| CD Baby DIY Musician Podcast |
 Dec. 14,
2008
Ep.41 : What's Your Story?
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| CD Baby has reduced clips to :29 secs |
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| posted by scprods on Thursday October 16 2008 @ 05:23PM PDT |
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Don't know if everybody knows but cdbaby is no longer doing 2
minute sound clips of songs; they have reduced them to :29
seconds - I can see them reducing it to a minute, but :29 seconds
is not a very long time for a listener to get a feel for a song; how is
a potential customer going to hear enough in :29 seconds? If you
think it's too drastic a reduction, I would urge you to email cdbaby
(cdbaby@cdbaby.com) and let them know. Again, I can see going to
a minute - but :29 seconds? Isn't Itunes a minute?
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Most digital stores seam to do 30 sec.
clips ,but not all.I think it could work
time will tell.
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I think this is just the first of many negative changes coming from the new CD Baby aka Disc Makers.
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your lucky to get 6sec. at any record co. if you cant sell your self in 30 you need to cut some better songs
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So I assumed you've tried it both ways, and you sell better at 30 seconds? Give me a break.
My prediction is that CD Baby will quickly see a significant drop in average sales per artist once the 30 second clip is implemented.
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Read down and you'll see this is something that ASCAP and BMI and the PROs are demanding. Even though many CD Baby artists have made the conscious decision to not play their game, and we're not associated with any PRO, they still want everyone to play by their rules. What works for label acts, though, is often a bad thing for independent artists/writers who seem to make up the majority of the CD Baby community and whose CDs are mostly what is sold here. So, why bow to the wishes of ASCAP, BMI et al when they have no control over non-affiliated artists?
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YES! The contact and communication has completly changed- and not in an easier-to-be-clear-and-really-get-it-don kind of way.
Derek is and was brilliant at communicating things simply and to the point- Disc makers people are sadly not:(
Soon I think that CD baby will be as complicated and unservice oriented as Disc Maker's other sites - in the same family of people who unwittingly complicate things like Cafe Press and Word Press. The Code Monkeys are on the move!
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Unfortunately, this is something we were forced to do. Every online music service(including
iTunes) who offer "Preview" clips are only allowed to stream 29 seconds for preview purposes.
Anything beyond that, and you're required to pay all the performance rights organizations huge
fees for streaming that content. We choose the option that we thought would best serve the
artist in the long run. My advice is to make sure you add a link to your CD Baby page to an
outside page(like myspace, or your official band site) where you do have full length tracks from
your album.
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There are thousands of artists on CD Baby not associated with any performance rights organization. Can you explain how ASCAP or BMI can force you to shorten their clips if they are not members of their orgs?
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[In•de•pen•dent: (adj.) Not having sold one's life, career, and creative works over to a corporation.]
I feel like these big corporations like ASCAP and BMI are forcing this site to treat everyone like they have sold out to a corporation, but with none of the 'benefits' of having done so.
If I am independent and don't expect, get or need radio play, then I in no way have any need to join ASCAP or BMI. Therefore, there is no way they should be able to strongarm CD Baby into shortening my clips. Wny should they have any say whatsoever over my music? A major mistake was made here.
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Oh dear - we took some time to liase with CDBaby staff (really helpful people!) about sound clips for both of our albums - we emailed start times, end times, fadeins and fadeouts for our song previews. They are exactly the same as the previews from our web site (susanraven.com). So you hear, for example, a bit of a verse and a bridge and a start of a chorus, a good taste of the song (more than a minute in some cases) and never just an intro...
Songs arbitrarily ending at 30 seconds are not the best listening experience...
{{ PLEASE }}
How about, in that case, allowing artists to decline to have CDBaby previews, but allow artists access to an html area on our artist pages, to embed our own player streaming our previews from non-CDBaby web space?
Best of all would be to leave well alone, but if that cannot be an option, then please do try to find an alternative way for us to give good representative previews of our work - it can really help to sell our music.
Thank you
(takes a polite bow and leaves)
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If I own 100% of my rights can't I just sign a contract allowing CDbaby to stream my music for free with no liabitity for performance roayalties?
