Providing your Music to Musicadium
No way! We simply provide a distribution service and leave it at that. You retain all the rights to your music and recordings. We are not a label, a publisher, a promoter or a record company.
We are simply a service that puts your music up for sale on digital outlets throughout the world. You can choose to stop using our service at any time you wish. This is a non-exclusive agreement.
No, that is not necessary. If you don't have a full album, you can sell just a single track, an EP or a full length album if you have one. You can submit multiple albums too, so don't forget about your back catalogue.
We require all tracks to be .wav files (just like a regular audio CD). If you send us anything else, we can't upload it for you, so make sure they are .wav files before putting the CD in the mail. We don't need your master reference CD though, so feel free to burn us a disc. Just make sure it's clearly labelled!
Yes.
Yes. Barcodes are vital for tracking your sales. Musicadium can supply a barcode to you for use with the digital distribution of your release for a one-off fee of $39 AUD ex. GST. During the online sign-up process to add an album for distribution with Musicadium, there will be a checkbox for you to request a UPC be supplied.
If you already have a barcode that you obtained for the physical release of your album, you may also use this for the digital release. Just enter the details when adding your album. If you obtain a barcode from us for your digital release however, you may not use this for your physical release as well. For more information regarding the legal use of barcodes for physical distribution, head here.
A UPC is a series of numbers exclusively associated with your album, EP or single. A UPC looks like this:
Each line represents a different number allowing machines to read the barcode information.
UPCs allow for easy tracking of yourdigital sales.
Your album, EP or single must have its own UPC.
If you already have a UPC, you can use this for your digital album, EP or single.
If you do not have a UPC, Musicadium can supply you one for your digital album for $39 AUD ex. GST. Please note, if you obtain a barcode from us for your digital release, you may not use this for your physical release as well. For more information regarding the legal use of barcodes for physical distribution, head here.
An ISRC is an International Standard Recording Code. An ISRC code allows you to track sales of individual songs.
If your songs do not have ISRC codes, Musicadium will generate these for you free of charge. The ISRC code can then be assigned to that song even if you are no longer a Musicadium customer.
Yes. We will automatically assign ISRC codes to any track without one. That ISRC can then be transported wherever the song goes.
No. Musicadium provide them free of charge.
We charge on the basis of the number of outlets you wish to distribute to. You can distribute your albums to iTunes, eMmusic or Amazon MP3. Costs work like this:
| Distribution fee to one outlet | $39 AUD |
| Distribution fee to two outlets | $69 AUD |
| Distribution fee to three outlets | $79 AUD |
| Barcodes | $39 AUD |
| Annual renewal fee | $20 AUD |
NB: All prices are ex. GST for Australian residents.
The distribution fee is charged per release. A release can be a single, an EP or a full length album.
The annual renewal fee is first charged 12 months from the date payment is made for your album and at the end of each year after that.
Your music will be available for purchase on iTunes, emusic and Amazon MP3. We will send your music worldwide unless you instruct us not to. These three stores account for the majority of digital music sales. Musicadium only works with established outlets and is finalising contracts with a number of additional online stores. We are currently negotiating with various other digital outlets across the globe to further extend the reach of your music. Stay tuned!
Yes, we sure do. We realise that not all artists and labels are alike. Email us with how many albums you would like to submit and we will quote you a discounted price.
Essentially, we (and you) need to cover ourselves legally! We do not request ownership or assignment of copyright in any way. We do however, need to ensure that you, as the authorised legal representative for an artist, band, group, company or corporation, have secured the necessary releases and authorities from all parties associated with your music. This is an exceptionally important part of the process and we have aimed to make this as simple as possible. Remember our contract is not term based (you can pull out at anytime), is non-exclusive and is aimed at helping to keep things simple yet legal for you and for us.
Musicadium is contracted in an Aggregator role for the albums that artists supply to us. We do not take over any rights and cannot legally "represent" the artist or label on certain matters. We can make changes to album information with our partnered digital outlets like iTunes but we cannot provide direction to them to only deal with us and not other aggregators or distributors that the artist may have engaged. In short, we are not a label, promoter, agent, publisher nor adopt other roles not specifically part of Aggregation services. We are service enabling you to get your music onto our partnered digital outlets.
