Get Your Demos Read By The Record Labels!
I am not going to spend any time on how you should produce your music or how you need to do your mix-down or mastering, so I am just going to start with what you do AFTER you finish a tune; uploading your music on the most well-known website there is for this exact purpose: SoundCloud.
SoundCloud
SoundCloud is being used all over the world by the biggest artists and record labels, so it is important for you to use SoundCloud to its full potential. One of the things you absolutely need to know is that every song on SoundCloud is downloadable. Even when the downloads are disabled, there are tools anybody can use that can rip songs off SoundCloud with disabled downloads, e.g. Offliberty. So keeping that in mind, what should you upload as a preview on your SoundCloud?
Wel first things first: you need to get yourself at least SoundCloud Lite. Why? SoundCloud Lite gives you more downloads per track (10 times more), a much bigger upload limit and most importantly: you can replace uploaded tracks with a new version.
Now I know what you’re thinking; ‘Why would I need to replace my tracks? They’re second to none right from the get go!’. Wel see, it’s not about that. The thing you need to use it for is this: when you have a really good track and you are pretty much done with it, pretty much done meaning you might change a few things here and there but the track is ready for club testing - you need to upload it in full on SoundCloud and set it to private with downloads enabled.
Now what you want to do is send the private link to a few DJ’s and producers close to you, and some DJ’s and producers that are already well known and might be interested in your track. Throw them an email or private message with your track and ask if they would be so kind to give you feedback or a comment on your track. After a few weeks and after you’ve gotten a bunch of plays on your track, some feedback and comments, go back into your track and make necessary adjustments wherever needed. Re-upload the track by replacing the old file and delete any comments that were feedback comments and are of no more use. Now you are ready to look for the right record label for your music.
After you have found a couple of record labels you like where you would want to release your track, start making up a good email for them. Remember to give them a personal email and not a mass-mailing. You don’t like to receive mass mailings, they don’t either. Also make sure to make a good first impression. If your track is bland and uninteresting you might not get the attention you want the next time you email the same record label with a tune that is actually feasible.
So what do you need to include in your e-mail? Well you need to give them a good amount of information but not go all out crazy with it. Things you must keep in mind: do not attach the track in the mail itself. It’s time consuming and just annoying. Just give them the private SoundCloud link. This way they can enjoy the track easy, fast and see that you are getting support from DJ’s .
This is particularly important for record labels. Most labels do not want to take a gamble with an unknown artist. A label like any other company, needs to make profits to survive and I don’t need to tell you that mister unknown sells a lot less records than Nicky Romero, Vato Gonzalez, Afrojack and so forth.
You also need to provide the label with enough info about you so send them a promo pack of yourself along with the track. Do you have a logo? Drop it in there. Any promotional photos? Dump them right in. Have a website? I’m sure you can provide a nice little URL of that as well.
I do want to stress that a promotional picture of yourself is important. I have heard of some other guy who made a pretty good track, sent it to a record label and got invited to their office to discuss signing with them. As soon as he set foot in their building they said: “Damn son, how young are you? Like 12? Get out of here man.” Okay maybe they didn’t say it exactly like that but he really was refused because he looked too young. I can’t blame them. If you look like you just got out of elementary school, you are kind of hard to market.
So now you’ve been mailing with a record label and they are actually interested. What now? It depends on the label. There are a lot of small labels that do everything via mail and never meet you in person. I am not a fan of this way of doing business. If you do get invited by a label for a meeting, remember you are NOT required to sign a deal right there and then. See it as a business meeting. You are there to discuss further plans. What are your plans for the future? How do you want to release your track? Do you want remixes? How many? When do you want to release it? It’s things like that you need to discuss during a meeting like this.
After this is done you'll get a contract. Read this carefully. Chances are you won’t understand a single word in this contract, so get it read by someone who does understand legal gibberish, and by someone who understands legal gibberish I do not mean your friend who released a track himself. I can’t read contracts myself, but I do know some pointers you absolutely need to watch out for:
What options do you have?
