{"id":3405,"date":"2014-01-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-19T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/srdevsite.soundreef.com\/music-distribution-what-happens-after-i-upload-my-song\/"},"modified":"2021-05-21T20:15:04","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T18:15:04","slug":"music-distribution-what-happens-after-i-upload-my-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.soundreef.com\/en\/blog\/music-distribution-what-happens-after-i-upload-my-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Music distribution: what happens after I upload my song?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/9abb05742671606dfabbafb96d8418f0.jpg\" style=\"cursor: default;\"><\/p>\n<p><i>Hannah Boothby and Davide d&#8217;Atri, Soundreef<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Artists, record<br \/>\nlabels and publishers often ask us what happens when they\u2019ve uploaded their<br \/>\nmusic &#8211; when will it be used as music for business and what affects how much<br \/>\nairtime it will get? We\u2019ve put this blog post together to answer some of your<br \/>\nquestions about this.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Why can\u2019t you use my music straight away?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Getting your song<br \/>\nbroadcast by Soundreef involves six stages: registration; dealing with your<br \/>\ncurrent collecting society; approving, tagging and cataloguing your song;<br \/>\nactivating your song; delivering the song to clients; the clients broadcasting<br \/>\nthe song \u2013 and then you getting paid! Some of these stages take longer than<br \/>\nothers, and it can be a long process, but bear in mind that you don\u2019t actually<br \/>\nhave to do anything at all once you\u2019ve registered. We handle all the<br \/>\nadministration and make sure you get paid. It\u2019s better than trusting to the&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.soundreef.com\/en\/blog\/2\/making-money-from-your-music\/how-does-a-collecting-society-split-royalties\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">old-style collecting society system<\/a>,&nbsp;where your music gets<br \/>\nused anyway, and you don\u2019t get paid!<\/p>\n<p><b>1. Registration<\/b><\/p>\n<p>How long this stage<br \/>\ntakes is entirely up to you \u2013 it can be minutes or days. During the<br \/>\nregistration process, we ask about: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.45em;\">Whether<br \/>\nyou\u2019re an individual or a company.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.45em;\">Your<br \/>\ncontact and PayPal details, so that we can get in touch and pay you.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.45em;\">The<br \/>\nnames of your songs, so that they can be registered on our system.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.45em;\">The<br \/>\ncollecting societies you use, so that we can contact them.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.45em;\">We<br \/>\nnever share your data with anyone else.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>2. Dealing with your current collecting<br \/>\nsociety<\/b><\/p>\n<p>As part of the registration<br \/>\nprocess, we\u2019ll send a letter to your current collecting society telling them<br \/>\nthat we\u2019ll be collecting your royalties for background music in Europe from now<br \/>\non. We send a batch of these letters to collecting societies every month. This<br \/>\nmeans that, if you register your tracks just after we\u2019ve sent a batch of<br \/>\nletters, you\u2019ll need to wait up to a month before this stage is completed. <\/p>\n<p>Things can<br \/>\nsometimes take a little longer, depending on your local collecting society,<br \/>\nsince some use different procedures or take longer to approve artist requests<br \/>\n(the fastest are ASCAP, BMI and SESAC). We\u2019re hoping to publish a blog post<br \/>\nabout these procedures soon.<\/p>\n<p><b>3. Approving, tagging and cataloguing your<br \/>\nsong<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Once you\u2019ve<br \/>\ncompleted the registration process, our Music Supervisors listen to your tracks<br \/>\nand decide whether we can use them. This process can take anything up to 60<br \/>\ndays, since there are often a lot of tracks in the queue \u2013 though it can often<br \/>\nbe faster than this.<\/p>\n<p>Each song that they<br \/>\nchoose to use then needs to be tagged with labels such as tempo, mood and music<br \/>\ngenre, then added to our catalogue. The tagging process takes between two and<br \/>\nfour weeks, and this is part of the 60-day approval process period. <\/p>\n<p>The time it takes<br \/>\nto get from stages 1 to 3 can take anything from two to eight weeks.<\/p>\n<p><b>4. Activating your song<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Once your song has<br \/>\nbeen approved, tagged and catalogued, it is put in our database, and will show<br \/>\nup when the database is searched for certain types of music. <\/p>\n<p><b>5. Delivering your song to Soundreef clients<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Your song is<br \/>\ndelivered to Soundreef clients in two ways: to&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.soundreef.com\/en\/blog\/1\/making-money-from-your-music\/what-is-in-store-radio-and-how-does-it-work\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in-store radio producers<\/a>, and&nbsp;via our&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.soundreef.com\/en\/licences\/#sr_licenze_in_store\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">web radio service<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Most airplay comes<br \/>\nfrom in-store radio. Since we have over 150,000 songs registered, it isn\u2019t<br \/>\nfeasible for in-store radio producers to select individual songs from it.<br \/>\nInstead, they give us a description of the kind of music they would like to<br \/>\nplay, and our music supervisors choose music from our database that fits this<br \/>\ndescription. For example, they might tell us that they have certain marketing<br \/>\ntargets, and their in-store radio company might suggest that certain types of<br \/>\nmusic would suit this. The descriptions tend to be very general at this stage<br \/>\n(such as \u2018radio friendly rock and pop\u2019). We then work with the in-store radio<br \/>\ncompany to choose the music. We start by sending the in-store radio company a<br \/>\nbatch of songs, and they then give us feedback that helps us refine the<br \/>\nselection. We then send them more music, and we repeat this process until they<br \/>\nhave exactly the music they want.