In order to distribute your music online, we only need digital distribution rights.

You hold all the other rights, such as copyrights, master rights, publishing rights, and so on.

A UPC (Universal Product Code) or EAN (International Article Number) is a unique code used to identify a Release.

ISRC, the International Standard Recording Code, is the internationally recognized identification tool for sound and music video recordings.

No.

We offer UPC and ISRC codes FOR FREE to all our registered customers.

(Please note this is often a paying option with our competitors!)

In case you are a record label or you do own legitimately registered UPC and ISRC codes, you can of course use your own.

Just follow the instructions during the Release creation process.

This is a service that allows a consumer to either stream, download or burn music for a set fee for a set period of time. Examples include, but are not limited to, Listen.com's Rhapsody, eMusic and Napster.

Interactive streaming is when a digital file is transmitted electronically to a computer or other device at the specific request of the end user in order to allow the end user to listen to a recording or a playlist contemporaneously with the user's request.

Interactive streams are sometimes referred to as on-demand streams.

A permanent download is an individual delivery of a sound recording by digital transmission resulting in a reproduction made by or for the recipient which may be retained and played by the recipient on a permanent basis.

Permanent Downloads sometimes referred to as full track downloads or untethered downloads

Tehtehred downloads are sometimes called limited downloads. A tethered download is a digital file that is delivered electronically to a computer or other device to reside there on a limited basis.

There are two types of thethered downloads: time-limited download (for example, the song resides on the computer for 30 days) and use-limited download (for example, the song can be heard 12 times before it can no longer be played).

Encoding is the conversion of one format into another digital file format, often referred as 'output format'. All the music you upload is being transcoded to FLAC files in the highest possible bitrate- without any wuality loss.

You do not 'need' to complete your Artist profile. An Incomplete profile will not prevent your Release to be delivered to the stores.

However, the more information we have, the better. The 'Artists' section allows you to add some information like artist' bio, website, twitter channel, facebook page, myspace link...Etc.

You can also upload a picture with the following specifications:

3x2 aspect ratio

Minimum size 1280 x 853 pixels, Maximum size: 2530 x 1706 pixels

Format: jpg, tiff or png

Max. 8Mb

Not all stores will take this information into account, but some will.

Adding a biography especially can help you get more exposure on stores and provide additional interesting information for your fans!

The more the better? Not always.

Just like in the physical world, there shouldn't be more than one digital music distributor bringing the same Release to the same store. Otherwise, when the Release makes some sales, how would the retail store know which distributor to pay?

However we can not prevent you from doing anything you want with your music.

But it is in your interest to be made aware that if you sign two digital distribution deals with two companies that will both be sending the same Release to iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, etc - this can have some serious consequences since the retailer will remove the Releases completely until you decide which distributor has the exclusive right to be selling that Release through them...

Mastering is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio material from a source containing the final mix to the master, the source from which all copies will be produced (via methods such as pressing, duplication or replication).

Digital masters have become usual although analog masters are still being used by the recording industry.

Mastering requires critical listening and expertise.

Results still depend upon the accuracy of speaker monitors.

Mastering engineers also usually need to apply corrective equalization and dynamic enhancement in order to optimise sound translation on all playback systems.

When submitting a release with Ministry of Musics you may notice that some partners do not appear as options in the partner list you see when creating a release.

These are indirect partners of Ministry of Musics, the reason they do not appear is that we do not send directly to them. They get their content via other partners.

The partners that provide content to these indirect partners are called white label providers. A white label provider is a Digital Service Provider that handles multiple services under them. For example, 7Digital and Medianet are two White Label providers that power various streaming and download providers and thus, we list them on our system as the one delivery point.

The services that a white label provider differ from retail, streaming, to cable tv music. There are often many changes in this area and unfortunately, we cannot control what partners under a white label your material goes to or doesn’t go to.

A service that allows a consumer to either stream, download or burn music on a pay per transaction basis.

Examples include (but are not limited to) Apple iTunes or Amazon MP3.

Apple Music

To claim a profile in Apple Music for Artists you have to do it through:

https://artists.apple.com/.

Any artist can log in with his Apple ID and fill out a form in which they will be asked to write the profile name they wish to claim, to select the albums associated with that profile, and to point their role in the project (artist, manager or label manager) as well.  

Apple Music will also ask to fill in the contact information as well as with the label’s / distributor’s and the manager’s and to link it at least, with one of the artists' verified profiles on Facebook or Twitter. Apple Music for Artists will verify all the information and the identity before giving access to the platform.

Spotify

To get your Spotify Artist Profile verified and to manage it yourself, you’ll need to request access to Spotify For Artists. Once you’ve done that, you’ll get the blue check on your artist profile (the hallmark of Spotify-recognized profiles).

To request access to Spotify for Artists just fill out this form by following the steps below:

1. Indicate whether you have a Spotify user account (you must have one to manage an artist profile on the platform).

2. Log in with your user account.

3. Indicate your role (artist, manager, label, etc.), your name, the Spotify user account you want to associate with the profile, and an email to send the notifications.

4. Indicate the name of the artist or the band whose profile you want to claim and verify.

5. Lastly, verify the Twitter account of the artist or the band and provide links to the website or social networking profiles.

Spotify will check the information and then the blue checkmark will be added to your profile. This is what indicates that you are a verified artist by Spotify.

Then, Spotify For Artists will allow you to change your profile and background pictures whenever you want, create playlists, and check stats as to how, how much, and where your songs are being listened to or who are your listeners, among many other interesting data. 

Moreover, you’ll be able to synchronize your profile with Songkick to show your concert dates at your profile or with Merchbar to sell your merchandising with Spotify.

You will find all the necessary information to claim your artist profile at: artists.spotify.com.

If you don't get any reply from Spotify after a month, you have to contact directly with the channel through: https://artists.spotify.com/contact.

Amazon

First of all, head to the Apple App or Google Play Store and install the Amazon Music for Artists app. Once the app is open, you will be directed to sign in using an Amazon retail account. If you do not have an Amazon retail account, you will need to create one in order to continue going through the sign-up and artist claim flow

To add an artist to your account:

1. Click on the “Claim An Artist” button at the bottom of the search screen. Search and select the artist you represent.

2. Press “Take Me There”: Verify your relationship with this artist by providing to Amazon your role and company information. Authenticating with your artist’s social media accounts helps them to expedite the approval process.

3. Press “Submit“ when all information has been completed. Once the claims have been verified/approved on our end, you will receive an email confirmation letting you know access to the artist has been enabled within your account.

Deezer

Deezer Backstage  allows artists, labels, and managers to update their artist pages with profile pictures, biography, and links to social media or websites, as well as access their analytics.

The DDEX Party Identifier (DPID) is an identification resource applicable only to distributors. If you are an artist or a label, it is not required to fill out the platform field.

What is DDEX?

DDEX (Digital Data Exchange, typically pronounced “Dee-Dex”) is a consortium of leading media companies, music licensing organizations, digital music service providers, and technical intermediaries focused on creating standards for use by businesses in the digital media supply chain. Adoption of the standards improves efficiency, reduces cost, and generates higher revenues for all businesses operating in this market.

You can find more information here on DDEX FAQ main page.

Some distribution channels allow the download of the content. Depending on their characteristics, they are classified as a specific type.

Streaming

These channels offer the streaming of content online without the listener necessarily having to purchase a file for download. However, they may offer the option to download content to listen to it offline.

Tethered Download

Tethered downloads are so-called limited downloads. A tethered download is a digital file that is delivered electronically to a computer or other device to reside there on a limited basis.There are two types of tethered downloads:

• Time-limited download: for example, the song resides on the computer for 30 days

• Use-limited download: for example, the song can be heard 12 times before it can no longer be played

Permanent Download

A permanent download is an individual delivery of a sound recording by digital transmission resulting in a reproduction made by or for the recipient which may be retained and played by the recipient on a permanent basis. Permanent Downloads are sometimes referred to as full track downloads or untethered downloads.

"A La Carte" digital service

A service that allows a consumer to either stream, download, or burn music on a pay per transaction basis. Examples include (but are not limited to) Apple iTunes or Amazon MP3.

Generally, stores like iTunes, Amazon and others keep 30% off of a sale.

7digital: Description

Introduction

Managed by music lovers for music lovers, 7digital stores offer a simple-to-use download service with highly developed features to elevate the user experience. 7digital’s music services are available globally and optimized for Europe and North America with dedicated stores in 20 countries among which Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States of America. 7digital’s B2B clients sell music via downloads or streaming in a variety of markets, depending on which territories each service lives in.

7digital is also the world’s leading B2B digital music solutions company. The company has provided digital music services to hundreds of international partners, including retailers, telecoms, consumer electronics companies, record companies, and many other organizations. Using 7digital’s API, partners can create new music websites, applications, and devices, or integrate music into existing services.

Partners

7digital’s global partner network includes:

7digital.com

Triller

Soundtrack your Brand

ROXi

Exlibris

Fan Label

Global Radio

Grandpad

Jazzed

Kuaishou

MyMelo

NEC

Soundhound

Soundmouse

Trebel

MusixMatch

Moodagent.

Territories

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States of America. 7digital’s B2B clients sell music via downloads or streaming in a variety of markets, depending on which territories each service lives in.

Anghami is the largest music streaming app in the Middle East and North Africa. Anghami claims to have The Sound of Freedom, and this sound can be heard anywhere, anytime.

Features

With Anghami you can:

• Discover, stream and download from a library of millions of Arabic and International songs for free, create playlists for every minute of your day and share them with everyone, and enjoy podcasts from all around the region.

• Create your personalized music library - Gather your favorite songs and create playlists for your every mood and occasion. We will recommend music according to your taste. The more you play, the better the recommendations will be!

• Discover new music - Let yourself be carried away with the best hits from your favorite artists, play the latest releases or explore playlists curated by our own team of experts.

• Share with Friends - Discover new music through people whose taste fits yours. Share your best discoveries on Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Messenger, and Anghami chat.

• Stay up-to-date - Follow your favorite artists and we will make sure you stay up-to-date with their new music!

• Synchronization with different devices - Anghami is available in smartphones, car applications, wearables, desktops, game consoles, etc

• Stream high-quality music up to 320Kbps in pure Dolby so you play top-quality music and use little data

Artists Connect allows not only distributors but also artists, labels, and managers to update their artist pages with profile pictures, biography, and links to social media or website, as well as accessing their analytics.

Once you're signed in to your Dashboard account, click on “My Artist Profile”.

From this page you can edit the following:

• Update your artist profile image (Upload a new image or link it to your Facebook profile image)

• Update your artist name in English and Arabic

• Edit your music language

• Add a biography in English/Arabic

• Link your Facebook page

• Link your Twitter account

After making any changes or additions, make sure to click on Update Profile when finished.

Introduction

AWA is a Japanese subscription streaming music service that launched in Japan in 2015 and is a joint venture between the Avex Group (a group of entertainment companies that includes Avex Trax, one of the largest record labels in Japan) and Ameba / CyberAgent (a popular Japanese social network/blog site with currently over 40 million users).

AWA analyzes your preferences, mood, and situation to automatically recommend music. Download the app to start right away without registration. You can use it without ads even for free.

Features

• Play online: Download songs to play them without using the Internet

• Display lyrics: Automatically display lyrics during song play, karaoke-style

• The lounge feature: Create a collaborative 'room' with a set musical theme

• No ads: Enjoy music without ads even on the free plan

• Advanced searching: In addition to keyword searches, the app can also listen to surrounding sounds to identify songs

• Extensive playlists: Lots of official playlists by famous DJs and artists

• Compatible with various devices: Access on your PC and tablet as well as your smartphone.

BMAT focuses on activities around music monitoring services, including the tracking of any public communication of music.

By distributing to BMAT, contents can be identified across televisions, radios, venues, and digital services globally; and then reported and rewarded.

Vericast — their audio recognition and music identification platform — uses audio fingerprinting technologies to service venues, digital and broadcast monitoring data for royalties distribution.

The company has grown to service more than 100 Collective Management Organizations and over 2 thousand Record labels and publishers. Their monitoring platform delivers 92 million identifications monthly and overviews 230 million digital transactions hourly. As per DSP's guidelines, the following genres and content types are not allowed: production loops, sound effects, karaoke recordings, classical music recordings of compositions in the public domain, DJ sets or continuous mixes, prayer recordings.

Introduction

Claro Música is a digital music service from the America Móvil Group, the leading wireless services provider in Latin America. Claro música gets your music heard in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and 12 other Latin American countries. Your fans can access your music when and however they want via Claromúsica's multi-platform experience.

Service Type

The service allows users to stream songs "on" and "offline" through monthly/weekly streaming subscription plans and downloads through monthly/weekly download plans or a la carte downloads.

Territories

Claro música is available in México, Brasil, Argentina, Colombia, Perú R. Dominicana, Panamá, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica.

iHeartRadio is a free broadcast, podcast and streaming radio platform owned by iHeartMedia, Inc - USA. It functions as the national umbrella brand for iHeartMedia's radio network aggregating its over 850 local iHeartMedia radio stations across the United States.

iHeartRadio is available across more than 250 platforms and 2,000 devices including smart speakers, digital auto dashes, tablets, wearables, smartphones, virtual assistants, TVs and gaming consoles.