And...
What if I never gave a sh@t about PRO's and do not belong to any of them. Can you stream my full songs then?
Peace,
bubbles
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Kevin, many other sites promote the commercial, label acts, whereas hereon CD Baby, most of the music is made by independent artists. Many, probably the great majority of us, have no affiliation with ASCAP or BMI, and we never want to have any dealings with a PRO. What about making a statement that CD Baby is for indies, and we don't need no steenking PRO badges around here?!
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Yes... CD Baby's hand was definately forced. THey either reduce song clips to 29 seconds, or pay LOTS of royalty fees... which they'd have to pass on to US.
Strength Through Unity!
Julian aKa CCG Pop SUperhero
PopSuperhero.com
PowerofPink.com
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if you think ascap or bmi would actually get those royalties to you, you are mistaken.
they will collect them but yours won't make it to one of their "official" recorded plays etc.
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If you are concerned about ASCAP not paying you royalties from their tracked outlets, simply join ASCAP for free, at www.ascap.com, where you can then register the various percentages for the writer/composer/artist for each song. That way, sites that DO play more than :30, plus radio, tv, movies, all will pay license to ASCAP and then they will know who to send the check to. This way, if some film producer chances on your music (and it does happen) they can ligitimately license it since it will be listed with the agency. Hope this helps. Again, signing up is easy with ASCAP, you can protect your rights to future royalties, plus there are some excellent benefits to membership. You can put Artistname (ASCAP) in your liner notes!
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Well... CD Baby is now a digital download center where you can also buy CD's. What if they were to add for a monthly fee x amount of free listens like I Tunes etc and combine this with the paid down loads and pay us like ITunes etc. Leave the non member samples at the 24 seconds as a teaser. Not sure that would work just a thought.
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Every online store that streams previews has limited them to under 30 seconds, which is the standard length for a preview clip. Since its inception CD Baby has felt that our 2-minute streams would be a nice plus for artists, allowing potential customers to more fully appreciate a song before buying. However, if you've been following the news at all you'll have noticed that there have been a number of lawsuits filed by the performing rights organizations to attempt to collect royalties on streaming preview clips - even on ones shorter than 30 seconds!
There are other companies like MySpace and Rhapsody that stream full songs. However, they generate subscription or ad revenue, and pay royalties from that revenue.
CD Baby, on the other hand, takes no advertising, and just like iTunes and Amazon, only makes money when a fan buys your CD or download. That's why it was necessary for us to go to 30 seconds for our streaming clips.
In effect, what these new clips have done is to bring our preview policy in line with the big guys. This policy is in effect on all new titles, and existing titles will be converted to 30 second clips over the next couple of weeks.
I'm not thrilled about it, but since our clips are only used to help sell your music we don't want to be held liable for streaming royalties (and you wouldn't want us to deduct them from your account either, I'm sure).
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Tony,
"There are other companies like MySpace and Rhapsody that stream full songs. However, they generate subscription or ad revenue, and pay royalties from that revenue."
Since when did myspace pay royalties? Am I missing something?
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they pay royalties to asscap and BMi,
they collect them but then claim they can't keep track of everthing in this day and age so they pay based on outdated random samplings collected by their people.
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"they pay royalties to asscap and BMi,
they collect them but then claim they can't keep track of everthing in this day and age so they pay based on outdated random samplings collected by their people."
Gosh, how is that legal?!? I mean, we put our trust in cdbaby, itunes, etc (and give them commission) to correctly and accurately report plays and sales, yet MySpace is allowed to 'get away with' dubious counting/accounting practises???
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Not MySpace. The performing rights organizations: Ascap, BMI, Sesac.
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How about an online form that CDBaby clients can sign that waives the royalty for those particular streams? If a CDBaby client was to waive those royalties directly, what possible harm could there be in then allowing 2 minute streams for that artist?
I think CD Baby needs to re-think this, as this is one of the things that makes buying music from CDBaby a special experience for the customer. I know my customers have already reacted quite negatively to this announcement!
