, taking out old music and so forth. So this playlisting hobby soon became a full time job, and this means money needs to be made.  

Introducing – Spotify Playlist Placementing! Artists pitch their songs to playlisters and the playlisters give it a listen. Does the music fit in any of their playlists? Did it make an impact? Hey but I paid for this!

Services such as Submithub, Playlist Push, and Indieflow, have a network of playlisters to pitch music to.

The idea is always the same: Artists pay X dollars to get pitched to Y playlists. After a campaign that can take up to a few weeks (depending on the service), you get added to any playlist that liked your stuff. The playlist curators guarantee to listen to the track and if it fits they will place it in the playlist.

The purpose of this article is to reveal some useful insights about the benefits and the risks of paid submission to playlists. It’s a roller coaster of emotions, so it’s crucial you know what to expect!

The Big Trade Off:  Playlist Curators & Musicians

As many of us artists would love to get into these playlists, there is a big debate about
the efficiency of playlist placements. Yes, it can get to a wide audience, yes you can get your song heard by thousands and sometimes even more, however, is this audience loyal to you or to the curator?

The general answer is: the audience is loyal to the curator. However the law of large numbers applies to music as well. Among the thousands of listeners – a small percentage will become your listeners. And in these numbers, a small percentage can be all you need.
Here are a few pointers to help you base your decision, the next time you consider playlist pitching.

The Listener to Follower Ratio

Your followers are most likely your true fans. These are the people that didn’t only listen to your songs, but who also want to follow your new releases, concerts etc.

Spotify’s algorithm likes this variable and defines the quality or the “hypeness” of an artist through this ratio. Listeners divided by followers. This ratio is an important factor of your quality in the algorithm’s eyes, and paid placement on playlists does not help you much with that.

A playlist curator’s follower base is there to listen to their taste in music. The audience will listen to the track but not in all cases become followers. Most listeners will do add to your listener count without actively following.

An artist promoting their music on paid placement playlists will likely have a high listener count, but a very low follower count, resulting in…. (drum roll) …. A very low listener follower ratio.  

While this can be a minus – do not be alarmed. Getting your music heard  is just as important as maintaining a high listener to follower ratio. Numbers are not everything.

The Spotify Save Button

Curated playlists allow listeners to click save on a specific song. Once a user has clicked “save” it means they liked your song. YAY!

Listeners like adding newly discovered tracks to their playlists, or just keeping these songs in their library where they sometimes shuffle play. Although this is not a follower – it is someone who clicked save on your music.

Branding

Releasing a song and getting it in several playlists can get your number of streams peaking. It is definitely fun seeing a new song getting thousands of plays through playlist pitching. But does it give you any meaningful results?

Depends how you look at it. Streams won’t get you anywhere in your music career unless it’s backed up by followers or listeners. It can give you a better look though. If you’ve pitched your hit song, and you want people to listen to this song, most users will go to your top popular songs and give them a listen. Also stream numbers stay there. They don’t change every week or month. You’ve probably experienced a situation where a friend has recommended an artist, or you decided to give someone a listen. When you go into their artist profile, you will probably take a look at whats popular in streams and press play.

Playlist pitching will give your hit song a good boost in stream numbers- a good way to make this song stand out.

Expectations and Understanding Results of Pitching to Playlisters:

Once you start a playlist campaign, a few things will happen. On average 5-10 percent of playlists pitched to will add your song to their playlist. If you pitch to 20 playlists don’t be surprised you weren’t added to one. If you do pitch to a decent number of playlists, your music will likely get added to at least a few and your listener numbers will rise. YES!

After the initial rise in numbers you should expect  to see a slow down in listeners which will eventually result in a generated loyal fanbase.

How do you know if your campaign was worth it?

Always keep KPIs (key performance indicators) in mind. The most important metrics are:

• Followers
• Saves
• Listeners
• Streams

Compare these numbers to your numbers before the launch of the campaign.

Conclusions

Playlist pitching can be a very powerful way to boost your streams. Paying for submissions is not the only way to do this. Spotting the right curators for your music and building relationships with them, is definitely something you can do on your own. Doing this properly is time consuming though, and is a whole topic within itself. In this article we’ve covered the main factors and measurable indicators that you should be aware of when starting a playlist campaign. Even if you had a successful campaign, it doesn’t mean you’re career is going to sky rocket. It’s another step towards building and growing your brand, so remember what to expect when planning your budget for this type of campaign, what to measure and always think long run.