Premium Features

Listen absolutely free with ads, or take control of your listening experience with iHeartRadio Plus™ and iHeartRadio All Access™.

• Search and play any song with our library of millions of songs on demand

• Save and replay any song from the radio

• Enjoy unlimited skips

• Download music and listen offline

• Create unlimited playlists

Play Artist Stations

Create personalized music stations based on favourite artists using our library of millions of songs covering genres like Country, Top 40, Pop, Hip Hop, R&B, EDM, Rock, Alternative and more.

Playlists perfect for any moment

Listen to any of thousands of hand-curated playlists. Organized by mood, activity, decade and genre to make it easy to find something that’s the perfect soundtrack for any moment.

The Best Live, Local Radio Stations

Discover thousands of live and local AM and FM radio stations near you and from cities across the globe.

Podcasts

Stream the most popular podcasts from NPR, Gimlet, How Stuff Works, ESPN, 30 for 30, Pod Save America.

Territories

Australia, Canada, United States, Mexico and New Zealand

When it comes to music credits, it’s important to get them right. They represent the contributions of every dedicated professional who played a part in the creation of a piece of music – not just the big stars. And while once it was possible to flip open a vinyl record jacket or CD booklet and peruse the list of credits, as streaming and downloading services have replaced physical products, the details of those precious behind-the-scenes contributions have been largely lost.

How can Jaxsta add value for artists?

In many ways, one of the main ones is visibility. Jaxsta ensures that creators’ works can be easily found and that they will receive the credit they’re due. It will also assist them when seeking jobs and commissions, as their catalogue of works will be conveniently accessible under their profile, acting as an official resume or CV. Jaxsta will also assist in the discovery of new music, as users ‘deep dive’ and follow the works of various contributors to see what else they’ve been involved with. By working with Jaxsta, Artists can ensure that the information being distributed is official, helping not only with visibility in the marketplace but all-important accuracy.

Jaxsta is on a mission to create the world’s most comprehensive database of official music credits, collected from trusted sources such as record labels, publishers, distributors and many more. They collaborate with these valued partners to ensure that the people who work on the music everyone loves to get credit where credit is due. It’s a journey – they’ll always be ingesting more and more credits to make sure that Jaxsta is the ultimate destination for trusted, official music information.

Jaxsta received releases' metadata from all territories and regions.

Service Overview

The Jaxsta Service will consist of the following service tiers:

• Web Platform – a free to the user, music informational database service available here. This service provides various recording, songwriting and production credits, in addition to the album and other liner artwork. The Web Platform also currently provides recording track links to third party digital streaming services including Apple Music and Spotify. Jaxsta launched a public beta version of the Web Platform in June 2019.

• Jaxsta Pro – a paid subscription service that will provide subscribers with additional third-party sourced information and data sets including worldwide music chart information festival and conference dates and information market insights and reports and publisher/label details. It is expected that the Jaxsta Pro service will be launched in late 2019.

• Distributed Service – a paid B2B service, whereby Jaxsta will provide its music informational database service to third party entities, such as digital service providers (Distributed Service Clients), for integration on the Distributed Service Client’s service and/or website (likely via API calls). The Distributed Service is not expected to launch prior to 2020. See further information with respect to the commercial structure of the Distributed Service below.

JioSaavn (formerly known as Saavn + JioMusic) is an online Indian music streaming service. Jio Saavn is the best way to listen to music, anytime, anywhere. Build a dream collection from over 50 million songs across Bollywood, English, Hindi, independent artists, and Indian regional languages like Tamil, Telugu, Panjabi, and more.

Free subscription

• Listen free with ads

• Unlimited music

• Expertly curated playlists and radio stations

• Smart, personalized recommendations

• Exclusive content and original shows & podcasts

• Listen on Alexa, Sonos, Chromecast, Google Home, Airplay, and more

Pro subscription

• Download to listen offline and save data

• Completely ad-free, with no interruptions or skip limits

• Beautiful, high quality 320kbps audio.

Territories

Our Merlin contract currently covers distribution in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

JOOX is one of the fastest-growing streaming platforms in South East Asia, with an increasing market share in South Africa. With millions of active users, the app has a community of music lovers and provides artists opportunities to engage with fans.

A music streaming service owned by Chinese entertainment giant Tencent, JOOX was launched in 2015 and amassed over 50 million downloads in 2017 and recorded over two billion streams in the same year.

Available as an app accessible from mobile and desktop, the platform is a freemium service with a library of about 35M songs that are free, some songs are only available for premium users. There is a wide range of songs available across different languages to cater to the local market, apart from English songs.

As of early 2021, JOOX has the following number of subscribers:

• Paid subscribers: 270k

• Free subscribers: over 5M

JOOX's audience base primarily comprises users from Asia (excluding China) - specifically in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand. The platform has also established its presence in South Africa, the brand’s first non-Asian market.

Kanjian is a global music enterprise that leverages technology to bring together music artists, fans and brands to the largest consumer market in the world – Asia.

Kanjian Music partners with artists, labels, and managers alike and has already helped more than 7,500 labels and 250,000 artists to reach more than 1 billion listeners worldwide, including China.

Territories

Worldwide

Kanjian's end-stores

The complete list of end-stores covered under our partnership with Kanjian is updated here:

• Acer

• Artistxite

• Audiojungle

• B612

• China Unicom (Wo Music)

• Bandcamp

• Beat.no

• Bilibili

• Bleep

• CCA

• CDON

• Celcom

• Changba

• Chunghwa Mobile

• Coolvox

• CTS Eventim AG

• Dance All Day

• DiGi

• Digitally Imported

• Douban Music

• Douyin

• Dragonfly FM

• Echo

• eMusic

• ExLibris

• FETnet

• Findspire

• Flipagram

• FNAC

• Forest Incentives

• Friday Music (Omusic)

• FUHU

• Gismart

• Global Radio

• Hardstyle.com

• High Res Audio

• Himalayan FM

• HMV

• hmv PLAY (Soliton)

• HTC One

• Huawei Music

• Huawei Music - Hi res

• Huawei South Africa

• Huawei Middle Eeast

• iam+ Dial

• iFeng

• Jeou Tai

• Jinli Music

• Kanjian Music

• Koala FM

• Kobo

• Kuaishou

• Kuyin Ringtone

• La Musica

• Last FM

• Lenovo Music

• Lenovo Sound

• Lequ Music

• Lizhi FM

• Love Music (China Telecom)

• Mach by Mariposa

• Maxis

• Me2u Music

• Media Markt

• Medion

• Mi Tracks

• Migu Music (China Mobile)

• Mixette

• Mixpixie

• Mixup Digital

• Moi Mir

• MOOV

• MQA

• MusicQubed

• MyMusic

• Naver

• NEC

• nMusic

• Odnoklassniki

• Onkyo

• Open Live

• Overmax

• Pledge

• Pono

• Prodigium/ Infogo

• Psonar

• Pubbles

• Pulselocker

• QNX CAR™

• Raku

• ROK mobile

• Sainsburys

• Saturn

• Stellar

• TDC

• T Star

• Qianqian Music

• TaiHua

• Taiwan Mobile

• TDC/TDC Mobile

• Technics Tracks

• The Overflow

• TingTing FM

• Triplay

• Tunewiki

• Tuzhan

• U-Mobile

• Ucmba

• Vibe

• VUE

• Walkgame

• Wasu TV

• Weibo Music

• Weltbild DE

• We Sing

• WEYV

• Xiaomi Music

• Xiaoying

• Xiumi

• Xiutang

• Yiqixiu

KDigital Media provides the broadest possible access to the Korean Market via a network of partner services. As one of the most well-established music industry companies in Asia, KDigital is committed to serving both the independent and major music companies and sharing our ethos of supporting and assisting valued talent around the globe.

Service Type Kdigital offers music through the sales of downloads.

Pay rate

Payouts are based on partner-specific rates, so for songs downloaded individually in a store, you will be paid the wholesale price of each partner's retail price.

Partners

Samsung Music, Hyundaicard music, Melon Kt (olleh+genie), Mnet, Soribada, Bugs, Dalkom, Kakao, Cyworld, Naver, Daum, Monkey3, Iguplus

Territories

Korea

Introduction

KKBOX is Taiwan-based music streaming and download service, which has been operating since October 2004. KKBOX has dealt with a significant number of international and local labels in South-East Asia.

Service Type

KKBOX offers music through streaming.

The existing Service consists of the following elements:

Premium Service

A paid-for subscription streaming service, featuring audio and video tracks but which does not feature advertising, available both to non-portable and mobile devices allowing unlimited streaming and offline plays of tethered downloads. Access to and the ability to ‘play’ tethered downloads lapses after the applicable end user’s subscription ends. The Premium Service is offered as a daily, weekly and monthly package. It is also offered as a “Monthly Committed Plan” to long-term customers who subscribe for at least 12 months at a discounted retail rate; and

Sponsored Premium Service

Enables a user to receive access to the Premium Service for up to two hours provided that the user has undertaken a certain action (such as watching an advertisement video, playing a sponsored online game or filling out a questionnaire).

Go Live Time

It takes 7-10 business days for content to go live in KKBOX.

Pay rate

Paid Streams: When a subscriber streams your music, you get paid a proportionate share of KKBOX’s subscription revenue per month calculated on terms set out in our agreement with the store (this usually excludes streams during a subscriber's free trial). Payments will fluctuate each month, depending on the amount of subscription revenue generated and how often your music was streamed.

Territories

The Service is currently live in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan.

Lickd is a micro-licensing service that gives artists a whole new way to reach an audience. It allows YouTube content creators to buy the rights for one-time use for music from Lickd's licensed catalog for the purpose of including such music in non-commercial, non-branded videos that the creator uploads to YouTube. Our Lickd Agreement does not cover Lickd’s “brand-sponsored” licenses.

The price of a Lickd License is determined by the average number of views of the creator's last 50 videos on YouTube, with outliers excluded i.e., excluding the creator's two best and three worst-performing videos. A Lickd License enables the creator to use the licensed track in one single video on YouTube.

With every license, the Creators are advised to include an artist credit with a link back to streaming services. This allows driving extra streaming revenues from licensed usages on YouTube to artists’ music on other platforms.

Territories: Worldwide

Mixcloud is a long-form Internet audio platform. The service provides a home for users who create radio shows, Podcasts and long-form audio from around the world.

Mixcloud allows all users to browse and stream audio content uploaded on its site. Registered users can upload content such as radio shows, DJ mixes, and podcasts, as well as promote and distribute their content through Mixcloud's own social networking widget. As of November 2011, Mixcloud lifted its 100Mb limit on uploaded content and allows uploads of 500 megabytes. Registered members may join a Group, a collection of other users who share a common interest, which will periodically update the user when new content related to the Group is available.

Mixcloud also provides an API through which users can search, upload, and embed its content.

Users may also share podcasts and mixes via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+

Mobile apps are available for both Android and iOS.

In December 2018, Mixcloud announced a new form of subscription called "fan-to-creator". Thanks to this feature subscribers can support a favourite artist directly and contribute to the licensing cost of the music played in the shows. This innovation is an attempt by the company to find new ways of funding.

It is important to note that Mixcloud is a user-generated content (UGC) service. Meaning the audio files are provided to Mixcloud directly by third parties.

Sonosuite does not provide content asset files of recordings to Mixcloud but does provide all the metadata associated with such audio files.

Mixcloud then uses a content identification service in order to identify master sound recordings contained in the audio files available on their service.

In order to carry out the content identification process that will enable Mixcloud to identify Sonosuite content, Mixcloud needs Sonosuite to deliver metadata only directly to Mixcloud.

Metadata will be used by Mixcloud solely for content identification, rights association, conflict resolution and royalty reporting purposes with respect to the service they provide.

Territories

World excluding Japan, China and North Korea.

Introduction

NetEase, headquartered in Beijing, China is owned by NetEase, Inc., a publicly-traded technology company listed on NASDAQ and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of over US$90bn. NetEase Inc. provides multi-platform games, media, email and e-commerce services.

NetEase covers content distribution to:

• NetEase Cloud Music (NCM Service), is a music and video streaming service operated by NetEase. The NCM Service was launched in mainland China in April 2013 and as of May 2020 had over 800 million registered users.

• Yin Jie is a karaoke streaming service that launched in March 2020 (Yin Jie Service).

NetEase Cloud Music

The NCM Service offers the following tiers:

1. Ad-Supported Service:

   • An on-demand, free to end-user, advertising-supported, music streaming service available on all devices.

   • No tethered download (i.e. ‘offline mode”) functionality.

   • The low audio quality of 128 kbps.

1. Basic Subscription Service:

   • An on-demand, music streaming subscription service available on all devices.

   • Includes tethered downloads (i.e. ‘offline mode”) for up to 300 songs.

   • The standard audio quality of 320 kbps.

1. Premium Subscription Service:

   • Same functionality as the Basic Subscription Service except includes tethered downloads (i.e. ‘offline mode”) for up to 500 songs.

   • Provides subscribers with access to purchase live concert tickets.

1. VIP Subscription Service:

   • Same functionality as the Basic Subscription Service.

   • Provides subscribers with access to paid product discounts and coupons, access to purchase live concert tickets, radio programs (which are not licensed under our Agreement), lyrics with customisable backgrounds, and customisable skins and music player features.

