Copywriting your music

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optX
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Re: Copywriting your music

Post by optX »

steevio wrote:
Toloache wrote:
steevio wrote:i've never copywrited a tune in my entire life.

whats the point? this is the underground.
At the moment im investing lot of energy in this, i have two things i love in my life, graphic design and music and would like to earn money to live from one of the two, the first in the list being music. It's something i could spend hours without being bored and will really like to live from it. I dont wanna to be rich, but i would love to spend my life doing something i love doing. So in a sense, i hope not to remain underground.
yes but you wont make much money from selling your music unless you are making mainstream commercial pop music, or you are one of the tiny percentage of artists who rise to the very top of the game.
the most likely way to make a living from electronic music is gigs.

i only have one thing that i love in my life apart from family and friends, and that is music. i survive, but i couldnt if i was relying on sales of my music. i treat that as promotion. and if someone big uses your track in a DJ mix they will have to contact you anyway for permission, copywrited or not. i've had several tunes used on big mix CDs and the DJ / record companies have always asked permission. however you wont make much money from that either, by the time the production costs, record company profit and all the royalties are taken into account, you get a tiny percentage.
i had a track on a Josh Wink Ministry of Sound Sessions Mix CD, and i hardly got anything for it, but the amount of promotion i got from that was increadible. that was worth thousands of times more than what i got paid for it.

if anyone who isnt well known uses your track, then who cares ?, they arent making anything out of it either, its just free promotion for you.

if someone big steals your loop, then the Creative Commons License might protect you, but lets face it, theres so much genericism in electronic music, that its often hard to tell whether its yours anyway, with everyone using similar equipment, generic 4/4 rhythm patterns, it would have to have some original (not sampled) vocal, or really unusual sound in it, to stand out as your own, especially if its been doctored in software.

release some good music, which in turn will bring the promoters to your door, and get out gigging, and stop worrying about someone using your music, thats my advice. see someone using your tunes as a positive thing, and a compliment.
steevio +1 on nearly everything you`ve said with that post. that`s one (of many) reason(s) why I am doing a netlabel and not a commercial one. I think the artists on my netlabel are likely getting more recognition that way than being on beatport where nobody knows us and fewer guys are buying our tracks. however.
and like you`ve said, nobody has the feeling with the few earned cents that it`s worth. better getting gigs if money is the case.

regarding to your "who cares" when a loop is stolen : yeah, right. actually, if somebody asks me, I`d love to give my loops or sounds from a particular track away (for free). but there`s something like ego which comes into play when, and that`s important I think, somebody takes it without asking you and maybe doing a commercial thing and earning money. I am pretty shure every artist on my label would give parts or a whole track away if somebody asks for it. the other way round all of them would be pissed off. and why`d they be pissed off? because of the ego. not the money or so. some stolen loops or vocals, made to a million dollar track, isn`t your merit although you`ve made that loop. simply because you didn`t make that track and neither had the idea! one woudln`t have done it anyway, maybe in a parallel universum.
Nevertheless, for me its a respect thing asking for permission! Now you may ask why demanding permission when giving away anyway? ego. and the joy of respectful behaviour. my electronic music origin is freetekno, which preaches the motto "free music for free people" and not "steal music from people who are giving it to you for free if you ask". :D

toloache : I personally don`t wanna listen to premastered demos. All labels to which I`ve sent my demos demanded mixes and no premasters, so do I. the label guys wanna know if you can mix (what inherents that you know what you are doing). so make a nice song and do a decent mixdown! at least I would love to know if the artist`s mix sounds good without mastering...

regarding to creative commons : now I know what you are talking about ... I woudln`t copyright a track anyway just for sending it as a demo. If you use soundcloud for uploading tracks and showing them and you don`t want the people to download it just disable downloading so everybody has to stream.

But its good to have a goal. Maybe you can live from what you love someday, if not world goes on. but having a goal in mind definitely helps reaching it! or at least coming near. think positive (referring to your goals) and things will happen!

(so much hippy attitude today) =)
steevio
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Re: Copywriting your music

Post by steevio »

optX wrote: regarding to your "who cares" when a loop is stolen : yeah, right. actually, if somebody asks me, I`d love to give my loops or sounds from a particular track away (for free). but there`s something like ego which comes into play when, and that`s important I think, somebody takes it without asking you and maybe doing a commercial thing and earning money.
yes i was only referring to someone unknown using it, it's very unlikely a commercial producer would steal an entire tune or very obvious loop, because they cannot risk their reputation if they are caught out, i'm sure its happened but it must be very rare.
it's just not something i would focus on as an upcoming producer, you should focus all your energy into getting some quality tunes out there, if you go huge, then its the time to worry about copywrite, not as an unknown beginner just starting out.
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Re: Copywriting your music

Post by Toloache »

Thanks to all for the input!

Actually a strange thing happened to me some years ago. I was making a remix for a tune of a friend that was signed on a american progressive label. In the end i wasn't happy with the track and avoided releasing it. Then month passed.

One night i was heading to a club with a friend who used to go to emule and downloading all he would find under names like "cool tech house" "house sets 200x" and the list goes on. So he was like "hey mate listen to this cool track". It was my track. When i told him that and asked how could he have it, he said that it was on emule under some obscure and unexplaining name like those. I hadn't share the track with anyone. I couldn't care less about that track, i wasn't happy of it aniway, but i pissed me off that someone hacked into my pc, stoled a track, and uploaded it on emule without it's real name and producer.

And after some years i released on another label and two days later same story, emule and file sharing sites...

So yeah... I suppose i would be happy if some good producer would sample my sounds to use them... I couldn't care less..

But i would be pissed if someone steal my work hacking my pc, or buy the track and start uploading it to all the file sharing sites.. That's why i worry about copyright..
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Re: Copywriting your music

Post by steevio »

Toloache wrote:
But i would be pissed if someone steal my work hacking my pc, or buy the track and start uploading it to all the file sharing sites.. That's why i worry about copyright..
it pisses me off too when i see my tracks on Russian pirate sites for 20 cents the same day its released on Beatport, but what can you do about that ?, once digital information is out there, its no longer yours.
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Re: Copywriting your music

Post by Phurniture »

This may be slightly off topic, but it brought this to mind. I recently read that for a certain year Deadmau5 was the top selling artist on Beatport with 30,000 songs downloaded. Now let's say he got $1 for each track (from my understanding for most artists it would be even less after the labels cut). That is $30,000 for the top selling artist. For the places I've lived that's hardly a living. Deadmau5 certainly made money off of licencing tracks and more importantly playing gigs, but it seems that no one is raking in huge $$$$ off of Beatport, other than Beatport themselves...
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Rein
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Re: Copywriting your music

Post by Rein »

@toloache: insane story you've got there, very weird they've stole some tunes of your pc to upload it... who had access to the computer you had those tracks on?

minimal earnings fits this music style well i guess
...
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Re: Copywriting your music

Post by tsankip »

Toloache wrote:I hadn't share the track with anyone. I couldn't care less about that track, i wasn't happy of it aniway, but i pissed me off that someone hacked into my pc, stoled a track, and uploaded it on emule without it's real name and producer
:o
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Re: Copywriting your music

Post by Toloache »

Rein wrote:@toloache: insane story you've got there, very weird they've stole some tunes of your pc to upload it... who had access to the computer you had those tracks on?
Dunno... it was very strange, and if i think that i discovered the fact listening to the tune in the car of my friend, the only thing i can say it's that is a very small world!

As for today, i think maybe i was better of that way, it was a loop assembled track made my frist year of music making, so no big loss.. But it's strange aniway.. if it would happen today, it would be very bad!
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