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What are performing rights organizations? How many are there in the United States? What are the type of royalties that performing rights organizations are responsible to collect and who can receive these royalties?

These questions do sound complicated however they can somewhat be simplified! Below is an overview of the key items to understand while registering with a performance rights organization.

Performing right organizations as suggested by their name collect a royalties called Performance Royalties and pay out these royalties to songwriters and publishers.

Each country in the world has a performance rights organization that is responsible for collecting royalties for songwriters and publishers . Any musical artist is eligible to receive performance royalties if you were the author (lyrics), the composer or a publisher of a work. In many cases independent artists are defacto all three!

Who are performing royalties collected from?

Performance royalties are collected from: streaming services, radio stations, TV stations, bars, venues, restaurants and more. Pretty much anytime a song is played in public the broadcaster of the song is legally obligated to report back to the PROs that the song was played and pay out a small portion for the right to play the song.

How can artists collect their royalties?

It’s pretty simple to register with a PRO and usually requires a one-time membership fee. PROs from all over the world work together in order to collect royalties from all of the different territories.

So if your song is registered with ASCAP and you have radio plays in Germany, GEMA (the German PRO would collect your royalties and transfer it to ASCAP). Just remember:  PROs pay songwriters (authors and composers) not Artists who perform the song.

What performance rights organizations exist in the United States?

There are 3 main rights organizations in the US:

ASCAP – A non-profit organization managed by songwriters, composers and publishers. The board members and board of directors in ASCAP are elected by it’s society’s members.  750,000 members are registered as of 2020 and is one of the two dominating PROs in the US. You can join ASCAP both as a publisher and a songwriter for as little as $50 – one time membership.

BMI – Holds 800,000 members. Just like ASCAP, BMI is also a non-profit organization. You can join BMI for free as a songwriter but as a publisher it will cost you $150 or $250 if you’re registering as a company.

SESAC – The only for profit organization with 30,000 members. Not everyone can become a member of SESAC, you would need to receive an invitation.

Some important points to remember:

• Always remember that performance royalties are broken out into money that is paid out to both the songwriter and the publisher. We would definitely recommend to open both a writer and publisher account on a PRO to collect the two.
• Performance royalties are a completely different type of royalty then streaming royalties paid out to a distributor. It is important to remember that on top of streaming royalties that you receive from your distributor the streaming services ALSO pay performance royalties to PROs.
• To benchmark the above point for you  – the royalty amount paid out to a PRO amounts to something in the ballpark of 7% in addition to what the artist receives from the distributor. So if in a given month an artist received $1,000 from his/her distributor,  they should expect another $70 to be paid out to him through the PROs.
• An artist & publisher can only be affiliated with one PRO in each country & the publisher must be registered in the same PRO that the artist is. So in the case where a publisher, publishes a song on ASCAP but the artist is on BMI – ASCAP wll not be able to collect the royalties on the artist or publisher behalf.

Hope this helps in generally summarizing what performance rights organizations do and the royalties they collect on behalf of artists. Always remember that if you are an independent artist you most likely own both the artist and publisher rights and are able to collect both by registering with the organizations.

Please always keep in mind that in addition to performance royalties an independent artist is most likely entitled to receive other royalties from different organizations. More on this in our next articles!

That wasn’t THAT complicated, was it?

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Social media is the ultimate source to leverage followers and keep them in the know. Staying consistent with post frequency, quality and engaging content is key to build and grow your audience. However, coming up with new posts over and over again can be daunting and stressful.

Most artists feel that the responsibility of creating engaging content on a regular basis and becoming a one-person production company does is not a skill they naturally have.

Things don’t necessarily have to be that complicated! Simplicity is key when it comes to social media, and as you probably noticed, there is not one secret sauce to make fans magically come running to your door. You will eventually find your authentic voice.

In the meantime, here are a few themes to help you step up your game:

The Making Of (Exposing Your Followers to the Creative Process)

The process of songwriting, producing, mixing and marketing is always intriguing!

Especially if you have some good footage, captures from the studio, other talents who participated in the process and so forth. Sharing your creative process to your audience and fans makes exposes the story behind the song and spotlights the building blocks, motives, ideas behind the song. This additional exposure to your audience deepens the connection between the creator and fans.