Yin Jie Service

The Yin Jie Service is an on-demand, ad-supported, free to the end-user karaoke service that offers the following functionality:

• Enables users to sing along and/or record their own vocals over a master recording (either together with the original vocals (as a “duet”) or with the original vocals digitally removed) (“UGC Covers”) and to post the UGC Covers to the Yin Jie Service platform.

• On-demand service is available on all devices.

• No tethered download (i.e. 'offline mode") functionality.

• The low audio quality of 128 kbps.

Introduction

Pandora is a leading music and podcast discovery platform, providing a highly-personalized listening experience to approximately 70 million users each month with its proprietary Music Genome Project® and Podcast Genome Project® technology - whether at home or on the go - through its mobile app, the web, and integrations with more than 2,000 connected products. As the largest streaming music provider in the U.S., with an industry-leading digital audio advertising platform, Pandora connects listeners with the audio entertainment they love. Pandora is a subsidiary of Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI). Together, Pandora and SiriusXM have created the world's largest audio entertainment company.

Pandora is a curated music service. The music has to be selected by Pandora curator services for it to be released on the platform and made available for subscribers.

Plans

• Pandora Free: Ad-sponsored radio / Non-interactive service

• Pandora Plus: Subscription radio with no ads / Limited interactive service

• Pandora Premium: Subscription-based on-demand listening / On-demand service

Listening modes

1. My Station: Pandora’s original algorithm

2. Crowd Faves: favours the songs that get the most thumbs-ups by other users in that station

3. Deep Cuts: serves up lesser-known songs by an artist or in a genre

4. Discovery: plays more artists that aren’t usually on that station

5. Newly Released: only picks the newest songs from an artist or in a genre

6. Artist Only: lets you binge entirely on a single artist’s catalogue

Territories

USA

Introduction

Pandora is a leading music and podcast discovery platform, providing a highly-personalized listening experience to approximately 70 million users each month with its proprietary Music Genome Project® and Podcast Genome Project® technology - whether at home or on the go - through its mobile app, the web, and integrations with more than 2,000 connected products. As the largest streaming music provider in the U.S., with an industry-leading digital audio advertising platform, Pandora connects listeners with the audio entertainment they love. Pandora is a subsidiary of Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI). Together, Pandora and SiriusXM have created the world's largest audio entertainment company.

Pandora is a curated music service. The music has to be selected by Pandora curator services for it to be released on the platform and made available for subscribers.

Plans

• Pandora Free: Ad-sponsored radio / Non-interactive service

• Pandora Plus: Subscription radio with no ads / Limited interactive service

• Pandora Premium: Subscription-based on-demand listening / On-demand service

Listening modes

1. My Station: Pandora’s original algorithm

2. Crowd Faves: favours the songs that get the most thumbs-ups by other users in that station

3. Deep Cuts: serves up lesser-known songs by an artist or in a genre

4. Discovery: plays more artists that aren’t usually on that station

5. Newly Released: only picks the newest songs from an artist or in a genre

6. Artist Only: lets you binge entirely on a single artist’s catalogue

Territories

USA

Resso is a music streaming app that allows users to listen to music as well as generate their own visual content to be displayed in the background while a song is playing.

Resso is the new highlight service from ByteDance, the creators of the TikTok app.

Napster (formerly Rhapsody) is the original, streaming, music service. It boasts a catalogue of over 42 million songs (and growing) and over three million paying subscribers worldwide. Napster creates new ways to connect you with the artists you love. Plus, they personalize your music experience – the more you listen to, the more they can recommend curated playlists, new artists, and artists you may have missed (but just might love). Napster has mobile apps for iPhone, Android, iPad, iPod touch, Kindle, and Windows Phone. You can listen to your music on any Mac or PC at http://us.napster.com/, or stream music to every room in your house with compatible home audio systems.

Service Type

Napster offers music through streaming and downloads. Files are available in DRM-enforced AAC+ or WMA formats.

Go Live Time

It takes between 1 and 3 weeks for content to go live in Napster.

Paid Downloads

Payouts are based on territory specific rates, so for songs downloaded individually in a store, you will be paid the wholesale price of the channel's retail price. Not including transaction surcharges added (for e.g Paypal), less VAT and fees due to exploitation of the content payable to Collecting Societies.

Paid Streams

When a subscriber streams your music (this excludes non-subscriber streams that are 30 seconds or less), you get paid a proportionate share of Napster's subscription revenue per month. The pay-out rates can fluctuate each month, depending on how much subscription revenue was generated and how often your music was streamed.

Territories

Napster is currently available in Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Ireland, Italy, Japan (via Rakuten Music), Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Uruguay and the United States.

Napster/Rhapsody allows the artists to update their profile picture, biography and social media links.

It can be requested by creating a ticket to [email protected] with the subject “Artist profile in Napster/Rhapsody” providing the following information:

• Profile's link

• Photo: at least 1500 x 1000 px. and 72dpi.

Shazam is a commercial mobile phone-based music identification service. Shazam uses a mobile phone’s built-in microphone to gather a brief sample of music being played. An acoustic fingerprint is created based on the sample and is compared against a central database for a match. If a match is found, information such as the artist, song title, and album are relayed back to the user. Relevant links to services such as iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify allow users to find your music in these services. Currently, around 350 million users are tagging more than 10 million tracks a day. The service was expanded in September 2012 to enable TV users in the US to identify featured music, access cast information and get links to show information online, as well as add social networking capabilities. Some of the features that both free Shazam and Shazam Encore include the following: Rdio integration, YouTube playback, Lyric search, Artist news, Share tags with friends, Buy tracks from iTunes, See popular tags on a map, and more.

Shazam offers two types of applications; a free app simply called Shazam and a paid app called Shazam Encore. Shazam and Shazam Encore provide the same music tagging and identification functionality, with unlimited tagging of music and TV content. However, Shazam Encore removes the advertising that helps to support the free version of Shazam. Shazam Encore users can also enjoy Full Track playback with Spotify.

Service Type

Shazam is capable of identifying your music and generating relevant to your music in third party services such as YouTube, iTunes or Spotify. The service offers also advanced promotional opportunities for songs that have high exposure on TV or Radio.

Go Live Time

It takes between 24-48 hours after delivery to have your tracks available for identification by shazam.

Pay rate

Shazam does not sell music so artists do not receive payment, but Shazam drives sales in other outlets through music discovery and by generating links to other services.

Territories

Shazam is live in over 200 countries.

Shazam track insights have now moved over to Apple Music for Artists.

See how your music is performing across Apple Music, iTunes, and Shazam from a single dashboard with even richer and deeper data. With Apple Music for Artists, you can:

• Update your Apple Music / Shazam profile picture

• Get a global view of your Shazam data with the country and city-level data.

• Explore detailed Shazams and listener trends with deeper historical data.

• Identify milestones and all-time bests for your songs and albums.

To claim the profile you must do it through the Apple Music Artists source.

SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website based in Berlin, Germany that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio.

Features

SoundCloud's key features include the ability to access uploaded files via unique URLs, thus allowing sound files to be embedded in Twitter and Facebook posts. A file may be embedded by clicking a share button corresponding to the target site (e.g., Twitter).

SoundCloud supports Creative Commons licences.

Territories

SoundCloud is currently available in every country except:

Antarctica; Afghanistan; Cuba; Bouvet Island; British Indian Ocean Territory; Central African Republic; Christmas Island; Equatorial Guinea; Haiti; Heard Island and Mcdonald Islands; Iran; Islamic Republic of Iraq; Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; Lebanon; Liberia; Libyan Arab Jamahiriya; Myanmar; Pakistan; Sudan; South Sudan; Syrian Arab Republic

What is SoundExchange?

SoundExchange is a non-profit organization established by the Copyright Royalty Board. SoundExchange collects and distributes digital performance royalties on behalf of recording artists, master rights owners (like record labels), and independent artists who own their masters.

What types of royalties does SoundExchange collect?

Under the Copyright Law of the United States, 45 per cent of performance royalties are paid directly to the featured artists on a recording, and 5 per cent are paid to a fund for non-featured artists. The other 50 per cent of the performance royalties are paid to the rights owner of the sound recording.

What are the sources of royalties collected by SoundExchange?

SoundExchange collects royalties from 3 main sources:

• Non-interactive webcasters: SoundExchange collects royalties from non-interactive webcasters, that is service providers that do not allow users to pick and choose what they listen to. Pandora is an example of a non-interactive webcaster, whereas MySpace or YouTube are interactive (or on-demand) streaming services because a user picks exactly what he/she wants to listen to.

• Satellite and Digital Cable TV: When your song is played through digital cable and satellite television music-related services like Music Choice (Digital Cable) and Muzak (Dish), SoundExchange collects and distributes the royalties.

• Satellite Radio Services: In the world of terrestrial radio, it's only the songwriter and publisher that receive performance royalties, not necessarily the performing artist (unless they own or control their underlying composition(s)). However, in the world of satellite radio, like SiriusXM, SoundExchange monitors their plays and allocates the money to recording artists accordingly.

Important Notes

SoundExchange is different from performing rights organizations such as BMI, ASCAP and SESAC (the “PROs”). In the US, the PROs collect publishing royalties on behalf of songwriters and publishers when their songs are publicly performed, they do not collect any royalties due to recording artists or sound recording rights owners. Registration with the PROs is a separate process. Please visit their respective websites for more information. As per DSP's guidelines, the following genres and content types are not allowed: production loops, sound effects, karaoke recordings, classical music recordings of compositions in the public domain, DJ sets or continuous mixes, prayer recordings.

Introduction

Tencent is part of the Tencent group of companies based in Shenzhen, China, and is publicly listed on the Hang Seng with a valuation of approximately US$670bn. The Tencent group provides a variety of digital entertainment, technology, media, and internet related services.

Tencent Services

Tencent offers the following music streaming services:

• QQMusic: (https://y.qq.com) music streaming and download service that launched in 2004.

• KuGou: (http://www.KuGou.com) music streaming and download service that launched in 2004, is one of the largest streaming services in China. KuGou was bought by China Music Corporation (“CMC”) in 2014 and Tencent acquired an interest via a merger with CMC in 2016.

• Kuwo: (http://www.kuwo.cn) the fourth-largest music streaming service in China. Tencent also acquired an interest in Kuwo via a merger with CMC in 2016.

• WeSing: (https://wesingapp.com) is the largest online karaoke streaming service in China (with an estimated 77% online karaoke market share).

In 2016 the Tencent Services combined accounted for approximately 78%* of the Mainland Chinese domestic music streaming market. Its mission is to use technology to elevate the role of music in people's lives by enabling them to create, enjoy, share and interact with music. Tencent platform comprises online music, online karaoke, and music-centric live streaming services, enabling music fans to discover, listen, sing, watch, perform and socialize around music.

Go Live Time

It takes about 4-6 weeks for content to go live in Tencent.

Subscription tiers

Each of QQ Music, KuGou, and Kuwo offers the following tiers:

1. Basic Subscription Service

   • An on-demand, music streaming subscription service available on all devices

   • Includes tethered downloads (i.e. an ‘offline mode”) for up to 300 songs

   • The standard audio quality of 320 kbps

1. Premium Subscription Service

   • same functionality as the Basic Subscription Service except includes tethered downloads (i.e. an ‘offline mode”) for up to 500 songs (QQ Music and KuGou only)

1. VIP Subscription Service (also known as Green Diamond on QQ Music)

   • same functionality as the Basic Subscription Service and in addition provides subscribers with access to third-party coupons, gaming, access to purchase live concert tickets, ringtones, customizable skins and music player features.

1. Ad-Supported Service

   • An on-demand, free to the end-user, advertising-supported, music streaming service available on all devices

   • No tethered download or offline mode functionality

   • The low audio quality of 128 kbps.

WeSing Service

The WeSing Service offers the following functionality:

1. VIP Subscription Service

   • An on-demand karaoke service that enables users to sing along and/or record their own vocals over a master recording (either together with the original vocals (as a “duet”) or with the original vocals digitally removed) (“UGC Covers”) and post the UGC Covers to the WeSing Service

   • Live streaming functionality (not licensed under the Merlin-Tencent Agreement)

   • Provides social / chat functions and virtual gifting functionality

   • Includes tethered downloads (i.e. an ‘offline mode”)

   • The standard audio quality of 320 kbps;

   • Subscribers are provided with access to third-party coupons, gaming packages, customizable skins and other karaoke features (“Extra Offerings”).

1. Ad-Supported Service

   • Same on-demand functionality as the VIP Subscription Service except

   • No tethered download or offline mode functionality

   • The low audio quality of 128 kbps

   • No Extra Offerings

Territories

The people’s Republic of China, but excluding Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan region.

Introduction

Tidal is a global music and entertainment platform committed to creating a deeper connection between artists and fans. TIDAL is a pioneer in giving its subscribers exclusive access to high-profile music, videos, original content, live streams, tickets, merchandise and live experiences fans cannot find anywhere else. The platform’s original content includes the “On Air” podcast network, original video series, artist documentaries and more.

With the commitment of artist owners that believe in creating a more sustainable model for the music industry, TIDAL aims to elevate the experience for artists and music fans. The TIDAL artist-owners are Alicia Keys, Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Daft Punk, Damian Marley, deadmau5, Indochine, J. Cole, Jack White, Jason Aldean, Shawn “JAY Z” Carter, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, T.I. and Usher.