Please find a workaround. Your uniqueness is at stake, folks.
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| by mz
on Tuesday November 04 2008 @ 11:03AM PST [ reply | parent ] |
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there has to be a work-around.
this is a bad idea in my book. How is this even possible to do when CDbaby is selling our products for us while myspace is making money off the advertisements surrounding our music. Myspace paying for streaming when they make money from our traffic makes much more sense.
The most confusing part is that CDbaby gave the option to make your samples whatever you wanted. So how about the people worried about their streaming royalties just make their song samples 30 secs.
OR better yet, if you have to do the 30 second samples continue to allow anyone to lengthen their samples and by doing that agrees to no streaming royalties. So, anyone who requested specific times that were over 30 seconds is also not going to claim royalties on a stream.
there has to be another way.
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I am curious as to whether this 29-second "rule" is actually supported (or not) by copyright law. Or is it just not clearly defined and all parties are just winging it until a CRB ruling makes it official?
I would have thought that any agreement between a company like CD Baby (or iTunes, or Amazon, etc.) and copyright holders would include a waiver of performance royalties for clips intended solely to promote the purchase of said music.
I too would like to see CD Baby return to 2-minute previews. 30 seconds is nothing. Most songs don't even get to the chorus within a minute!
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While I understand why CD Baby may have had to make the change,
I'm wondering why an e-mail about this wasn't sent to all CD Baby
artists. It is a very significant change and we all should have been
officially notified. Not everyone checks this message board.
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It'll be in the next email to CD Baby artists, which is going out in a week or so. Sometimes the timing between the web and the emails doesn't exactly match, but no worries, everyone will get notified.
Of course, you're assuming everyone reads their emails. :)
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SongVault can help with the full length preview issue for CD Baby.
Hi Tony,
Part of our terms of service is that we ask artists in opting out with royalty payments in return to helping promote their music on our network.
SongVault.com is making updates to our site and getting ready to launch a new feature for unsigned artists to sell music downloads in the next couple of weeks and we were already planning to contact CD Baby once we have this ready. I guess the timing is right in consideration to the issue with full length previews.
We can provide the ability to have artists link their music previews on CD Baby and also have their entire music library available for single sale downloads on SongVault.
If your not aware of what we do, SongVault helps market and promote unsigned artists of every genre through our network of on-demand radio stations where listeners "filter" what songs they consider to be the "best of the best" songs that get placed in our SongVault directory.
The idea behind this is that instead of providing a music catalog with millions of songs, SongVault has the music filtered through 3 stages of music charts before getting a permanent placement in our SongVault directory. Out music catalog then is based on quality, not quantity.
The general listening audience votes or chooses what songs they want to add to their personal online playlist. Sale of music downloads will be added as part of the filtering factor.
It's sort of like Rhapody without the commercial artists and no subscription cost to the listener.
Please contact us for further discussion in how we can help with a solution to providing full length previews and further help in promoting artists on CD Baby.
Best Regards,
Paul John
Founder
SongVault.com
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Just want to add my voice to the mix. 29 seconds... I have a song that closes the sale on one of my CDs when I play live. People often want to know which album the song is on... when they find out they buy the CD. My digital download sales for this song, however, are very few ... why? 29 seconds. You see this is one of those songs that creeps up on you... it needs time to develop and build. When someone is allowed the time to really hear it they are often in tears. I wonder how many other songs there are like that… great songs that just need a good listen.
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I don't understantd why ascap can't keep track of streams on myspace...they are frickin listed...we are at 96,000 plays, not the most but obviously a countable percentage... Cd baby represents a mass of BMI ascap artists...i wonder if there is any way to request your share of royalties due...collectively..
Record labels do it, and not all signed artists are doing well enough "to be counted" but unlike us get PR Royalties...Hmmm
email me if you know anything...JM
info@midnightreign.com
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Argh..that is terrible. My tunes barely get started in the first minute. Long intros. You won't get any idea of what the whole track sounds like from 29 seconds. Oh well...hopefully there will be some way to adjust this...