When creating Making Of content for social media make sure to save your videos, photography and behind the scenes footage for marketing material!  Some ideas for useful Making Of content can be: videos of vocal recording sessions, raw takes of just you playing the song in a natural environment, sharing footage or the story of the inspiration behind the track.

Post a Lyric Video

Not every song needs to have a fully produced video clip.

There are literally hundreds of websites out there with royalty free videos like: pexels.com, pixabay.com where you can use a few cool atmospheric videos for your track.

Import the video into a movie editor software like i-Movie or Lightworks to add your lyrics. As a stand alone post it may not be the fastest post content you will create, but it could be an engaging, eye-capturing way for fans to interact with your music and also serve as content for your YouTube channel or other video outlets.

Share Nostalgic Styled or Throw Back Posts

Do you have any embarrassing moments from your childhood? A picture of you playing at your first concert? Post it!

People love seeing older photos of others. It’s not only a way to reveal another part of yourself or your background, but also can be a humoristic, nostalgic moment which is always easy to connect with.

Cover A Favorite Song or Artist

Cover songs have quite a few advantages. It really depends on how far you want to take this. Anywhere from simple guitar covers shot from your phone to a multi instrumental studio session.

Share a Playlists of Influential Music

Creating playlists and sharing with your fans is a cool giveaway as well as another nice way to create a deeper connection with your fans. People who appreciate the same artists have something in common.

Build Up Posts and Teasers of Upcoming Releases

Pretty much a no brainer. This comes naturally to most artists. You’re probably super excited about your next release, whether it is a song , an album, a video, a vinyl, new merch. Anything new is exciting! And anything new gives reasons to start a conversation.

Leverage this excitement and use it strategically by creating cool offers for early adopters. You can do a pre-save campaign for an upcoming track release, or start teasing with images of your new cool merch thats cooking, while creating discounted offers for whoever order in advance.

You don’t have to think transactional necessarily. This can be simple excitement about an announcement of a new gig date you closed. The point here is don’t just wait for the announcement of a new event. Build up towards the day of announcement and be generous with your fans.

Collaborations with Similar Artists

Do some research and find a few artists to collaborate with.

Collaborations on social media go way beyond just posting and  the beautiful thing about it is that you’re expanding your music network – which is the number one thing you need to focus on if you’re building a music career.

There are endless ways to collaborate with musicians around you: You can produce a track with someone, do simple covers to each others songs, perform together, do a webinar on a mutual interest you both have and so much more.

Whats nice about music is that when it comes to fans, you’re not necessarily in competition. On the contrary, if a fan loves your music, and a collaborator makes music in the same genre or style the fan will be happy to discover the collaborator through you.

A collaborator’s strategy won’t only give you something to post about, it will help you grow and reach new fans.

It is now more than ever that live music streaming is being acknowledged by the masses. Self quarantine is leading more people to consume content at home, while artists who are forever creating content are looking for new ways to reach their isolated audience.

These content consumption needs are now being addressed by live streaming platforms. In this article we will cover ways to quickly utilize the different audio and video live streaming platforms out there and finally we have picked our 2 favourites for music performances.

Broadcasting software:

These are downloadable softwares that allow you to manage your broadcast. Almost as if you were in a real television production studio. Definitely start from one of these to polish and upgrade content delivery.

These tools allow you to:

• Plan transitions in advance.
• Prepare your screen with graphics and text that can run on through the broadcast,
• Stream in HD
• Integrate and broadcast on the main live streaming platforms: Facebook, Youtube, Zoom, or custom stream keys (we’ll get to that one in a bit)

E-camm: (For Mac users only)

E-camm us actually an outstanding product. Its very easy to understand and intuitive. There are three main video modes your camera, “share screen” view, and an option to play a video from your computer.

E-camm also has a plugin that allows you to stream audio from your computer. This allows you to easily play audio from any DAW directly into the live stream platforms. If you are familiar with live streaming you already know that routing audio into your streams isn’t as easy as it sounds. Special tools like : voicemeter, soundflower, loopback were developed especially for doing this.

You can simply skip this with E-camm and just download the E-camm audio plugin.

OBS:

This is a totally free tool that many YouTube broadcasters use. OBS is a bit less intuitive than E-Camm but in terms of features you can do the same.

Audio Quality

First and foremost making extraordinary live streams is dependent on sound quality. Fans are seeking the intimacy of seeing you off stage but what will make them stay for the full show is the quality of your content. Sound is a very important factor here.