TIDAL is currently available in 55 countries, has more than 60 million songs in its catalogue and over 240,000 high-quality videos. Since its inception, TIDAL had live-streamed more than 120 concerts, offered 325,000 concert tickets and hosted hundreds of exclusive TIDAL member events globally.

Service Type

Tidal offers music through streaming and downloads.

Go Live Time

It takes anywhere from 1-3 business days for content to go live on Tidal after delivery.

Pay rate

Paid Downloads: Payouts are based on territory specific rates, so for songs downloaded individually in a store, you will be paid the wholesale price of the channel's retail price. Not including transaction surcharges added (for e.g Paypal), less VAT and fees due to exploitation of the content payable to Collecting Societies.

Paid Streams: You get paid a proportionate share of subscription revenue per month calculated on terms set out in our agreement with the store (this usually excludes streams during a subscriber's free trial). Payments will fluctuate each month, depending on the amount of subscription revenue generated and how many times your music was streamed.

Territories

TIDAL is currently available in these countries:

Albania; Andorra; Argentina; Australia; Austria; Belgium; Brazil; Bulgaria; Canada; Chile; Colombia; Cyprus; Czech Republic; Denmark; Dominican Republic; Estonia; Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Hong Kong; Hungary; Iceland; Ireland; Israel; Italy; Jamaica; Latvia; Liechtenstein; Lithuania; Luxembourg; Malaysia; Malta; Mexico; Monaco; Netherlands; New Zealand; Norway; Peru; Poland; Portugal; Puerto Rico; Romania; Singapore; Slovakia; Slovenia; South Africa; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; Thailand; Turkey; Uganda; United Kingdom; United States of America

Updated list available here.

Tidal allows any artist to update their profile picture, biography and social media links.

It can be requested by sending an email to s[email protected] with the subject “Artist profile in Tidal” providing the following information:

• Photo: square and at least 2400 x 2400 px.

• Biography: cannot be very long. You can choose the language.

• Official website and social media URLs.

Traxsource was born at the start of the digital revolution. We are the result of our experiences as an Independent label navigating the disruption caused by the internet. To this day we retain our original ethos which was built upon the reputation of that label, Soulfuric Recordings. We are literally DJs who built one of the first online music stores for our friends who were also DJs, resulting in a download site with the heart of an independent label.

Since our birth in October 2004, Traxsource has secured a place in the hearts and minds of DJs around the world. We are ambassadors for the true underground movement that is House Music, driven by our unique and authentic musical point of view. Our mission has always been to provide a home for creative artists and labels to flourish, because their story is our story, and this synergy is the lifeforce of our store. We stand by the artists and labels we serve because we genuinely understand what it takes to survive in today’s industry.

Introduction

Twitch is an interactive live-streaming service and global community that comes together every day to create unique, live, and unpredictable experiences from the interactions of millions.

Soundtrack by Twitch

Soundtrack by Twitch is a tool made specifically for Twitch creators to feature licensed music within their live streams while also creating a new way for artists to be discovered by audiences and fans at a tremendous scale.

As you know, music rights are complex, and many of the streamers would like an easier way to add high-quality music to their Twitch live streams, they have created Soundtrack by Twitch, to offer them the ability to include a select library of fully licensed music in your live broadcasts. Notice that, as Soundtrack has been created for live streaming, the music that is included in Soundtrack can only be used on live Twitch broadcasts.

As explained in Twitch's blog, Ministry of Musics catalogue can be found on Soundtrack and therefore, used in live streams. However, you should know that this channel doesn't monetize the used content.

Territories

Worldwide

Types of service

Yandex service consists of the following elements:

The Ad-Supported Service

Free to the end-user music streaming service, including banner advertisements and with the functionality set out below.

• Available on desktop and mobile devices on the following basis:

  • Desktop devices: on-demand functionality (on up to 10 devices)

  • Mobile devices: no on-demand functionality, ‘freemium’ radio service based on editorial playlists, daily recommendations feed, a maximum of 6 skips per hour, no rewind functionality

• Free to end-users

• Banner advertising

• No offline caching/tethered download functionality

• The low audio quality of 192kbps streams

The Premium Service

Paid music streaming service with the functionality set out below:

• On-demand functionality

• Users pay a monthly subscription fee

• Available on desktop and mobile devices

• Offline caching of tethered download functionality with offline streaming

• The standard audio quality of 320 kbps Streams

Territories

Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Georgia (together with the “CIS Territories”), Israel and Mongolia.

The current available genres in the platform are:

• Alternative

• Alternative/Experimental

• Alternative/Gothic

• Alternative/Grunge

• Alternative/Indie Pop

• Alternative/Indie Rock

• Alternative/Rock

• Ambient/New Age

• Ambient/New Age/Meditation

• Blues

• Blues/Contemporary Blues

• Blues/New Orleans Blues

• Blues/Traditional Blues

• Children’s Music

• Children’s Music/Classic

• Children’s Music/Holiday

• Children’s Music/Stories

• Classical

• Classical/Antique

• Classical/Baroque

• Classical/Chamber

• Classical/Concert

• Classical/Modern Compositions

• Classical/Opera

• Classical/Orchestral

• Classical/Piano

• Classical/Romantic

• Comedy

• Country

• Country/Bluegrass

• Country/Contemporary

• Country/Honky Tonk

• Country/Nashville

• Country/Pop

• Country/Square Dance

• Easy Listening

• Easy Listening/Bar Jazz/Cocktail

• Easy Listening/Bossa Nova

• Easy Listening/Lounge

• Easy Listening/Traditional

• Electronic

• Electronic/Acid House

• Electronic/Breaks

• Electronic/Broken beat

• Electronic/Chill Out

• Electronic/DJ Tools/Sample Packs

• Electronic/Dance

• Electronic/Deep House

• Electronic/Downtempo - experimental

• Electronic/Drum & Bass

• Electronic/Dub/Reggae/Dancehall

• Electronic/Dubstep/Grime

• Electronic/Electro House

• Electronic/Glitch Hop

• Electronic/Hard Dance

• Electronic/Hard Techno

• Electronic/Hardcore

• Electronic/Hardstyle

• Electronic/House

• Electronic/Indie Dance/Nu Disco

• Electronic/Jazz

• Electronic/Minimal

• Electronic/Pop Trance

• Electronic/Progressive House

• Electronic/Psy-Trance

• Electronic/Tech House

• Electronic/Techno

• Electronic/Trance

• Electronic/Trip Hop

• Experimental

• Fitness&Workout

• Flamenco

• Folk

• Funk/R&B

• Hip-Hop/Rap

• Hip-Hop/Rap/Gangsta & Hardcore

• Holiday/Christmas

• Inspirational

• Jazz

• Jazz/Bebop

• Jazz/Big Band

• Jazz/Brazilian Jazz

• Jazz/Classic

• Jazz/Contemporary

• Jazz/Dixie/Rag Time

• Jazz/Free Jazz

• Jazz/Fusion

• Jazz/Jazz Funk

• Jazz/Latin Jazz

• Jazz/Nu Jazz/Acid Jazz

• Jazz/Smooth Jazz

• Jazz/Swing

• Jazz/Traditional

• Jazz/World

• Karaoke

• Latin

• Latin/Bachata

• Latin/Banda

• Latin/Big Band

• Latin/Bolero

• Latin/Bossa Nova

• Latin/Brasil/Tropical

• Latin/Christian

• Latin/Conjunto

• Latin/Corridos

• Latin/Cuban

• Latin/Cumbia

• Latin/Duranguense

• Latin/Electronica

• Latin/Grupero

• Latin/Hip Hop

• Latin/Latin Rap

• Latin/Mambo

• Latin/Mariachi

• Latin/Norteño

• Latin/Pop

• Latin/Ranchera

• Latin/Reggaeton

• Latin/Regional Mexicano

• Latin/Rock en Español

• Latin/Salsa

• Latin/Salsa/Merengue

• Latin/Sierreño

• Latin/Sonidero

• Latin/Tango

• Latin/Tejano

• Latin/Tierra Caliente

• Latin/Traditional Mexican

• Latin/Vallenato

• New Age

• Pop

• Pop/Contemporary/Adult

• Pop/J-Pop

• Pop/K-Pop

• Pop/Mandopop

• Pop/Singer Songwriter

• Punk

• R&B

• Reggae

• Rock

• Rock/Brit-Pop

• Rock/Classic

• Rock/Glam Rock

• Rock/Hard Rock/Heavy Metal

• Rock/Heavy Metal

• Rock/Progressive

• Rock/Rock ‘n’ Roll

• Rock/Singer/Songwriter

• Ska

• Soul

• Soundtrack

• Soundtrack/Anime

• Soundtrack/Musical

• Soundtrack/TV

• Spiritual

• Spiritual/Christian

• Spiritual/Gospel

• Spiritual/Gregorian

• Spiritual/India

• Spiritual/Judaica

• Spiritual/World

• Spoken Word/Speeches

• Trap

• Trap/Future Bass

• Trap/Future Bass/Twerk

• Vocal/Nostalgia

• World

• World/African

• World/Afro-Beat

• World/Afro-Pop

• World/Americas/Argentina

• World/Americas/Brazilian

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Axé

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Black Music

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Bossa Nova

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Chorinho

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Folk

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Funk Carioca

• World/Americas/Brazilian/MPB

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Marchinha

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Pagode

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Samba

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Samba-Rock

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Samba-de-Raiz

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Samba-enredo

• World/Americas/Brazilian/Sambalanço

• World/Americas/Cajun-Creole

• World/Americas/Calypso

• World/Americas/Colombia

• World/Americas/Cuba-Caribbean

• World/Americas/Mexican

• World/Americas/North-American

• World/Americas/Panama

• World/Americas/Peru

• World/Americas/South-American

• World/Arabic

• World/Asian/Central Asia

• World/Asian/China

• World/Asian/India

• World/Asian/India-Bollywood

• World/Asian/Japan

• World/Asian/South Asia

• World/Australian/Pacific

• World/Ethnic

• World/Europe/Eastern

• World/Europe/French

• World/Europe/German

• World/Europe/Northern

• World/Europe/Southern

• World/Europe/Spain

• World/Europe/Western

• World/Mediterranean/Greece

• World/Mediterranean/Italy

• World/Mediterranean/Spain

• World/Russian

• World/Worldbeat

The roles that Ministry of Musics currently supports are:

• Primary artist

• Performer

• Producer

• Remixer

• Composer

• Lyricist

• Publisher

• Featuring

• With

• Conductor

• Arranger

• Orchestra

• Actor

Incompatible Artist Roles

Channels are well-aware of the interdisciplinary nature of artists, this is why most roles can be shared among the same artist. This means the composer can be at the same time the primary artist and the lyricist, for example.

However, there are some artist roles that can not be used for the same artist name, as they clash according to the perspective of the channels.

The roles "featuring", "performer" and "primary artist" are not compatible. If one artist is featured with one of these roles, they can not be featured as another one of them.

To avoid any difficulties the channels may face when ingesting the content if this information is mismatched, the platform does not allow assigning the same artist name to two of these roles.

Language availability varies from DSP to DSP and so the way each DSP deal with it.

For example, some channels only use language information for internal search engine settings and do not specify other uses in their specs.

We are in touch with channels, updating language availability accordingly to their requirements. If you cannot find a language, it is very likely it isn't supported yet. But please don't hesitate to write us if you have any question.

You can see the list of current available languages when creating a release:

Afrikaans

Arabic

Bengali

Bulgarian

Cantonese

Catalan

Chinese

Croatian

Czech

Danish

Dutch

English

Estonian

Finnish

French

German

Greek

Haitian

Hebrew

Hindi

Hungarian

Icelandic

Indonesian

Irish

Italian

Japanese

Kazakh

Korean

Lao

Latin

Latvian

Lithuanian

Malay

Norwegian

Persian

Polish

Portuguese

Punjabi

Romanian

Russian

Sanskrit

Slovak

Slovenian

Spanish

Swedish

Tagalog

Tamil

Telugu

Thai

Turkish

Ukrainian

Urdu

Vietnamese

Zulu

1. Quality of images

The cover art must not be any of the following: blurry, pixelated, mismatched, misaligned, rotated, incorrect, or have other quality issues.

2. Dimensions of cover art

The cover art of all releases must accomplish all following requirements:

• Proportion: Exactly squared

• Minimum size: 3000 x 3000px

• Maximum size: 5000 x 5000px

• Accepted formats: JPG, TIFF or PNG

• Mode: RGB (CMYK is not acceptable)

• Maximum size of file: 36 MB

The images which do not accomplish with all the above requirements will not be accepted and may not be shown on the channels.

3. Links and webpages

The cover art must not contain website addresses, websites that sell music, mention to social media, logos of any store or services related to entertainment, mention to physical formats, or any external reference of the digital release.

4. Credits and collaborations

The cover art can include credits or other artists' names who are not the primary artist of the release, always in a precise form and without any type of abbreviattion. The introduced information in the cover will have to be reproduced with extreme precision in the metadata and vice versa.

And, similarly, expressions like "all rights reserved" - or equivalent - cannot be used. Not even other redundant or unnecessary information.

The release reference number can appear in the cover, but not the release's UPC or any track's ISRC codes.

