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About Lowdown Audio This project stems from our goal of selling our own music online in digital format (MP3). There are a number of sources to sell your music through the world wide web (CDbaby, CD Now, Itunes, Sony Connect, Walmart, Snocap etc. etc.) They all have great ideas and seem to be user friendly. We wanted to skip the 'middle man' and create our own source for secure digital downloads. We also wanted to present incentives to our fans by offering videos, lyrics, graphics, CD layout etc. This would encourage our potential customers to buy the full album for $9.99 and own all of these items that are not available anywhere else. I pitched the idea to our record label yet they weren't able to give a clear answer. I was told that I was the first person to ask this question. A week or so later, I finally learned that a distribution company had an exclusive digital distribution deal with our record label. The record label pressed and published our music and they own the copyright. We also agreed that they would own partial publishing at the time of the signing of the record deal. That means in order to have proprietary rights we cannot make a move unless we have "clearance" from the label. Since they did not control the digital distribution we had to wait until the distribution company submitted a response. Here is what they said: 1- It can not be you that hosts the music on your server. You can put links on your site that direct people to existing places to buy the songs. Some of those vendors might have some sort of referral program to pay a bounty to someone who provides customers to them so maybe you can check into that for your site. Perhaps there will be a way soon to have an actual store front on your page but it will have to go through something like Snowcap. At least this will save you the bandwidth costs for now. 2- It is ok for you to market your music and generate sales, but any download sales income must go into our account or our licensee's account. So, there you have it! Don't sign away ANY portion of your publishing for ANY reason! Instead, sell it here and on your website and your myspace and everywhere you want to. It's YOUR music! Rather than ditching the whole project, I thought I'd share it with the unsigned artists of the world. WHAT'S THE LOWDOWN? FREE ACCOUNTS: MP3 DOWNLOADS - copy and paste MP3 links on your website! Lowdown Audio will provide you with your own artist page. We will include your MP3 downloads, graphic(s) of your CD cover(s) a link to your website and/or Myspace page if applicable. Also, you can copy and paste all links to your MP3s and album downloads on your website. JUKEBOX PACKAGE: $5/Month We will create a jukebox that plays streaming audio of your full songs and add it to your page for $5 per month (provide us links to your music and we will direct the player to the corresponding URLs of your MP3s) MEDIA PACKAGE: $10/Month The Media Package includes all the above mentioned features PLUS we will include any graphics, lyrics, photos, videos, and media of your choice in the full album download! 100mb maximum |