Unless you’re going for a spontaneous live solo session with your smartphone, a good audio interface is highly recommended. Assuming you already have one of these, the next step is to have an audio routing system that will allow you to control input / outputs from and to different applications.

Lets say you want to do a  Google Hangouts session, but want the people you’re speaking with to hear what’s playing on your audio workstation, or on a video editing software. These tools will allow you to route through the different apps:

Voice Meeter
Blackhole
Soundflower (Only on Mac)
Audiobus

Social Platforms

Social live streaming is another great way to connect with fans. Facebook and Instagram, for example, love giving you updates about who’s live right now. You can easily take advantage of this and connect with your fans on a more intimate and personal level.

Use Facebook & Instagram algorithms for your best interest. The thing to remember here is that your audience’s attention can be easily disturbed. It’s very likely that people on Facebook & Instagram won’t have the patience to stick around your 30 minute live streaming. If you have a decent following on Youtube, maybe it would be better to try and broadcast from there.

Below is a list of social streaming platforms:

Instagram live
Facebook live
Youtube live
Twitch
Periscope

Our staff pick platforms for  live stream gigs

After researching we have found ZOOM and Crowdcast to be the most accurate solutions for musicians.

With ZOOM you can easily setup the audio to both go through your DAW and have a good sound quality. By default, ZOOM doesn’t deliver well with a guitar or keyboard playing, but if you make a few adjustments , you can generate a pretty good sound. We’ve found a video that explains how to setup your ZOOM audio setting to get the best results (make sure your version of ZOOM is up to date): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEAb4G063sM .

What’s great about ZOOM is that for the purpose of playing live, you wont need any extra programs like OBS or E-Camm. Upgrade your account and you will also be able to connect your stream to other platforms such as facebook live (you wont see the comments unless you open your facebook live session. Be careful though, opening more than one of your live stream simultaneously can cause feedback).

Crowdcast allows you to create an event, connect to OBS/E-Camm, collect donations, collect emails through a registration link and even connect attendees with your Patreon account to support you. If that’s not enough, you can also stream from Crowdcast to other platforms if you use one of the upgraded versions. The only thing to keep in mind is that you should use Crowdcast with OBS or E-Camm. The platform has its limitations and since audio quality is a essential to live streaming, we highly recommend getting familiar with E-Camm or OBS when using Crowdcast .

Crowdcast is growing rapidly now and they did have some technical problems because of this growth in demand. Regardless it is indeed a solution tailored for musicians (and other content creators) which you should check out if you haven’t already.

Live streaming is now all over the web. From meetings and webinars, to yoga classes and music concerts. People are craving for content and personal connection. There’s still a long way until streaming will be flawless and smooth.

Until than, there’s still a feeling that we are in the stone age of live streaming evolution. The tools above can help step up your game, but keep in mind that there are more factors which can affect your live streams (internet connection for example).

There is definitely still demand for live music, and the technical faults are part of this stage of the evolution. Maybe 20 years from now we will laugh at ourselves for having such an unstable experience, but for now,  just go have fun with the tools above.

Play to your audience and you will eventually get better and better just like real gigging.amm

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How did the music industry get so complicated? How can an artist be aware of what’s happening all over the digital streaming sphere? So many platforms & so many data points to track. Although the complexity – digital distribution is actually something we should be thankful for.

Not too long ago, physical stores were Spotify and Apple Music of the world. Distributing an album to a “Tower Records” shop, would not help your music much. It is about getting discovered and doing proper campaigns to stand out.

A distributors job is to make sure an artist’s music fits store requirements, and pay you back artist royalties. As complicated and non-transparent as it may seem, we’re actually in an era where an artist can both deliver their music to the masses  and also get paid from one place.

When choosing a distributor it would be recommended to take into account the following considerations

Stores & Streaming Services a Distributor Submits To

Which stores (DSPs) does your distributor work with? Different distributors have connections with different DSPs. Yes, it is amazing to be on every streaming platform out there, but focusing on a few big ones can be more rewarding.

We have complied a list of the top 10 streaming services by subscribers in 2019 statistics. FYI IndieFlow’s platform distributes to all these streaming platforms with 100% of the royalties going back to the artists:

1. Spotify: 124 Million Subscribers

2. Apple Music: 60 Million Subscribers

3. Amazon Music:  55 Million Subscribers

4. Tencent Music: 35 Million Subscribers

5. YouTube Music: 20 Million Subscribers

6. Deezer: 7 Million Subscribers

7. SoundCloud: 175 Million Users (No subscriber data available)

8. Pandora: 6.2 Million Subscribers

9. Tidal: 3 Million Subscribers

10. Gaana: 1 Million Subscribers

Royalties & Pay Outs

As these royalties most likely won’t pay the rent (at least in 2020), you must be aware of two things:

How are your royalties provided and how often are they given to you?