5. Tracklisting and illegible texts

The cover art must not contain track listing, as the image will be generally visualized in small formats and it won't be able to appreciate small size texts.

In general, is recommended to use legible fonts in the cover, especially for the sizing.

6. Descriptions and biographies

The cover art must not include albums' descriptions, nor artist's biographies.

7. Telephone or email addresses

The cover art must not contain any telephone number and email addresses.

8. Digital Product

The cover art must not include references to it being a digital product.

9. Pricing

The cover art must not include references to pricing, nor any information with promotional purposes.

10. Pornography

The cover art must not contain pornography or to do any violence apology, neither a URL of any website that contains or links to pornography content.

11. Misleading information

The cover art must not be misleading. For example, prominently depicting or referencing an artist even though the artist does not perform on the album.

12. Missing Content

The cover art must not contain references to content that the album doesn't contain, such as “included DVD” or “includes lyrics.”

13. Offensive Symbolism

The cover art must not contain any kind of symbolism that offends a specific group of persons or ethnicities, such as nazi symbolism restricted by the Strafgesetzbuch section 86a.

14. Irrelevant information

The cover art must not include additional information which is irrelevant to the content's identification, such as album descriptions, artist biography, music genre, instrument with which the album is executed, credits or any text incorporing merely ornamental characters that do not guard an explicit relation with the content.

Preferably in occidental languages contents, it is necessary to avoid the use of extraoccidental or special characters - such as the Asian or Arabic characters, among others - until they guard an explicit, justifiable and coherent relation with the content.

15. Logos, images and registered brand

Every logo appearing in the cover must be justified in the metadata, including the involved texts. These logos will be accepted if they guard clear relation with the album's content and explain some relevant information - producer, artist, label, etc. Designers or artists -who created the cover design- mentions won't be accepted as any other external content that isn't involved with the release directly. Any registered brand can appear in the cover, or any other person / company / property images institution. Is totally prohibited the explicit or implicit promotion of them.

Their appearance in the cover will only be accepted if they are visually irrelevant and it can only help to clarify the cover's intention, and not to promote any product, brand, institution or company.

Note: a company name or logo will be able to appear in the cover and/or in the metadata only if it accomplishes some relevant role in the release (in a musical or/and publishing point of view), and remain justified in the metadata (for example: as a producer or publisher).

In addition, it will be necessary to report documentation to prove the consent of the involved mentioned institution to use its name.

• Mastering. In order to ensure good audio quality, and meet the standards of today's music industry, all audio files, must have undergone a professional mastering before their distribution.

• Audio quality. The audio files should not have any sound imperfection. Audio files containing any background noise and other sound imperfections will not be accepted for distribution. Silence, cuts, pauses or extended silences are not allowed. The audio cannot have more than 10 seconds of silence neither in the beginning nor in the end of the track. Other kinds of silences, such as cuts, long pauses or sudden endings, should be avoided too as they can be misunderstood as audio errors.

• Hidden tracks and ghost tracks. This content must be included separately in digital releases, indicating the corresponding expression in the version field. The silence rules apply equally to this kind of audio.

• Silent tracks and white noise tracks. This kind of audio is not allowed. Its use will be interpreted as fraudulent, leading to the application of our Anti-Fraud Policy.

• Audios and titles. Audio files and track titles must always match. Audios uploaded to non-corresponding tracks are not accepted.

• Minimum length. If it is a single, a song has to last more than 30 seconds, otherwise, the channels can interpret the release as click fraud. If it is part of an EP or album it can be permitted as long as it has coherence with the whole release or if the song is an intro, interlude or an outro. Generally speaking, unless it is artistically justified, we recommend audios longer than a minute.

• Previews, commercials, snippets and trailers. None of these formats are permitted.

Why it is recommended to provide a license in these cases and what happens if it is not provided?

Given the new legislation related to the MLC* which became effective in 2021, the requirement of a license for covers on certain cases (especially streaming), is not mandatory anymore in the American territory. Despite the fact that this is not an international paradigm, its appearance forces us to review our current licensing processes.

Therefore, from this moment, in case there is a release with covers to be distributed, the QC team may ask for a license, without thereby supposing an obligation, but more like a recommendation.

The reasons why the licenses will still be recommended are the following:

1. We recommend still providing them for download platforms since the flexible legal terms are related to streaming platforms

2. The original authors of the content can exercise their right to prevent the publication of any version or reinterpretation of their opus.

Both cases can cause the takedown of the distributed content or the claim from the DSPs.

The transformations (medleys, lyrical or compositional changes, translations, use of original masters, etc.) may still require a license that can be obtained as official permission from the editor of the original piece.

What should the license look like?

• COMPULSORY LICENSES: these are licenses that should look like the attachment of this article.

• CUSTOM LICENSES: these are licenses that are issued by both parts involved (owner of the original piece and owner of the cover), and must include, at least, the following:

  • Name of the person who is making the cover

  • Name of the original piece artist

  • Publisher of the original song

  • Signature of the original author, or at least the publisher, and the person who is making the cover.

Where can I get a license if needed?

• Permission of the publisher of the original author (official signed document)

• Easy song licensing (For custom licenses)

There are several possibilities in order to use a sample on a release, and you must justify the use of it depending on each case:

1. If the sample was obtained directly from the original owner: the original owner must provide a valid document that expresses his agreement with the obtainment, use and commercialization of his sample, by the artist who intends to distribute it through the platform.

2. If the sample was obtained from an instrument, either physical or virtual instrument: the license or any other evidence that can demonstrate that the sample has been obtained from an instrument must be presented. Similarly, if applicable, you must present the license that is usually available with the instrument.

3. If the sample was obtained through a payment service (per unit or per subscription): A proof of payment must be presented for the unit, or the registration of the subscription to said service, as well as evidence that the sample has been obtained through this specific payment service.

4. If the sample was obtained through a free legal service: Any valid evidence that could demonstrate that the sample has been obtained through the free service, must be presented, and also valid evidence that could prove authorized commercialization of the obtained sample.

5. If the sample has not been obtained by any of the aforementioned means. It must be justified and in the same way, present a document or any evidence that could prove that:

   • The use of the sample is allowed

   • It has been provided by legal means

   • It has been obtained in a legal manner

   • It grants permission to the commercialization of the sample or derivative works

If the provisions of this policy are not met, then the content involved will not be approved, nor will its distribution be accepted.

Release

Cover Art

Just to the right of the cover, the minimum requirements for the file and the content to be uploaded are detailed.

Remix or Version

This field is optional unless you are using the Remixer artist role (or vice versa).

Artist(s)

The Artist field requires at least one Primary Artist to be entered in order to validate the release. Additionally, different roles can be added for the artists who have participated in the album. It is always advisable to include the Composer in releases, as well as to avoid adding more than four Primary Artists.

In case the release is a Single, the artists listed must match at album and track level. For an EP or album, all artists should be listed at track level and only the primary artists at the album level.

Label

To add a label, it is possible to select one of the available labels from the drop-down list, where you can find the labels already created by the user and the public and default labels of the platform.

In case you want to add a new label, just type the name in the text field and click on the "Add a new label" button.

Genre

At the album level, at least one main genre must be entered, with the option of adding a secondary genre. In both fields, the list of available genres is the same.

Please note that some of the available channels may have genre restrictions, so you may encounter warnings before distributing content. The genres accepted by each channel can be consulted from Distribution > Channels, entering the information of each channel.

Remember that in releases that are Single, this field must be the same at the album and track level.

Language

All releases must have a language assigned to them, which you can consult and select from the drop-down list in the 1. Release info tab or in the following article: Album and track languages.

If the desired language is not available, we recommend indicating the most phonetically similar or geographically close language.

Again, the Language must be the same at album and track level if the release is a Single.

Album Format

You must choose one of the options among the formats: Single, EP and Album.

UPC code

For the UPC code, the platform marks by default the option of I don't have one, assign a UPC code to this release automatically. If you want to enter one manually, simply uncheck the box and enter it in the available field.

Reference number

The reference number works in the same way as the UPC code, except that this field refers to the user's internal catalogue. By default, the automatic assignment is selected and to fill it in manually, just uncheck the box.

TRACK

Remix or Version

This field works the same as at the album level, it is optional unless the Remixer artist role is used (or vice versa).

Artist(s)

It is necessary to enter at least one Primary Artist and one Composer (except if the genre is Spoken Word) in order to validate the track and, consequently, the release. Other roles can also be added for the other artists who have participated in each track.

Genre

As is already the case at the album level, it is mandatory to enter at least one main genre, and adding a secondary genre is optional.

ISRC code

The ISRC code works in the same way as the UPC at the album level. By default, I don't have one, please assign an ISRC to this track.

If you already have one, just enter it in the available field and uncheck the corresponding box.

(P) Publication rights

This field by default is set to the current year. In addition, there is a text field to add the name of the owner of the publishing rights.

If the release is a Single, the value entered must be the same as at the album level.

Lyrics

Adding lyrics to your tracks is optional.

Explicit lyrics

In the drop-down for the Explicit Lyrics field, you must choose between Not Explicit, Explicit and Clean Version.

Language

For the tracks, it is also necessary to indicate the language, here you will find more information: Album and track languages.

Please note that the desired language may not be available in the list of languages on the platform. In this case, you will have to indicate a linguistically or geographically similar language.

If the release is a Single, the album and the track must have the same language.

Available separately

This field applies only to channels that offer Downloads of the content, as in the case of Amazon Music. If this option is not checked, the tracks will not be available individually on that platform.

1. Redundant information

• The terminology "Original Mix" or "Main Mix" and similar expressions, is not accepted in the cover art.

• Credits such as copyright owner(s), and cover art designer(s) are not accepted in the cover art.

2. Languages

• Instrumental tracks should be marked as "non linguistic content" in the language field.

• If a track contains intelligible vocals (such as speech fragments, short sentences, single words, etc.) the language of those vocal parts must be selected as the language of that track. But when it comes to album level, the language in which the title is written, is the one that must be selected.

For example: If an album's title is "Love", but all tracks are instrumental, all tracks should be marked as "non linguistic content" and the album's language should be marked as "English". 3. Artist roles

• The remixers should not and must never be marked as primary artists, at track or album level.

• "Remixers" should only be assigned as remixers at the album level, if the release contains only one track, and that track is a remix. Otherwise, "Remixers" must be assigned only at track level.

4. Format

• Format types (such as Album, Single, or EP) must not be included in the cover art.

5. Dj sets and continuous mixes:

• Dj sets (with own or other's artists tracks) and continuous mixes (that is, putting all the tracks of an album together in a single track creating a continuous mix), are not allowed by the channels.

Explicit content is allowed by the channels, but it has to be properly flagged before its delivery in order to be published. Many of the digital partners have parental control processes available that will prevent explicit content from being displayed to children who visit their digital stores.

Adding the "Parental Advisory" tag to the art cover for explicit content is compulsory.

Failure to correctly identify explicit content may result in your release being removed from the stores after it has been delivered or not being published at all.

SoundCloud profile

End-users can link their SoundCloud profile to the platform by only copying their profile URL:

https://soundcloud.com/artist

How to get the Apple Artist ID?

End-users can get the Apple Artist ID from the link to their profile. It corresponds to the numbers that follow the artist's name, at the end of the link:

https://music.apple.com/en/artist/stephen-please/1467880022

How to obtain a Spotify Artist ID?

There are several ways for users to get an existing Spotify Artist ID:

Desktop App

1. Navigate to the Artist page in the Spotify desktop app.

2. Click the "..." icon below the Artist's name.

3. Click Share > Copy Spotify URI.

4. Paste the Spotify URI in this field, and delete “spotify:artist:”.

Alternative to Desktop App

It is also possible to obtain the Artist ID if using the web app:

1. Navigate to the Artist page in the Spotify web app.

2. See URL, for instance, https://open.spotify.com/artist/0bOrkDLzYe57Zl803Zv8ww

3. The Artist ID is the alphanumerical value after "artist/", for instance, https://open.spotify.com/artist/0bOrkDLzYe57Zl803Zv8ww

Also, the link to the artist page can be copied via the web app:

1. Navigate to the Artist page in the Spotify web app.

2. Click the "..." icon below the Artist's name.

3. Click Share > Copy the link to the artist.

4. The Artist ID is the value between artist/ and ?, for instance: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0bOrkDLzYe57Zl803Zv8ww?si=g1V5aDGPSpm2LRMXZuaKdw

Minimum audio resolution

The minimum requirements for uploading audio masters are:

• WAV at 16 bit depth, 44.1KHz, stereo.

• FLAC at 16 bit depth, 44.1KHz, stereo.

Hifi/HD audio

Basic Audio master 16 - 44.1KHz

HD master 24 - 96KHz

Studio HD master24 - 192KHz

We also support other sampling rates above 44.1KHz.

Once the content has been completely delivered to the selected DSPs, the timing for the publication will depend on each channel: If there are no issues with the DSP, it can take from 1 to 15 working days.

For this reason, we recommend making the distribution as early as possible, at least 15 days before the release date, to make sure the content will be published on the desired date.

Please note that the 1 to 15 working days period is extended during festive and holiday periods, meaning it can take more days for the publication.

Why hasn't my release been published?