No you don't. We work with artists and labels from the UK, USA, NZ, Japan, Pacific Islands etc. To use our distribution service you can be an artist or label from anywhere in the world.
If your status in the member's area says awaiting CD then no, we have not received it yet. If it reads anything else then we have it in our excited little hands. There is no need to contact us about it, your member's area has the latest information!
Unfortunately we cannot make any promises on this one. If you have a specific release date and would like to pass this information onto us, feel free to do so. However, the best way to ensure that your release is live in the store when you want it to be is to be prepared! Send us your album with 8 weeks to spare.
Album artwork is displayed on the digital outlets and only the cover art is required. Atrwork must be in .jpg format, 300dpi and a minimum of 600 by 600 pixels. All artwork must be in the best-quality RGB colour mode (including black and white images), we cannot accept CMYK colour mode. You may not include any of the following information on your artwork or it will be rejected by the outlets: email addresses, web addresses or any other contact information, pricing information or advertising for a feature that is not available on the outlet (e.g. a DVD). If you have scanned your cover art from your physical CD, make sure that you remove any stickers or prices listed on the cover.
You must include both the artist/band name and album title on the artwork.
Sales, Royalties & Payments
In all cases, Musicadium returns 100% of royalties to its customers. Each outlet has different ways of paying but you can be sure that Musicadium does not.
We give you back everything you have earned.
iTunes
Talking in US$, iTunes will sell your music for .99 cents per track or $9.99 for your full length album. If you don't have a full length album, simply multiply the number of tracks you have x .99 cents, and that is what it will be sold for. iTunes returns to Musicadium .70 cents for every track downloaded or $7.00 for your album. You retain 100% of this royalty. Other aggregators can take up to 50% of your royalties so make sure you read the fine print on royalties before you sign up somewhere else.
eMusic
emusic is a service that lets people download music on a subscription model. emusic customers can download songs each month based on their subscription rate. emusic currently offers: 30 songs per month for $9.99, 50 songs per month for $14.99 and 75 songs per month for $19.99
emusic royalty payments vary depending on how much money emusic makes in pre-sales each quarter. To calculate this figure, emusic divides the amount of money made by the number of songs downloaded which then gives them a Pay Rate for each song downloaded.
emusic then deducts out Allowed Expenses and you you get 60% of the remainder.
To help you understand, imagine in the first quarter of this year 1,000,000 songs were downloaded from emusic generating revenue of $250,000. Each individual download would be worth $0.25.
emusic would then deduct expenses of, for example, $0.05 leaving $0.20 per song. You receive 60% of this $.020 which equates to $0.12.
If you had 100 tracks downloaded in the first quarter of this year then, hypothetically you would have received 100*$0.12 = $12.
Amazon MP3
Amazon MP3 sells individual songs and albums at four price levels based on whether releases are current and how much those releases sell.
At present, Amazon mp3 sells music in the US and the UK with a European store soon to be added.
You can request a payment from Musicadium at any time, providing you have over $20 AUD in your account. You will receive the payment electronically through the PayPal service.
You can track sales 365 days of the year through our Member's Area and keep an eye on which stores are selling and which countries are buying the most of your music.
Just to make sure we don't just pay small change, we wait until you have accumulated $20 AUD ex. GST in royalties before we pay out. But don't worry, that's only 2 - 3 albums so you'll get there in no time.
Musicadium provides you with sales reports as soon as we receive them. However, iTunes and Amazon MP3 provide us with reports approximately 45 days after the end of a month, and eMusic sends out reports 45 days after the end of a quarter.
So - if you wanted to see the sales you made in August in the iTunes USA store for example, these will appear halfway through October. Rest assured, as soon as we get the information from the outlets, we provide it to you!
It's easy! You just login to your Musicadium account, go to the sales area and click on the 'Pay Me Now' button. Your royalties will be deposited into your PayPal account within 2-3 business days.