Direct distributors often have the availability to receive payouts after a certain amount of funds ($5-50) are collected from the streaming services. These funds are usually distributed to your bank account.

Another useful stat here would be the average royalty per play on each one of the different channels. It is an interesting stat as the leading streaming service (Spotify) is actually not the top payer in terms of royalties to artists:

Here are the top 9 payers- their average payout per track and for comparison purposes the number of tracks needed to hit ~$1,500 in royalties:

1. Napster: $0.019 (Per Stream); 77,474 (Streams Needed to Reach $1,500)

2. Tidal: $0.012 (Per Stream); 177,604 (Streams Needed to Reach $1,500)

3. Apple Music:  $0.007 (Per Stream); 200,272 (Streams Needed to Reach $1,500)  

4. Google Play:  $0.0067 (Per Stream); 217,752 (Streams Needed to Reach $1,500)  

5. Deezer:  $0.0064 (Per Stream); 230,000 (Streams Needed to Reach $1,500)

6. Spotify:  $0.0043 (Per Stream); 336,842 (Streams Needed to Reach $1,500)

7. Amazon:  $0.004 (Per Stream); 366,169 (Streams Needed to Reach $1,500)

8. Pandora:  $0.001 (Per Stream); 1,106,767 (Streams Needed to Reach $1,500)

9. YouTube:  $0.0006 (Per Stream);  2,133,133 (Streams Needed to Reach $1,500)

Costs, Exclusivity & Length of Deal

Cost, exclusivity and length of deal vary depending on which distribution route you choose to take.

Distributing completely independently through online services or software:

(IndieFlow, Distrokid, CD Baby, TubeCore & other independent distributors).

The costs for these services vary from (0-10% of commission on royalties) to subscription costs or just a general cost per track distribution.

No exclusivity is required here and there is no minimum deal length)

Distributing semi independently:

Services such as AWAL offer semi independent services. AWAL has gone the semi label route – where they choose the artists they would like to distribute, offer them a cash advance & ask for a higher % of royalties (can be the ballpark of 20-30%).

They offer exit points upon payback of the cash advance.

*Information above should be verified with services and is not based upon sources and dependent on artist.

Distribution through a label:

The old fashioned label route is the “traditional” way of getting your music on the streaming platforms. It is worth noting that for the sake of uploading to the streaming services many of the labels utilize online services described above.

Labels can ask for contracts giving them up to 50-70% of royalties and will ask for exclusivity.

Labels do offer networking, PR and services that are not in the scope of digital distribution.

A Distributor’s Support Team

Is there someone to talk to on the other side? There may be all kinds of terms you’re not aware of, questions you may have or corrections you need to make even post release.

“What is an ISRC code?”

“I can’t find my profile on one of the stores”.

“How do I transfer my track from one service to another”

In many cases , because the stores are in direct contact with the distributors and not with the artists themselves, you need a good support team to back you up on a rainy day!

BACKSTAGE WITH: ATELLER | ATELLER MUSIC on Spotify | New York, NY

Main influences on making music?

Ateller: O Mer, Flying Lotus, James Blake, Radiohead, Fallen Atom, Zeppelin, Bon Iver, Kendrick, Anderson Paak, Chris Dave, my friends

Challenges in music production?

Ateller: Sit your ass down and work 🙂

Challenges in being a musician in 2020?

Ateller: Oooof — I don’t know where to start! I would say that the biggest challenge is the need to master many things that aren’t music – social media, marketing, fashion, brand, business. I don’t think we were prepared for it and whereas we’ve probably spent our 10,000 hours on music, we certainly haven’t on the other stuff. That creates a gap between talented profound musicians and their potential audience, because we simply don’t really know how to reach them.

Best ways new artists can reach an audience?

Ateller: Funny to finish my last answer and the read this question. Well – I just don’t know!

What is the most exciting aspect of launching your new album?

AT: This one had the strongest impact on me so far. Many people have been reaching out, writing long thoughtful messages about how the album touched them from all over the world. It’s kind of a mind fuck that something I did completely alone now belongs to other people and they have their private relationship with it.