It can happen that, even if a delivery has been completed successfully in your platform, a release doesn't reach a DSP. In this case, we recommend you request a redelivery

To proceed with a catalog transfer from another distributor to our platform, we recommend to follow these steps:

1. Create the releases in your Sonosuite platform.

2. Distribute the content.

3. Wait for the synchronization.

4. Take down the content from the old aggregator.

1. Create the releases in our platform

• Create the releases in the platform by using the same metadata previously used. The most important data for the synchronization are:

• ISRC codes

• Release title and track title(s)

• Artist(s) name(s)

• Audio master

• UPC codes (the same ones can be used as long as the release is exactly the same as before)

This will increase the success of the track linking on DSPs.

2. Distribute the content

• Set the release date 5 business days in advance of the set live date.

• Distribute the releases that are being transferred to the new platform to all the channels where they were previously published.

This step can take a while, as releases have to go through Quality Control review, as well as the channel's ingestion and publication.

3. Wait for the synchronisation

Wait until the content appears online on all channels and DO NOT Takedown the content from the previous distribution service before.

• The transferred content will appear as duplicated (one from the former distributor and the other one from our platform)

• The synchronisation can take up to a week.

4. Take down the content from the old aggregator

Once the synchronisation has been successfully done, you can request the Takedown to the previous distributor.

As channels are progressively backing the artists' autonomy. Most of them have already enabled their own apps, which allow End-users to claim and personalize their artist profile in the channel.

However, some of the channels still only afford content coming from the aggregators, while others do not have any open possibility for modifications.

Claim the profile from the channel

Here are the channels that offer the possibility to claim the artist's profile through their app:

• Spotify: Artist Profile Verification

• Apple Music: Apple Music for Artists

• Amazon Music: Amazon Music for Artists

• Deezer: Deezer Backstage

• Anghami: Anghami Artists Connect

As the channels are the ones to automatically assign releases to their artists' profiles when a release is distributed it can happen to be assigned to an incorrect Artist Profile. It also can happen that the channel creates a new artist profile instead, while a previous one already exists.

This issue happens with Artist Profiles with identical or similar names, as channels create and organize them automatically.

In case artist has experienced this situation, we can contact them in order to request the channel to fix it.

Content which is under public domain in some territories may be held from going live in some channels. This action is taken by the channels themselves, at their sole discretion and criteria, in order to provide the best experience possible to their users and also prevent copyright conflicts.

More and more channels are following this policy, therefore it is recommended to avoid distributing this type of content.

The following DSPs do not accept this kind of Content: Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Youtube Content ID, Youtube Music, Facebook, TikTok, SoundExchange, AGEDI, Audible Magic, BMAT, as well as other channels.

If you have any questions about Public Domain content distribution, please do not hesitate to contact us

Introduction

Spotify is a commercial music streaming service providing digital rights management-restricted content. Music can be browsed or searched by artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label. Free subscriptions can listen to music, interrupted by targeted advertisements. Paid "Premium" subscriptions remove advertisements and allow users to download music to listen to offline. The service has also introduced social functions such as the "Follow" feature which allows following friends or artists and verified artist profiles. Spotify was launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB. As of November 2020, the service has approximately 320 million monthly active users with 144 million paid subscribers.

Service Type

Spotify offers music via on-demand streaming only. Streams are offered in DRM-enforced Vorbis q5 or q9 format.

Territories

Available in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay.

Pay rate

Paid Streams: You get paid a proportionate share of subscription revenue per month calculated on terms set out in our agreement with the store (this usually excludes streams during a subscriber's free trial). Payments will fluctuate each month, depending on the amount of subscription revenue generated and how many times your music was streamed.

Spotify for Artists

Spotify for Artists puts you in control of your profile on Spotify. You can promote your music and the music you’re into, add your bio, update your images, dig into listener stats, and much more.

Introduction

To get your Spotify Artist Profile verified and to manage it yourself, you’ll need to request access to Spotify For Artists. Once you’ve done that, you’ll get the blue check on your artist profile (the hallmark of Spotify-recognized profiles).

You will find all the necessary information to claim your artist profile at: artists.spotify.com.

How to request an artist verification

To request access to Spotify for Artists just fill out this form by following the steps below:

1. Indicate whether you have a Spotify user account (you must have one to manage an artist profile on the platform).

2. Log in with your user account.

3. Indicate your role (artist, manager, label, etc.), your name, the Spotify user account you want to associate with the profile, and an email to send the notifications.

4. Indicate the name of the artist or the band whose profile you want to claim and verify.

5. Lastly, verify the Twitter account of the artist or the band and provide links to the website or social networking profiles.

Spotify will check the information and then the blue checkmark will be added to your profile. This is what indicates that you are a verified artist by Spotify.

Then, Spotify For Artists will allow you to change your profile and background pictures whenever you want, create playlists, and check stats as to how, how much, and where your songs are being listened to or who are your listeners, among many other interesting data.

Moreover, you’ll be able to synchronize your profile with Songkick to show your concert dates at your profile or with Merchbar to sell your merchandising with Spotify.

If a client doesn't have any reply from Spotify after a month, they have to contact directly with them through: https://artists.spotify.com/contact.

How to request a label verification

The former tool Spotify Analytics was closed and merged into the Spotify for Artists platform. This free tool is now giving not only to artists but also to labels and distributors, the data they need from Spotify by providing streaming stats and helping to understand performance across your entire catalogue.

To request access to Spotify for Artists as a label just fill out this form by following the steps below:

1. Go to artists.spotify.com to log in with your Spotify account username and password. Next, you’ll confirm your work email address, or provide it if your Spotify account is associated with a different email address.

2. Search for your company or organization using the exact same label name that you used when submitting your music through your platform.

3. If you are joining an existing company, Spotify may ask you for some details about your role. If you’re the first person on your team to request access to Spotify for Artists, you may need to create your organization in their database. Enter the URIs for at least 3 albums or songs for which your label has the right to view data. If you have sub-labels, or you’ve used more than one distributor or licensor, select tracks that represent each of those combinations. You’re able to provide more than 3 URIs if necessary.

4. Hit submit, and Spotify's support team will review your request. If they have all the information needed to grant you access, you’ll receive a confirmation email from [email protected].

Note: If you manage multiple labels and require content from all labels to be accessible via your Analytics account, contact [email protected] from the email address linked to your Analytics account requesting the labels to be added. This process may take some time as it is a manual process.

It is common that, when an artist releases to Spotify, the channel assigns the music to another existing profile. This issue tends to happen with Artist Profiles with identical or similar names, as Spotify creates and organises them automatically.

My release has been assigned to a wrong profile

If you have an artist page in Spotify, then submit an update after introducing your Artist ID in the platform.

1. Get your Spotify Artist ID.

2. Introduce the Artist ID in your artist profile.

3. Update the release so that the data reaches the channel.

If you still do not have an artist page in Spotify, use this form to create a profile. So that you can add your Artist ID to the platform afterwards.

I need to remove a wrong release from my profile

If you are verified in Spotify for Artists, then log in and use this form to request the modifications.

If you are not verified yet, then please verify yourself.

Remember to check if this issue has been going on only on Spotify or also in other platforms, above all if this is the artist's first release.

If your case does not match any of the previous requests, please write to [email protected]

Introduction

The artist roles that Spotify currently publishes on the main page are just two: "Primary Artist" and "Featuring Artist".

So, from now on, if you assign an artist as "With" or "Featuring", in Spotify it will be published as "Featuring Artist" indistinctly.

All other assigned roles than those listed above will not appear in the album information published in Spotify. However, the listeners can access certain information by clicking on the ellipsis next to the track title

As Spotify users, when we click on a song > "Show credits", it shows to us additional information.

Which equivalence does it have with the metadata we specify in our platform?

• Performed by: Equals our platform's "Primary Artist", "Featuring Artist" and "Remixer"

• Composed by: Equals our platform's "Composer", "Conductor" and "Lyricist".

• Produced by: Equals our platform's "Producer".

• Source: Equals our platform's "Label".

Even when a release has never been published on the channel, only releases with an "Original Release Date" within the past 6 months will appear on Spotify for Artists' "Latest Releases" section.

Moreover, releases marked as “Various Artists” at album level, will not appear on/in this section either.

As you know, Spotify has several levels of access for the users, one of them is Freemium, for users with free accounts. In these cases, Spotify does not collect money from users' subscriptions but from advertisers who pay to serve ads to these accounts. It is based on this money collected that it distributes the royalties for each reproduction that comes from a free user. This means that the price per stream in these cases can vary exaggeratedly from one month to another and even from one country to another. The reality is that a couple of years ago, the price per stream of a free user has dropped severely. To give you an idea, if to generate 1€ with streams that come from Premium users an artist needs around 250 plays, to generate 1€ with streams from free accounts an artist would need almost 6,000 plays.

Spotify features the option to submit songs that have not been published yet to their official curated playlists.

To do so, the artist, label or manager has to go to their Spotify for Artists account and select the track they wish to submit for playlists. The editorial team will consider the proposal and decide if the track is included or not and to what playlist. The final decision is always made by the professional Spotify team.

Spotify advises the users to make the request not less than 7 days before the release date as well as to introduce all the available information about the track.

More detailed information related to basic requirements can be found in the following entry, while all the data step-by-step can be checked in Spotify's Help Center.

Spotify created an experience that’s simple and interactive —and even shareable. By partnering with Musixmatch, Spotify is bringing song lyrics to life through in-app access across the majority of their extensive library of tracks.

Lyrics are available to all Free and Premium users globally across iOS and Android devices, desktops, gaming consoles,*, and TV.

How do I add my lyrics on Spotify?

For artists, to get their Lyrics live on Spotify, they have to add their repertoire to Musixmatch.

Also, Musixmatch has launched a new service Musixmatch for Music Creators, in which artists and/or labels can sign up to upload and synchronize their lyrics. In this link, you can find further details about how to sync your lyrics.

How to find Lyrics

Spotify Mobile app

1. Tap on the “Now Playing View” on a song.

2. While listening, swipe up from the bottom of the screen.

3. You’ll see track lyrics that scroll in real-time as the song is playing!

4. To share, simply tap the “Share” button at the bottom of the lyrics screen and then select the lyrics you want to share — and where you want to share them — via third-party platforms.

Spotify Desktop app

1. From the “Now Playing” bar, click on the microphone icon while a song is playing.

2. You’ll see track lyrics that scroll in real-time while the song plays.

Spotify TV app

1. Open the “Now Playing View” on a song.

2. Navigate to the right corner to the “lyrics button” and select if you want to enable Lyrics.

3. Once enabled, you’ll see the lyrics in the “Now Playing” View.

*The Lyrics feature will be available across Playstation 4, Playstation 5, and Xbox One, along with Android TV, including FireTV, Samsung, Roku, LG, Sky, and Comcast.

Introduction

Spotify launched its DJ Mixes, where some DJs are sharing their own mixed-music content, in addition to high-quality compilations directly on Spotify through its new DJ Mixes. Available for all users in the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand, this latest innovation opens up a completely new format for artists to get their music mixes in the hands of their fans and further expand their global audience. DJ Mixes provides one integrated place where artists can seamlessly create and connect with their audiences.

DJ Mixes is just beginning to roll out, so fans should expect the experience to continue to evolve over time. Users on iOS and Android who have the Spotify app downloaded can listen for themselves.

How to get involved?

If you're interested in suggesting a DJ from your roster who would like to be involved, please contact us

Facebook Rights Manager helps you protect your copyrighted content at scale on Facebook and Instagram by detecting audio and video content matching yours. It uses the reference files you upload to identify potential matches and apply the rules and conditions you've set.

Rights Manager works by detecting matching audio and video content based on rules and conditions you set. You upload reference files and indicate whether you own the rights to the video, audio or both video and audio. Rights Manager finds matches and applies the rules and conditions you set.

Rights Manager isn’t the only way to monitor and protect content on Facebook. Rights Manager allows rights owners to manage content from one place at scale but you can also manage intellectual property without Rights Manager.

Only Facebook Pages are eligible and you must be a Page admin or editor to use Rights Manager. You can access Rights Manager from Creator Studio.

Page admins and editors can use Rights Manager to:

• Establish content ownership by uploading reference files.

• Create match rules and decide what automatic actions happen when people upload matching content.

• Authorize certain people or Pages or Instagram accounts to have permission to post videos matching your content.

• Review matched videos that may contain content you own.

• It's important that you don't claim rights to the content you don't own. You need to exclude segments of content in your reference files that you don't have exclusive rights to use.

You can upload reference files even if the video is not posted publicly on Facebook. Your videos can be uploaded to your reference library without being posted to your Page.

Rights Manager isn’t retroactive. It may not detect videos that were posted before reference files are uploaded. You should update reference files regularly as you produce and distribute new content.

Sound Recordings Policy

As FBRM sound recordings policy says:

When using Rights Manager, you uphold that your organization owns and/or controls exclusive rights to the sound recording reference files and Audio Library content you deliver to Rights Manager for the applicable territories. You may not deliver soundtracks or compilations where you do not own exclusive rights.