Just like a bank account, you need to have at least 1c in your account for it to stay open.
It usually takes 3 - 6 weeks for albums to go live on the outlets. In rare circumstances, some outlets can take even longer. If you're album falls under the 'classical' genre - this will take longer for iTunes to process as their quality assurance team has to check all of the composer details.
If you have a specific release date for the album, uploading 6-8 weeks in advance is recommended.
Outlets check the quality of the recording to ensure they meet minimum standards, as well as verifying that all of the information provided is correct.
Outlets also reserve the right to modify album information (i.e. genres) if they deem that information to be incorrect.
Grit your teeth, take a deep breath and just sit tight. If the album is showing up in the member's area as "Outlets Processing", then there isn't a lot we can do. 99% of the time, uploads will take 3-6 weeks. If after 8 weeks, the album is not showing up, shoot us a support request in your members area and we will contact the outlets on your behalf.
No. iTunes will set the price. They are not flexible and will not accept any price changes you want to suggest.
No. Have a look here for more information.
Yes. But it is your responsibility to make sure you are paying royalties to the original owners.
If you have any queries, call or email APRA on 02 9935 7900 or apra@apra.com.au.
Yes. But it is your responsibility to make sure the samples have been cleared for use with the original owners.
If you have any queries, call or email APRA on 02 9935 7900 or apra@apra.com.au.
No, not yet, we are working on it. We currently distribute through iTunes, emusic and Amazon MP3 but will offer more soon.
Absolutely. If you are proactive and looking to promote yourself we will assist you to make the most of your opportunities with each outlet. But let's be clear, we pay you 100% of your royalties so that you have as much cash as possible to hire someone to market you professionally. That's the best way to market yourself. And any distributor who says that they market you is - well - likely to be lying through their teeth.
Think about it.
Distributors are volume-based businesses. They deal generally with hundreds, if not thousands of releases. Those releases grow in number every week.
So the question is, how on earth does a distributor market that many artists?
Do you really think they are on the phone calling outlets saying - we have 100 new releases and we want you to market them all?
No way. It's unsustainable as a business model for starters. And just look, on iTunes for example, at how few tiles there are to promote. And now think how many artists from major labels are clamouring for that valuable piece of digital real estate. Common sense is enough to tell you that as an independent artist, your distributor is doing very little, if nothing at all to promote you. Musicadium is a distributor and we do that side of things really well. We leave marketing to the professionals and we think you are best advised if you do too.
Making Changes / Using The Member's Area
Most distributors would say no, but Musicadium understands that sometimes accidents happen! We will allow you to make one change without charge - if we can!
You see, after a release has been sent to an outlet, changes are pretty difficult to make. We may need to resend your album entirely and if this is the case we will have to charge you for another upload fee. If we can do it for free, we will!
This is why it is very important to check that all of your album info is 100% correct before submitting it to us.
Here are the things we are usually able to change without resending -
- artist name
- album title
- cover art
- genre
- track title
Here are the things that usually mean we have to resend the release -
- UPC change
- ISRC change
- audio change
- track order
If you need a change made, send a support request with your album's barcode and title, and the change that you would like us to request.
Changes can take up to a month to show up so give it time before you send us a frantic email saying nothing's changed.
In the Musicadium member's area, in the bottom right of the screen, you can track your songs sales. There is a 45 day lag in both iTunes and Amazon MP3's sales reporting and eMusic reports to us 45 days after the end of a quarter so be patient. You won't see February's figures until late April, you won't see March's figures until late May etc etc.
No. Once your album is on iTunes, you cannot add tracks to it. We can however pull the album down and reload it with the new tracks but this will be considered a new release and you will have to pay the upload fee again.
ITunes uses the Gracenote software (formerly CDDB) to identify CDs that are inserted into a drive, and to gather information relating to that CD.
However, as this information is sometimes entered by fans instead of artists, it can be incorrect.