Best ways to book gigs in 2020? What are your favorite venues and why?

AT: Well — I still book my gigs based on personal connections and just writing emails. I’m not sure that’s the best way. I really like to play at Baby’s All Right where I have a show at Feb 26, if you’re in NYC — come!

How and when did you start realizing that you can support yourself financially with music?

AT: I’ve been only doing music for roughly 3 years now and it’s truly the best feeling in the world. To me it’s mixing several worlds that create a somewhat consistent income – producing myself and other artists, playing drums and touring with other artists, and DJing. I think you need to have more than 1 expertise these days and be very flexible and adaptable in order to survive today, in all professions really.

What are your recommendations for up and coming artists who would like to take and treat their art as a business?

AT: My main advice (to myself included) would be to constantly release music. You can only benefit from dropping music to the world. You engage with the enviroment in a real way and learn and grow that way, whereas sitting on music, trying to perfect it for years and never releasing it gives you nothing and creates unnecessary loops in your head.

Earning money as an independent musician is challenging. Income opportunities vary through streaming, mechanical, performance royalties, performing at concerts and the list goes on.

Another opportunity presented to artists is sync – film and TV music licensing. The great thing about music sync is that it works for you while you can concentrate on the other aspects of your artistic career.

There are some cool websites out there that give your music necessary exposure to sync opportunities. The pricing models of these websites vary: some sites are free at the musician end while others take a percentage or request exclusivity for your music.

As an independent artist being open to these opportunities is not a bad thing.

Below is a comparison of the top music licensing websites, a description of their services, product & costs. These websites have hundreds of thousands of monthly visits – all are business opportunities for you as an independent artist.

Songtradr

Overview: An online marketplace designed to facilitate music licensing for films, TV shows, ads, apps, and other media. Songtradr also facilitate features such as distribution and YouTube monetization

Costs: One time fee which ranges from $0 – $49 + a percentage of the transaction.

Ease of use: As Songtradr offer a variety of services, their interface may seem a little complex – however the process is clear and easy.

Exclusivity: Songtradr does not request exclusivity. Artists can license through other outlets as well.

Artlist

Overview: An easy to use marketplace that connects any video content creator with music available for licensing. The music is filtered by genre, mood or video theme.

Costs: Free. The musician has no membership costs. There is a curation process – but Artlists’ business model charges the video creator, not the artists. Film creators pay a fixed fee for unlimited use .

Ease of use: Beautiful and easy to use interface.

Exclusivity: Artlist does not request exclusivity. Artists can license through other outlets as well.

Rights: The artist maintains the rights for their music.

Music Vine

Overview: Marketplace that connects video creators with music creators

Costs: 40% of transaction for exclusive licensing, 65% of transaction for non-exclusive licensing

Ease of use: Great interface. Artists need to fill out a short application in order to apply and need to have at least 5 songs on their catalog.

Exclusivity: Music Vine accept both formats. Artist portfolio must have at least 50% of the music in exclusive deals. Non exclusive deals charge a higher fee as mentioned above.

MusicBed

Overview: A marketplace for film makers. Membership differs depending on license type. MusicBed also offer larger scale projects and custom, pre-ordered music.

*Cost, ease of use and exclusivity comparisons was not available due to the fact that they are not accepting submissions at this time. You can fill in a form and they will get back to you when they open submissions for artists.

Soundstripe

Overview: Same as the others. Also offers sound effects.

Costs: Free. Musicians have no membership costs.

Ease of use: The interface is simple for video makers. All songs have 3 main tags attached to them. Tracks are submitted and reviewed. Soundstripe contact the musician only once accepted and offer the musician different types of contracts, depending on the level of the track and demand.

Exclusivity: Soundstripe require & request exclusivity. You cannot register songs if you’ve assigned them to a third party. You cannot submit songs if you are signed to a label or have publishing deals elsewhere.

AudioJungle

Overview: Probably the biggest website out there for royalty free music. Huge inventory of songs. As of the day this article was written they had 570,800 tracks!

Ease of use: The website is pretty much clumped with everything “Envato Market” offers. Interface is still very old school and not as pleasant as the younger websites above, but you can definitely get around.

Costs: Per license. The “author” (in this case the musician) decides what the price of their piece will be , and then , depending on the type of license, the final price will be calculated. The musician doesn’t take all of the payment made, there are also some taxes and handling fees.