References uploaded to Rights Manager and/or offered in Facebook Inc. and Instagram music products must additionally meet all of the following content standards. References unlikely to be sufficiently distinct include, but are not limited to:

• public domain content

• covers

• production loops

• soundbeds

• sound effects

• sound-alikes

• karaoke recordings

• classical music recordings of compositions

• spoken word recordings

• comedy recordings

• film recordings (that are not the musical score to a film)

• speeches

• prayer recordings

• audiobooks

• podcasts

• nature or wildlife recordings

• ambient sound recordings

• recordings or descriptions of sexual acts

References uploaded to Rights Manager and/or offered in Facebook Inc./Instagram Music products that do not meet these standards may be deleted entirely and/or prevented from matching user content without notice.

Content Availability

Content that completes ingestion may not always be available immediately for use on Facebook platforms. The availability of specific content is governed by policies set within the metadata. Territorial coverage and hence availability in any launched markets is also limited by what is asserted within the metadata.

Instagram stories: Track linking to an artist profile

To request a track to be linked to an Instagram account or Facebook artist/band page request to [email protected] with the following details:

• Instagram:

  • Track ISRC to be linked

  • Instagram username without "@", "www", capitals or other symbols.

• Facebook:

  • Track ISRC to be linked

  • Facebook Artist's page URL

If a song does not currently have lyrics available, they will see “Lyrics aren't available for this song”. Facebook Rights Manager team is working diligently to add new lyrics every day. Lyrics are being compiled and delivered to the channel by their lyric partner MusixMatch.

So, if you want that to ensure that your lyrics are available in Stories you must register them to their lyric partner MusixMatch.

If you have any other queries regarding this issue, please, don't hesitate to contact us via [email protected]

What if our clients want their lyrics in time for a new release?

FBRM are asking labels to ensure their artists' lyrics are available in time for their next release, and to have them sign up to become a Verified Artist at Musixmatch and use their New Release form.

A verified badge is a check that appears next to an Instagram profile's name to indicate that the account is the authentic public figure, celebrity, global brand or entity it represents.

The Instagram Verification has to be requested directly through the app.

Here you can find all the information related to Instagram Verification and the steps you must follow to apply for it: Verified Badges | Instagram Help Center.

Users and/or pages are allowed to feature music distributed to Facebook Rights Manager on the content they share on Facebook. However, due to the channel's own internal policies, FBRM will automatically block and hide videos composed by a still image plus a song, or what could also be called an art-track.

Important: Please, understand there is no other reason for this than Facebook's own internal policies to avoid art-tracks on their service, even if the uploader is the artist itself. Therefore, there is nothing we can do from Ministry of Musics in order to avoid this from happening.

About iTunes

iTunes is a media player, media library, online radio broadcaster, and mobile device management application developed by Apple Inc. It is used to play, download, and organise digital audio and video on personal computers running the OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The iTunes Store is also available on the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad.

Through the iTunes Store, users can purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, audiobooks, podcasts, movies, movie rentals in some countries, and ringtones, available on the iPhone and iPod Touch (fourth generation onward).

About Apple Music

Apple Music is Apple's premium subscription service, accessible via the iTunes interface. After an initial 3 months free trial, which users will only be able to access after providing credit card information, Apple Music will only be available to paying subscribers. The service has a strong focus on editorial and artist features, including “Artist Connect”, which will allow approved artists to post free content directly on the service and interact with fans.

Service Type

iTunes offers music through the sales of downloads. Apple Music is a streaming service.

Territories

iTunes and Apple Music are available in: Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argelia, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus*, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhután, Bolivia, Bosnia, Botswana, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Brunei Darussalam, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina-Faso*, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India*, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Liberia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldivas, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal*, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Congo, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Africa, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Tonga, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Turks & Caicos, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan*, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

*Explicit content is not sold in these territories.

Go Live Time

Normally, releases go live within 24-27 hours in both services simultaneously. Important Note: a random percentage of releases go through an internal iTunes review process, which can take up to 16 business days from the day they are received by the store. If your release is placed in iTunes' content review, unfortunately, it will take longer than the normal 24-72 hours to go live. We can't speed up the internal iTunes review process. If you have a required release date please make sure that you distribute your music more than 16 business days in advance of the digital release date.

Introduction

Apple Music is one of the main channels and one of the first ones that has established a Style Guide for content delivery. iTunes guidelines are the most strict among the DSPs. This is to ensure that Apple Music is the most complete music experience available, with a catalogue of good quality and variety and free of legal and rights issues.

Most important considerations

Here we share a list of the most important guidelines to consider when preparing your content for delivery to Apple Music:

Asset quality

Quality of the audio. We expect to receive the highest-quality assets available, which must meet or exceed the quality of the physical product is already out in the marketplace.

Artist accuracy and formatting

Pay attention to the format and accuracy of artist names and roles. The information should be correct and remain consistent across all content of the artist. The artist's name must not be generic and include any additional information. Also, take into consideration that the Songwriter/Composer/Lyricist role is considered very important and will become a mandatory role in the future.

Localizations and phonetics

Localizations and phonetics enhance the discoverability of your content. If your content is available in more than one language, localizations have to be considered. Please contact our team for more information.

Explicit or Clean version

Explicit and clean content must be flagged.

Lyrics

Lyrics can improve the quality of the content and the overall experience related to it. Promote and make sure your content includes lyrics and that they are written correctly.

This is extremely important for content that you are promoting directly with Apple itself (ie. you are in touch with the Apple Editorial team). This content has to be delivered with lyrics, otherwise, severe penalties can incur.

Artist ID

It is very important in order to have a release correctly published

Rejections

The following kinds of content lead to rejections:

• Public domain content

• Misleading content (sound-alike artists or performers)

• Content with legal or rights issues

We recommend checking the above points before delivering content to Apple Music, this will fasten up the delivery process and will ensure the successful publication of your catalogue on this channel. Not following these guidelines will result in content not being published on Apple Music and the possible Takedown of your whole catalogue from the channel.

Introduction

Unlike other content-related issues, what Apple Music calls “Editorial hides”, cannot be fixed by redelivery or metadata update. Editorial Hides is the most serious type of content rejection from the channel, which is related to potential frauds and copyright issues. It can severely penalize your content distribution to this channel.

Types of Editorial Hides

Curated Artist

Content will be hidden using the reason Curated Artist when:

• Apple Music has curated an artist’s page and decided there are sufficient instances of a song or catalogue available.

• Public domain content: the channel accepts only one version created from the best available source.

Repeated Submissions

Content will be hidden using the reason Repeated Submissions if multiple copies of the same content and/or audio files are submitted with a slightly different title and/or artist.

Do not send duplicate versions of the same content (such as the same album with a rearranged tracklist, or near-identical greatest hits albums).

Misleading

Content will be hidden using the reason Misleading if designed to mislead customers by mimicking popular content or search terms

• This includes but is not limited to the artist name, album, or song titles that are similar or identical to the movie, musical theatre, book, podcast, social media, studio, and TV show titles or characters. This also applies to the imagery, logos, and fonts associated with those pop culture franchises.

• Sound-alikes, cover versions, or tribute songs that sound very similar to the original, aren't accepted. Recordings that include a similar name, title, or image of a popular artist in the content title or cover art may be hidden for editorial reasons. This content may not violate copyright law, but it can cause customer confusion.

Refusal

• Cultural Sensitivities: Content sold must be legal and appropriate for the country or region where the content is cleared.

• Nazi Propaganda: Content must not depict Nazi symbolism as restricted by the Strafgesetzbuch section 86a if the content is cleared for sale in Germany (DE), Austria (AT), Switzerland (CH), or any other country or region that restricts Nazi propaganda. If content violating this rule is submitted, your entire catalogue may be subject to suspension in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and any other applicable country or region.

• Other Content Not Permitted:

  • Subliminal content

  • Karaoke music videos and ringtones

  • Karaoke tracks with lead vocals or vocal versions

  • Ringtones delivered as tracks on music albums

  • DJ Mix albums delivered as a single audio file

  • Snippets and advertisement tracks

As you can see, there can be some content that does not violate copyright law, but it can cause customer confusion and definitely, iTunes doesn’t accept this.

iTunes reviews accurately all the content delivered and takes really good care of its whole catalogue quality and variety, playlists included. Because of this, if iTunes decides to hide content, this is a final and serious decision that can penalize content delivery to the channel. Depending on the volume of hides applied to your content, it can lead to your whole catalogue takedown on this DSP.

The Apple Artist ID is automatically assigned to each artist created in the iTunes Store.

Once the works of an artist are available, the artist ID can be obtained via Apple's artist page. To obtain the artist ID follow these steps:

1. Search any album of the artist on iTunes or directly the artist name.

2. Click on the artist's link and go to their artist profile.

3. Click on "Share artist" and get the URL. The ID number corresponds to the code you can find in between the "artist/" and the "?" symbol.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/ARTISTNAME/ARTISTAPPLEID?...

Note: Please, ensure that the URL is the artist page, not the album page.

Introduction

This tool by Apple Music offers the artist access to analytics and statistics of their songs and albums distributed to this channel. Find out how many plays and sales has their catalogue, in which radios they have been included and how many times they have been played. Moreover, artists will get to know where their main listeners come from, as well as their trends and habits when they listen to the catalogue.

How to claim a profile?

To claim a profile in Apple Music for Artists the end-user has to do it through this link.

Any artist can log in with his Apple ID and fill out a form in which they will be asked to write the profile name they wish to claim, to select the albums associated with that profile and to point their role in the project (artist, manager or label manager) as well.

Apple Music will also ask to fill in the contact information as well as with the label’s / distributor’s and the manager’s and to link it at least, with one of the artist's verified profiles on Facebook or Twitter. Apple Music for Artists will verify all the information and the identity before giving access to the platform.

Instant-gratification tracks can be requested for any desired album. Instant-gratification tracks are available for individual purchases during the pre-order period. If a customer pre-orders the album, the track will be downloaded immediately.

If any artist is asking for their album in iTunes’ Pre-order you must follow up the next steps:

Distribute the release to iTunes via the digital platform.

Wait until the export/distribution process to iTunes

1. Contact [email protected] requesting the iTunes Pre-order by sharing the following information:

   • Album Name

   • UPC

   • Release Date

An iTunes Booklet is a digital booklet that you can include in the release in iTunes. Similar to booklets that can be found in physical albums, you can use them to add information about the content (lyrics, technical sheet, special thanks, etc). The release buyer can download the booklet along with the tracks.

To request the delivery of a booklet to iTunes, please write to [email protected] before distributing the release, indicating the following:

• Release title (single, EP or album)

• Artist name

• Booklet in PDF

In contrast to physical booklets, iTunes digital booklets differ in measurement. Contact us for more information.

In case an artist wants to submit tracks mastered for iTunes, these must be mastered by an iTunes approved studio. If you don't know one, we can put you into contact with approved studios. Once the mastered tracks are ready, please make sure the full album has been uploaded to Sonosuite and proceed with the distribution. Then, send an email to [email protected] indicating the following information:

• Album Title

• Apple Album ID (the number in the iTunes Album link, such as https://music.apple.com/us/album/name-album-example/888028550) or, in case the ID is not available, album UPC.

• Mastering Engineer's Email Address

This process can take up to 15 days. If after this period you don't see the release on iTunes correctly labelled as "Apple Digital Masters" or do you have any queries about the submission, please don't hesitate to contact us.

iTunes Match allows users to store all their digital music in the cloud.

Users can then access their entire music library wherever they go; their music won't be tethered to one device or computer.

iTunes will automatically determine which songs in their music collection are available in the iTunes Store; those tracks will be added to the iCloud for them to listen to on any device that supports iTunes.

Apple Music is one of the main channels and one of the first ones that has established a Style Guide for content delivery. iTunes guidelines are the most strict among the DSPs. This is to ensure that Apple Music is the most complete music experience available, with a catalog of good quality and variety and free of legal and rights issues.

Here we share a list of the most critical guidelines to consider when preparing your content for delivery to Apple Music:

Asset quality

Quality of the audio. We expect to receive the highest-quality assets available, which must meet or exceed the quality of the physical product if it is already out in the marketplace.

Artist accuracy and formatting

Pay attention to the format and accuracy of artist names and roles. The information should be correct and remain consistent across all content of the artist. The artist's name must not be generic and include any additional information. Also, take into consideration that the Songwriter/Composer/Lyricist role is considered very important and will become a mandatory role in the future.

Localizations and phonetics

Localizations and phonetics enhance the discoverability of your content. If your content is available in more than one language, localizations have to be considered. Please contact our team for more information.

Explicit or Clean version

Explicit and clean content must be flagged.

Lyrics

Lyrics can improve the quality of the content and the overall experience related to it. Promote and make sure your content includes lyrics and that they are written correctly.

This is extremely important for content that you are promoting directly with Apple itself (ie. you are in touch with the Apple Editorial team). This content has to be delivered with lyrics, otherwise, severe penalties can incur.

Content that can lead to rejections

• Public domain content

• Misleading content (sound-alike artists or performers)

• Content with legal or rights issues

We recommend checking the above points before delivering content to Apple Music, this will fasten up the delivery process and will ensure the successful publication of your catalog on this channel. Not following these guidelines will result in content not being published on Apple Music and the possible Takedown of your whole catalog from the channel.

Important Note: Take into account that these guidelines can be applied to any DSP.

TikTok is a global video community powered by music. With this app, you can discover, create and edit amazing videos, and easily share them with your friends and the whole world. Create and edit videos instantly using special filters, funny stickers and much more.