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A possible solution would be to let the artist select which 29 seconds of a song the preview will contain.This would put it into our hands and enable us to make sure the Hook is in the preview.
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You can select where in the song the 29 seconds starts... it doesn't have to be at the beginning of the song. I'm new here and I signed up my audio book last week. As part of the editing process I had to select which tracks could be previewed and then I had to click on a link next to the selected tracks which opened a box and allowed me to change the default start setting to whatever I wanted it to be. I hope that helps :-)
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Hi Tony - I wonder, is there a way that we artists could get those 2-minute clips from CDBaby to post on our own websites? you've done that work, and there is obviously some great concern among the artists - at least we could offer that meatier sound clip on our website while still directing the commerce back to CDBaby. just a thought, maybe not worth the two cents I just spent on electricity and internet typing it :)
with warm regards from Blue Ridge country,
Andrew
--
Andrew McKnight http://www.andrewmcknight.net
Singer Writer Guitarist - Middleburg VA
http://www.myspace.com/andrewmcknight
FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Andrew-McKnight/16254192997
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Andrew,
In the distant past, we did allow people to link to our sound clips from their personal web
pages, but it became a really big problem. A huge number of illegal and questionable sites
started harvesting those sound clips from our site, which created a number of legal issues.
If you don't have the ability to post sound clips in your own website, the best bet is to have
a myspace page and load it up with full song clips there.
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I checked my song Mardr Gras and I'm still at
2 minutes.Some other songs are at 29 seconds.
If you you have any questions I suggest you
contact cdbaby directly.
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My mistake, the song is called Mardi Gras.
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Hi Tony,
Lot's of comment & suggestions here that many (most?) of us are not affiliated with ASCAP or BMI and don't intend to be. I think those of us in that boat should be allowed the 2 min preview cuts if we wish them. Can't be that hard to sort out, can it? I constantly tout CD-Baby as a quality shopiing site, based partly on the nice audition clips, and often have made a purchase decision here based on what I can hear. Don't give in to ASCAP/BMI where you don't have to.
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Tony,
One of the reasons I chose to sell my CDs through CD Baby was the
longer streaming time for each tune. We've all paid money to do
this. Shouldn't this be up to the individual artist? Isn't there
another way of dealing with this besides shortening the clips?
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This is just the first of many negative changes from the new CD Baby aka Disc Makers.
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Bruce,
This change is not due to our recent purchase by Disc Makers.
It's something that was in the works before then. The
performance royalty organizations had been letting things slide
for many years, but now that the web is a place where so many
people enjoy music, they have been making sure everyone is
being compensated for performances.
Change would have happened regardless.
I've worked at CD Baby for a long time, and I can say that the
Disc Makers purchase is only going to help bring CD
Baby up to speed for the 21st century.
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I'm hoping that in the future we will be able to offer the option, but for right now, that isn't possible. It's a very
complex issue. It's not just a matter of not allowing people to stream cover songs for more than 30 seconds.
Thousands of artist that sell at CD Baby have their songs registered at ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC. By listing their songs
with these organizations, they are telling them that they are supposed to be collecting those royalties on their
behalf. Hopefully, in the coming year, the dust will settle some, and we can see if their are any other options for
the future.
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Just cut those few thousand members; clips who happened to join ASCAP and BMI down to 29 seconds. The rest of the clips can be left alone. Problem solved.
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What about the rights of the many musicians with music on CD Baby that have no affiliation with the PROs - and don't want any? Surely the rights of this large group cannot be ignored. (And, I'm not meaning by CD Baby - but by the "powers that be".) The times they are a changin' and I can't believe that in a democratic society those who don't have any ties to PROs, especially when they exist in such large numbers, can be forced to obey PRO dictates. What about the non-PRO people here?
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Will current songs be converted to 30 seconds or just future songs? If so, how do we select where to begin the clip on the current songs? Thanks...
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I think this is an excellent idea...On my MySpace site potential buyers can listen to a full song from the CD and decide to buy it. Perhaps this 30 sec limit will entice musicians to spice up the | | |