Exclusivity: Artist can choose whether or not they want exclusivity. Exclusivity increases the artists share of the full price.

Epidemic Sound

Overview: A different and interesting one for music creators. Epidemic Sound will do what the other websites do- sell filmmakers a license for using your music, but they pay you up front. Registered musicians must be located in the US or Sweden.

Songs however cannot be registered with a publishing rights organizations (PROs or NROs). The reasoning for this appears on the Epidemic Sound website:

“Our team of experts collaborate with each Music Creator from the first demo to the final mix to make sure each track becomes as great as it can be, while never sacrificing artistic vision. Each Music Creator works closely with a dedicated team of music production experts, packed with songwriters, producers, and engineers who help our creators hone their craft. This team of Music Reviewers provides extensive personalized feedback to help music creators achieve the best version of their music’s original creative intent. Epidemic also provides in-house mastering”

Ease of use– The user interface is obviously focused on acquiring new users therefor the access to the music on Epidemic sound takes about one-two more step for new users to find music. Once you reach the music catalogue its pretty much the same. They have a pretty cool feature called “similar songs” attached to each song which can come in handy for filmmakers.

Costs: Free for musicians + the musicians are paid.. There is an up front fixed rate + a 50/50 split per deal.

Epidemic Sound also offer distribution for the songs accepted.

Exclusivity: Non-exclusive. However they do require your song to be “PRO” free as mentioned.

Curation: Only selected tracks .

Tracks in catalogue: 30,000 tracks

While the dream of having your music featured in the next big Netflix series is tempting -granting exclusivity to sync libraries at the beginning of your career is questioned .  Working with a few non-exclusive outlets might be a good way to market your music. Think it over before limiting yourself to exclusive channels – getting your music out there as an aspiring independent musician can be key.

IndieFlow met with Groover founder Dorian Perron for a conversation on the founding of Groover, result driven promotions for artists & music-tech startups.

Are you able to give us the story behind the founding of Groover? What inspired you guys to build a music-tech company?

Of course! I started as an indie music blogger in 2013, sharing music that I liked and thought didn’t receive the attention it deserved. I also organized live acoustic sessions at my place and live shows in Paris with indie rock & pop musicians such as Asgeir, Pete Yorn, Plants and Animals etc. It was the coolest hobby in the world. Then I met with my co-founders Romain & Rafaël in UC Berkeley in 2018, they had music projects and had struggled with getting their new tracks heard from blogs, radios, record labels etc. On my side, even though my blog Indeflagration was quite small, I was receiving over 100 requests per day from artists wanting to get their music featured!

What was already certain is that we wanted to help independent artists. We knew they encountered many obstacles and wanted to do everything at once. But we started by taking phone calls with more than 200 musicians and music industry professionals during an entire month, and we understood that the most major issue they were facing was related to the nightmare they were experiencing to promote their music. They were mentioning how tough it was to have other people than their mom, their friends and their dogs listening to their music…

It was not complicated to realize that artists needed help in order to stand out from the crowd when supposedly 80,000 new tracks are released each day on Spotify. We realized that the biggest bottleneck exists after the track is created, recorded, mixed. The barriers to production and distribution are already brought down thanks to production software such as ProTools and Ableton, streaming platforms and online distributors.

Our goal from the start has been to help artists emerge through influential channels such as blogs, radios, playlist curators, starting with ensuring that their music would be listened to and that they’d receive feedback on it. To help them break this wall of the first listening that could change things, and sometimes change everything. That’s why we created Groover. Today, with over 100k artists using Groover and over 1.5 million pieces of feedback and counting, our mission is on the right track.

As a company started in Europe do you see yourself as approaching a specific market in the music industry or genre in the music industry? What kind of perspective and insight do you feel that starting in Europe has given you guys on the music industry and contributed to the success of the company?  

Interesting questions! We started working on Groover in California but we had the idea of servicing France from the start. It’s where we had our early network and where we had interviewed most of the artists that made us realize how game changer a localized music promotion service could be. So we focused on France first and on building a community of blogs, radios, record labels there, then on bringing artists to the party.

We’ve kept on using the same method to expand. We indeed develop Groover with a country by country approach, building real communities of curators and artists and bringing them together in cities and countries in which we’re present, such as Paris, NYC, Milan, Quebec (Canada), Brazil and more. We also organize shows – more than 50 already – and free call for applicants on Groover to offer more opportunities to emerging artists to showcase their projects and talents.