Whether it’s dance, free-style or performance, creators are encouraged to let their imagination run wild and set their expressions free. Designed for global creators, TikTok allows users to quickly and easily create unique short videos to share with friends and the world.

TikTok is the new cultural benchmark for global creators. They strive to empower more creative minds to be part of the content revolution.

• Mobile Studio The perfect marriage between artificial intelligence and image capturing. Enhancing product offering through rhythm synchronization, special effects, and advanced technology. Turn your phone into a full-blown creative studio.

• Massive Music Library A sea of music libraries with fresh editor's pick daily. Take your creative potential to the next level and unlock the world of endless possibilities.

Territories

Worldwide

TikTok pays royalties based on the videos that use that content and not based on the views that the content gets.

Therefore, as informed by the DSP, the monetization goes for each video created and it is possible that even if your users' content has been used to upload a video with a lot of streams, it may not generate high revenue.

A blue checkmark next to a TikTok username indicates that this account is the authentic presence of the creator, brand, or public figure it represents. Artists with verified accounts can request a Sounds tab to be displayed on their profiles.

This tab compiles all of the artist's tracks previously distributed by a label or distributor. Now, fans can access their favorite artist’s sounds to use in their clips not only by searching for them in the sounds library but directly from the artist’s profile on TikTok.

If you are interested in obtaining this tab for one of your platform's artists, write us at [email protected] and we will manage it for you.

TikTok doesn't allow music to be used in a video longer than 60 seconds.

In that case, the video is longer than 60 seconds the music will be automatically muted by the channel.

Due to the current contractual agreement with the channel, songs are sent with a duration of 60 seconds. However, TikTok users can only shoot a minimum of 15 seconds and a maximum of 60 seconds, although 60 seconds can be previewed.

Remember that you can set the start time through the platform editor.

Channel Description

YouTube Music allows watching and listening to music videos. YouTube Music Key automatically pairs your song with your album cover art (YouTube calls this an “Art Track”), allowing you to earn money when these Art Tracks are streamed on YouTube. With a reach of one billion unique users monthly, YouTube Music Key gives you the power to connect with more fans worldwide.

The service offers ad-free, audio-only playback for background listening in addition to video viewing, as well as offline listening. It will also include a subscription to Google Play Music, with 30+ million songs, expert-curated playlists, and in the future, the ability to watch many YouTube official music videos right from the app. When you deliver an album to this channel, it will be made available and monetised in the YouTube Music Key service. Even if you have your music videos already on YouTube, adding YouTube Music Key gives you broader distribution and access to an additional income.

Service Type

YouTube Music makes your music available via the creation of Art Tracks. An Art Track is an automatically generated YouTube version of a sound recording. An Art Track consists of the sound recording, the album art, and metadata about the recording, such as its title and artist name.

The purpose of Art Tracks is to provide a single official, label-sanctioned YouTube version of every sound recording. Currently, official music videos are available for recordings only when a label or artist invests (non-trivial) time and resources into producing one. Art Tracks automate the creation of versions for recordings that don’t have a produced music video. Art Tracks are available to either free or premium users on YouTube. You can find more information about art tracks here.

Territories

YouTube Music is available in Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Lebanon, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Oman, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States

YouTube Music is YouTube's music streaming platform, which SonoSuite distributes to channels as well. Here we will try to clarify some of the most frequent doubts about YouTube Music.

1. When you distribute a release to YouTube Music, you will also see that it appears on YouTube as an "Art track". YouTube Music publishes all the content distributed its channel in Art-track format. This means that for every single, EP or album distributed to this channel, the channel will publish it as an 'auto-generated' video using the Cover Art of the release.

2. By default, YouTube Music will send the release to one of these three channels:

   • "Various Artists - Topic" (Ie. Various Artists 1, Various Artists 2)

   • "[Artist Name] - Topic": This channel is created automatically by YouTube. All auto-generated videos from one artist are stored here.

   • Your personal channel: YouTube will prioritise the synchronisation of auto-generated videos in your channel.

In case a release hasn't been properly linked to its Artist's channel, a request can be forwarded to YouTube on this link.

Sending a release to YouTube Music will automatically generate an Art-track in YouTube. An Art-track is a song with an image generated automatically by YouTube, composed by the sound recording, the art cover and all the metadata entered in the platform by the end-user, for example, the artist name or the album title.

Art-tracks are catalogued as audio releases for YouTube, that's why the audio is distributed through the platform and they will appear in the YouTube Music app and Youtube Premium, as well as in the channels/playlists that YouTube decides. They are created for their streaming service and their music products. Also, these Art-tracks are included in the YouTube Music app and YouTube Red subscription services.

For more information concerning how to contact YouTube please visit this link.

Introduction

Official Artists Channels on YouTube automatically organize the music catalog of an artist in two sections: album & singles and music videos.

Conditions

Having an Official Artist Channel on YouTube is related to having a "Topic Channel". That means, if an End User wants to have an Official Artist Channel it is necessary to accomplish the following conditions:

• To have their own Topic Channel.

• At least three music videos were provided by a music distribution partner in the Artist YT Channel.

How to request the Youtube Official Artist channel?

If the artist meets these requirements you can proceed with their Official Artist Channel writing to [email protected], sending us the following info:

• YouTube Artist Channel URL (where they upload all their videos)

• YouTube Artist Topic Channel (YouTube Music)

You can get more info on the YouTube Artist Resources site and on the Official Artist Channel Playbook.

Description

Content ID is a popular digital fingerprinting system that content creators can use to easily identify and manage their copyrighted content on YouTube*. Videos uploaded to YouTube are compared against audio and video files registered with Content ID by content owners, looking for any matches. When the audio of a video is matched to Content ID registered content, a copyright notice will appear on the video, and the content owner may choose to take certain actions, such as:

• Clearing the claim and taking no further action

• Tracking the video’s viewership statistics

• Monetizing the video by running ads against it

• Muting the audio that matches their music

• Blocking a whole video from being viewed

As a YouTube Partner platform, we use the audio part of the Content ID system to manage and administer copyrighted audio content on behalf of content owners. When you send your audio to YouTube Audio Content ID, your audio is matched against videos that contain this audio. Automatically, we monetize those videos and the generated revenue will be reported together with the rest of the channels in your distribution account.

*Important: Do not confuse Youtube Content ID with Youtube Music.

Service Type

YouTube Audio Content ID is not a public music service, but an invisible tracking system. YouTube creates a reference that allows claiming all videos that contain your audio. You can only activate YouTube Audio Content ID if you are the rightful owner of the copyright.

Go Live Time

It takes between 2-5 business days for a Content ID to start generating claims.

Pay rate

When a video containing your music is reproduced on YouTube, you get paid a proportionate share of YouTube ad and subscription revenue for that video per month calculated on terms set out in our agreement with YouTube. Payments will fluctuate each month, depending on the amount of ad or subscription revenue generated and how often your music was streamed.

In order to fulfil the key component of the Content Commitment to YouTube, any sound recording should be assigned to an asset (Youtube Music).

Youtube will claim any content that matches the music of this art track, so it is important that the content you distribute meet the minimum requirements of the DSP to avoid false claims on other artist's content, which are:

• Original compositions

• Content for which you have exclusive rights

• Tracks longer than 20 seconds

Content ID will match your reference content against every upload to YouTube. Copyright owners must have exclusive rights to the material that's evaluated. Common examples of items that may not be exclusive to individuals include:

• ​Mashups, “best of”s, compilations, and remixes of other works

• Covers

• Video gameplay, software visuals, trailers

• Unlicensed music and video

• Music or Samples that were licensed, but without exclusivity

• Recordings of performances (including concerts, events, speeches, shows)

• Public domain content

• Karaoke versions or cover versions

• Content already distributed to Youtube by another partner

• Music containing any audio library samples, sound effects, or production loops

As informed on Youtube's Help Center:

Copyright owners have to give evidence of the copyrighted content for which they control exclusive rights.

You may have noticed a huge drop of around 40-50% of the total Youtube Content ID revenue occurred in January. Here we explain to you why this happens.

Youtube Content ID is an advertisement-based service. The royalties pool is calculated each month based on the total advertisement investments. Since Western markets are hugely influenced by holiday periods, and Christmas is the most important season of the year, brands focus their advertisement investments before the Christmas season, with a great peak in December. The immediate effect is that they stop the investment by the end of December, and thus the January ad-revenue market size is significantly lower.

This is a repeating phenomenon regarding YouTube royalties outpayments and consequently should be taken into account every year.

Any activity contrary to the law, the DSPs, and/or Ministry of Musics policies, related to the content present or distributed via Ministry of Musics can be considered fraud.

The following activities would be categorized as Fraud: 

• The unauthorized exploitation of any material that is protected by Copyright.

• The use of misleading or fake information (such as artist, band or label names, or artwork which may create confusion or false expectations about the distributed content).

• The use of any kind of means to generate “clicks” on payment-generating links pretending to be actual consumers. The use of manual or automated resources, bots, or any other means with the intention to stream and monetize any content in streaming DSPs or Fingerprinting Systems (such as YouTube Content ID, Facebook Rights Manager, Soundcloud).

Fraud relates to any unfair activity that harms a third party (artist, composer, or producer), as well as a DSP, or even our business.

Artificial Streaming, also called Click Fraud or Streaming Fraud, is when play counts are increased by any automated, deceptive, fraudulent, or other invalid means (e.g. digital bots, click farms, payment for placement on playlists, etc.) to boost a track’s popularity, its streams and therefore its revenue. 

Streaming services are taking this issue seriously more and more and are constantly working to identify and prevent streaming fraud on their platforms.

This is what Spotify says about Artificial Streaming:

An artificial stream is a stream that doesn't reflect genuine user listening intent, including any instance of attempting to manipulate Spotify by using automated processes (bots or scripts). We put significant engineering resources and research into detecting, mitigating, and removing artificial streaming activity on Spotify so that nothing stands in the way of our mission of allowing artists to live off their art, and so that rights holders are paid as fairly as possible for their work. The integrity of this is incredibly important to us because an illegitimate stream means there are honest, hard-working artists on the other side that are impacted.

Content identified as Artificial Streaming by DSPs

If a DSP considers that some content is involved in an artificial streaming activity:

• The DSP has the right to take actions that may include the withholding of royalties, and the correction of streaming numbers, until the removal of the entire catalog permanently.

• You may also receive a warning from us.

• To prevent fraudulent content to be distributed, the Quality Control team can withhold the delivery of releases that are suspected to be click-fraud until further proof of distribution and publishing rights are provided in order to avoid any issues with the publication of content on all DSPs.

Artist Relationship Concerns

If a channel receives genuine artist complaints about the use of the artist's content on the channel, they may reserve the right to remove it to preserve the channel's relationship with the artist.

Such content removal shall be solely at the channel's discretion and it will be notified to our Support Team. Provided the supply of that content is deemed as legitimate, no strike will be applied against the applicable label.

Content Causing Damage to a Channel Brand

Channels reserve the right to remove from their services any content that can be in any manner harmful to the channel, its brand, or users.

Channels also reserve the right to apply a strike against the providing label if they deem it justified. If any content is taken down, the channel normally informs our Support Team about it, its reason, and whether the takedown has resulted in a strike or not against the applicable label.

Manipulation of Streams and Charts

Any tracks found to have suspicious streaming activity, including potential artificial manipulation of streams, shall be notified to the provider or Admin and may be immediately removed from the service pending investigation by the channel's legal team in consultation with the content provider.

Cultural Sensitivities 

It is your responsibility to be knowledgeable about local regulations and cultural sensitivities. Content must be legal and appropriate for the country or region where cleared, otherwise, it can be hidden by the DSPs.

Public Domain Content

At the channels' discretion, recordings less than 90 years old that by operation of law may fall into the public domain in some territories may not be treated as public domain recordings. Such recordings will be treated as protected by their last applicable copyright in a relevant territory.

Royalties consist of an economic income/revenue that corresponds to the original(s) rights-holder(s). Therefore we differentiate between “legitimate royalties” and “illegitimate royalties”:

Legitimate Royalties: Royalties that were properly generated through actual organic activities. These are the result of actual and rightful exploitation of certain content.

Illegitimate Royalties: Royalties that were generated through unauthorized or fraudulent activities. These are the result of any artificial exploitation or activity that generates illicit and un rightful income.

Please note that, contractually, DSPs have the right to reclaim illegitimate royalties during a timeframe minimum of 24 months.

Each channel has its own means to report any content infringement and claim the original work's rights. These are a few examples of sites where you, as a content manager, can start a right claim: 

• iTunes: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/itunesstorenotices/

• Spotify: https://www.spotify.com/es/legal/infringement-form/

• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/report/infringement

• Beatport: http://forms.beatport.com/form/51386983261968

• YouTube Music: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807622?hl=en

• TIDAL: https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/legal/report/Copyright

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/copyrightform

• Jiosaavn: https://www.jiosaavn.com/corporate/contact 

• Deezer: https://support.deezer.com/hc/es/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000057889 

• Ministry of Musics receives the estimated sales data with, approximately, one month delay from the DSPs.

• As you may know, the sales are confirmed by the channels with approximately, a 90 days delay, therefore we receive these confirmations within 3 months of delay (i.e. a sale registered in January, will be confirmed and paid in May since confirmations are being paid on a monthly basis)

• When users balance is updated, they will be able to request an out payment of the royalties' earnings.