<\/p>\n<p>The other way your<br \/>\nsongs get used is via our&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.soundreef.com\/en\/licences\/#sr_licenze_in_store\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">web radio service<\/a>. This is a<br \/>\nservice designed&nbsp;for small shops and businesses who do not work with in-store<br \/>\nradio companies<i>.<\/i> Our music supervisors hand pick songs to appear on our<br \/>\nweb radio service in order to fit a certain mood, or create a certain<br \/>\natmosphere. The web radio service is divided into different genres \u2013 for<br \/>\nexample, rock, pop, lounge, house, classical.<\/p>\n<p>Whether your song<br \/>\ngets picked depends on its quality, suitability for background use and its<br \/>\ngenre \u2013 so if you\u2019ve supplied a high quality rock\/pop song in exactly the style<br \/>\nour client is looking for, it could be played in as little as two weeks from<br \/>\nactivation. If you\u2019ve uploaded, say, a few stomping dance tracks that we<br \/>\nabsolutely love, they might not get used for as much as six months, since no<br \/>\ndance music has been requested. You could describe this as, \u2018the quality of the<br \/>\nsong discounted for the genre of the song divided by what is needed by the market\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>You should also<br \/>\nremember that, no matter how good the track, we can never actually guarantee<br \/>\nthat it will be used!<\/p>\n<p><b>6. The client broadcasts the song<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The songs get<br \/>\nplayed in the client\u2019s store or other business.<\/p>\n<p>In-store radio<br \/>\nproducers keep a log of all the songs that they play in each store, which is<br \/>\nreturned to us every 30 to 90 days \u2013 so if your song is broadcast at the<br \/>\nbeginning of the 90-day period, it will be a while before it\u2019s added to our<br \/>\ncalculations. However, it\u2019s pretty rare that it would take this long \u2013 it\u2019s<br \/>\nusually a maximum of 45 days.<\/p>\n<p><b>7. You get paid<\/b><\/p>\n<p>We assemble the<br \/>\nlogs from all the in-store radio companies and combine them with our own logs,<br \/>\ngenerated by our web radio channels. We then parse these to add up the total<br \/>\nnumber of times each song has been played.<\/p>\n<p>We publish our<br \/>\nresults every six months, on the 29th of January and the 29th of July, then we pay you via<br \/>\nPayPal.<\/p>\n<p><b>8. We announce the results for the semester<\/b><\/p>\n<p>We publish the<br \/>\nstatistics for each semester (for an example, see the&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.soundreef.com\/en\/blog\/1\/news\/soundreef-the-statistics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">results for July 2013<\/a>), and<br \/>\nwe use these to try&nbsp;and forecast future earnings in our trends and estimates<br \/>\ntool.<\/p>\n<p><b>How long will all of this take?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>As you can see,<br \/>\nthere is a lot to organise after registration, and it all takes time! The total<br \/>\ntime depends on various factors, such as when you submit your song and how many<br \/>\ntracks our Music Supervisors currently have in their queue, but you should<br \/>\nexpect to wait between two and eight weeks before your track becomes active or inactive.<\/p>\n<p>It seems like a<br \/>\nlong time to wait \u2013 but bear in mind that you don\u2019t actually need to do<br \/>\nanything at all after you\u2019ve registered your song. You can just sit back and<br \/>\nwait, and we\u2019ll handle all the administration, keeping you informed along the<br \/>\nway!<\/p>\n<p><b>Can you give me any idea how much I can<br \/>\nexpect to earn from my music?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to<br \/>\nwork out how your tracks are likely to do, you could try out our trends and<br \/>\nestimates section. It&#8217;s a new tool we are developing to forecast your sales and<br \/>\nmusic usage, to help you work out how much you could earn and be played by<br \/>\nbroadcasters in the current semester. Although it\u2019s still at an early stage, it<br \/>\naims to give you information that is based on a variety of different factors<br \/>\nand is as up to date as possible. We usually publish trends and estimates in<br \/>\nthe middle of the semester, so that we can base our estimates on previous data.<br \/>\nThis means that your song needs to have been active for this amount of time<br \/>\nbefore estimates can be meaningful.<\/p>\n<p>Remember that this<br \/>\nsection is still being developed. As it involves new technology, and since forecasts<br \/>\nare never completely reliable, the information we provide here might not be<br \/>\naccurate, and it might not predict actual performance properly yet. Please<br \/>\ndon\u2019t rely on it!<\/p>\n<p>We publish reports<br \/>\non how much you&#8217;ve been paid on the My Money page every semester, on the 29th of July<br \/>\nand the 29th of January, and we pay money out to you the next working day.<\/p>\n<p><b>Still not sure<br \/>\nwhat\u2019s happening?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Post your questions<br \/>\nin the comment section!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>We love to hear<br \/>\nfrom users, and our commitment to transparency means that we tell you as much<br \/>\nas we can about how we calculate and pay your royalties. We\u2019re constantly<br \/>\nupdating our FAQ and blog to try and give you as much information as possible \u2013<br \/>\nyour questions are really helpful to both us and other users!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hannah Boothby and Davide d&#8217;Atri, Soundreef Artists, record labels and publishers often ask us what happens when they\u2019ve uploaded their music &#8211; when will it be used as music for business and what affects how much airtime it will get? We\u2019ve put this blog post together to answer some of your questions about this. 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