If this occurs you should contact Gracenote with both the incorrect information and the corrections. The more details you provide them with, the easier it will be for them to verify these details and fix the problem.
There are two options. Either the quality is too low (you need a minimum of 300dpi and 600 by 600 pixels) or the file size is too large. We don't accept cover art above 3MB.
Yes. You will see the status of your album change when it arrives. That is our way of letting you know. There is no need to call or email us.
If the album is already uploaded, then there is nothing we can do.
If it hasn't been uploaded, send it through and we will try and make the change.
Yes. First, pick out the song you want to be single of the week. Second, think if you can offer iTunes any exclusives or free downloads of your music, they like that. Third, fill out this form and email it to info@musicadium.com telling us which song you would like submitted and when. Remember, choose your best song because there are thousands of songs submitted each week and only the cream of the crop gets picked.
The outlets select this material editorially - meaning that we cannot influence them in any way. They do not accept paid placements or advertising, so the only way to get chosen is to write fantastic songs!
If you wanted to offer your music for free on iTunes the other option is to create a podcast. For some instruction on how to do this, head here.
Just keep checking back in. iTunes will not notify you or us when the album goes live so just check in every so often after the three week mark and it will show up.
The status of your album will show up in the member's area. Use this as your guide.
If you'd like to take your album down from an outlet, please send an email to support@musicadium.com This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with the following information:
1. Your Musicadium username
2. Your artist name
3. The title of your release
4. The barcode attached to your release
5. The store or stores that you would like to be taken down from.
Please note that we cannot give a specific time frame with take down requests. A ticket will be lodged with the appropriate outlets when the request is received, but we cannot anticipate an exact date as to when the outlet will remove the release from the store.
Musicadium gives you the freedom to close your account and terminate services with us at any time.
Please send us an email to support@musicadium.com with the following information.
- Your Musicadium username
- Your artist name
- The title of your release
- The barcode attached to your release
- Confirmation that you would like to remove content from all stores.
As outlined in the Musicadium Distribution Agreement, the $20 AUD (excl. GST) annual renewal fee is calculated quarterly and is payable in arrears. We will send you an invoice for any outstanding renewal fees, and once this payment has been finalised, we will take your releases down from the outlets.
Therefore, the following portion of the annual renewal fee will apply when you close your account.
(a) prior to 3 months before the Renewal Date and after 6 months before the Renewal Date, then
you shall only be required to pay us 75% of the Renewal Fee (AUD$15 plus GST);
(b) prior to 6 months before the Renewal Date and after 9 months before the Renewal Date, then
you shall only be required to pay us 50% of the Renewal Fee (AUD$10 plus GST);
(c) prior to 9 months before the Renewal Date and after 12months before the Renewal Date, then
you shall only be required to pay us 25% of the Renewal Fee (AUD$5 plus GST).
E.g. if you signed up with Musicadium in January, but decided to close your account in March, you would only be liable for 25% of the annual renewal fee.
Go to apple.com/itunes/linkmaker to create the HTML. Then, paste the HTML into your MySpace profile. To do this, go into profile edit and make sure you are in safe mode.
Go to your MySpace, if you can setup a MySpace, then you are qualified to cut and paste HTML. Once you've logged in to your MySpace, go to profile edit and make sure you are in safe mode. Then, paste the code into your bio or band members field.
The explicit tag works in a similar way to the stickers found on physical CDs. If one of your tracks features explicit material, by default all of the tracks will be marked with the explicit tag.
Affiliate Programmes
Yes, we do! We want to provide our affiliates with as much revenue opportunity and promotional visibility as possible! Head to http://www.musicadium.com/affiliate/ if you want to know more or to sign up.
Misicadium Affiliate Commission is Pay-Per-Sale. You get 10% for each sale you deliver! And you get $10.00 AUD just for signing up!
Musicadium Clothing and Promotion Items
Yep, we sure do! We sell shirts and posters over at Red Bubble. We also have stickers, DL's, badges and more if you are interested in receiving a promo pack for your business, event or band. Let us know if you want a promo pack sent to you to promote Musicadium.
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