Groover is now very international, with over 70% of our activity happening outside of France and artists from 120 different countries who have used the service. What’s interesting is that our fastest-growing country is the United States, while we initially thought it would be super complicated to grow there.

What we understood from our user research is that people in the US value a lot the fact that Groover is international, that it’s the only platform that can help them try to export their music in new markets such as France, Italy, Brazil etc.

I think our relative success comes from that: having built strong localized communities in multiple locations, which trigger international network effects and attractiveness for artists all around the world 🙂

How does Groover differentiate itself from other similar services?

Everything lies in “similar” 😉 There are indeed many services which try to address the issue of helping artists get their music heard, but not many which do it with as much effort and/or with the same model as Groover. Our main differences lie in:

• Our business model: artists send their track to music curators for €2 by contact selected (so approx. €60 for 30 curators for instance), the curators are paid €1 by piece of feedback given whatever their decision is, so they keep their editorial independence. We control the quality of feedback on a daily basis. If the curators haven’t listened to their track after 7 days, artists get Grooviz (our tokens) back to get in touch with new curators. So there’s really a guarantee that the curators contacted will listen to your music.
• As I was mentioning earlier, we develop Groover with a country by country approach, building real communities of curators and artists and bringing them together in cities and countries in which we’re present around the world. We also organize gigs and free call for applicants on Groover to offer more opportunities to emerging artists to showcase their talents.
• We focus on bringing high quality curators, real people of the music industry who are engaged locally
• We focus a lot of energy on the user experience, in order for artists to promote their music easily and efficiently
• Our customer service is probably one of the best in music since the very beginning, we answer super quickly and put a lot of effort into solving problems entirely, even bringing more value to the artists. Our customer service satisfaction rate is at 99% and we have no intention of allowing for it to decrease 😉

Who are some of your favorite artists on the Groover platform?

There’s nothing more satisfying than witnessing artists who’ve been using Groover from the start getting amazing results, making life changing encounters, building their team through the platform… And killing it on stage!

The artists that are part of our accelerator Groover Obsessions are particularly dear to me as it was a dream to be able to help artists boost their careers even further. The 50 artists & bands who are part of it are family now, and we have a team of 5 working every day on pushing them to where they deserve to be.

If I had to mention just a few of those I’m the most “obsessed” with currently, I’d talk about Faux Real, Alvin Chris, Silk Skin Lovers, Mathieu Saïkaly, L.Teez – he’s so good on stage! -, Metò, Morena, thaïs, Magon – the very first Obsessions artist – and Nedelko. You can check them out in our Spotify playlist. That’s 10 out of 50, but please don’t ask me to limit this favorites list even more 🙏

How do you see Groover developing and growing in the next couple of years?

Currently, we have over 100k artists and over 1,700 curators and professionals on Groover – and that number is growing every single day! Long may that continue because we feel we’re on the right path.

From a company perspective, our team is growing consistently. Alongside our HQ in Paris, we now have an office in Brooklyn NY and team members in the UK, Brazil, Italy and elsewhere.

To be more precise, we have 3 main strategic priorities:

• Growing internationally. Groover started in France but over 75% of our activity takes place abroad now, especially in the US, Canada, Italy, the UK, the rest of Europe, Brazil etc. We’re growing our community of curators in every market and artists from more than 120 different countries have already used Groover
• Improving the experience for artists for their first campaign but also their subsequent ones, especially by improving the artist dashboard with new features and a better experience. We expect that artists will be able to get the most out of their feedback, to better interact with curators, to get meaningful advice to accelerate their career and analyze their results better in order to send more relevant promotion campaigns afterwards
• Developing Groover Obsessions, our artist accelerator: we select the best performing artists on Groover and bring them more services tailored to their projects in order for them to grow their visibility, connections and career in the right way. We already support over 60 artists from France, Canada, the UK, the US, Brazil and intend to support many more before the end of 2022.

On top of those priorities, we spend some time exploring new growth opportunities for artists, e.g. addressing Instagram/TikTok influencers and adapting the service in a more detailed way to each kind of curators.

Want to try Groover out? IndieFlow users can now enjoy a 10% discount. Sign up on Groover and use the code INDIEFLOWGROOVERVIP [more explanations on how to apply the special discount here].

Follow Groover on Instagram and Spotify.

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