This gives the label the right to the first couple of tracks you want to release after the track you have signed with them. Remember, for a record label it is an investment to release a track by an artist so they want to make as much money from it as possible. I know there are a lot of record labels that say they are there for the beginning artist and want to make a difference, but they still need to make money one way or another. This is why they want options. So for example: I release a tune, and the first three tracks I make after are theirs to release. They can decide whether to release it or let it go in which case you can take it to a different label.
Exclusivity
Where is the label releasing the track in the world? A lot of labels just release in specific regions in the world like just one country, or a continent. If you release on a label that only releases their tracks in Holl and, you can get them to license the track to a different label that covers a different part of the world for maximum profit!
Mastering
A lot of record labels want a properly mixed and mastered track. A lot of the times an artist doesn’t provide this and they will want to master the track through an external company. They can charge this on the artist. So make sure it says in the contract they can only do this with your consent!
Sample Clearing
Lately there has been a surge of tracks that has sampled an old track and released it as something new. (i.e. ‘Cry Just A Little’- Bingo Players, ‘Anyway’- Ducksauce, pretty much all of Daft Punk’s tracks etc.) Something you absolutely need to know is that when you sample anything - ANYTHING. Even 1 second samples, whoever told you, you can use a maximum of 12 seconds without paying is a big fat liar - you need to clear it before releasing it on a label or even releasing it as a free download.
Failure to do so can result in some pretty bad fines and claims if the original artist or the label owning the rights to the sample finds out. To give you an example, back in 2000 there was a UK 2step track released in the UK (‘I Don’t Smoke’ – DJ Deekline). It used a 30 second sample from a pretty unknown comedy sketch. The track became a huge hit and got played pretty much everywhere in the UK. It reached the UK top 20 and even still it took almost 6 months before the comedian found out that it was his sketch that was used in the track. He immediately took action and received every single earning from that track (which in 2000 was still quite a lot compared to nowadays) and took a little something from every booking that guy received because of his hit as well. Safe to say, the comedian got rich, the artist did not.
So how do you go about clearing your samples? Well it’s the easiest when you let the record label you want to release it on do all the emailing and making deals. But you can do most of the work yourself if you want to. Just find out who has the rights to the sample you are using. Is it the artist? Or is it the label it was released on? Be careful when researching this because a lot of tracks get released on multiple labels, so it might take some emailing before you get to the right people. If you are not sure where to look, Discogs is a very good place to start your search.
Now after you have found out who has the rights you can get to an agreement about how you are going to pay for using the samples. This is different for every track. The rights holder of the sample might ask for a couple of hundred bucks or want 50% revenue of the track. Whatever the sample is, most of the time you can get to a mutually profitable agreement. Just don’t expect to use a Beatles sample anytime soon. Yoko Ono will tear you to shreds if you do!
Producing for a group
This is something you need to remember if you are going to produce for a group. I have an example for this ready but I can’t use any of their real names because its insider info, and I don’t think they'll be happy with me if I were to reveal all their secrets in this eBook. So the following has factual events, with fictional names:
There’s a producer called Charley. He’s having some minor success and is an overall good producer. He meets 2 friends who are into DJ’ing and MC’ing. They decide to just have some fun in the studio and make a couple of tracks. They have a good time and just release the track at a label without really thinking too much of it.
Unexpectedly the track becomes a huge hit and the two friends of the producer are getting a lot of bookings from this hit and are playing at pretty much every festival around the country. The producer now finds out that he didn’t secure everything in the contract. He is receiving only a small portion of the money from the track he produced with them, but they are getting insane amounts of money because of all the bookings they are receiving. Sadly, the contract said nothing about getting money for live performances so he’s still driving around in his Fiat Panda and his two friends just bought a brand new Audi A4.
It might seem extreme but this is happening right at this moment. Charley is going to a process to have new contracts made so he will get money from every booking his two friends receive.
So what is the message I want to give you? Whatever cooperation you do, whether if it’s a collaboration or a ghost production, be sure to have a contract that absolutely covers everything and doesn’t leave any room to take advantage of. You never know when a track is going to take off so it’s better to be safe than sorry. And to say the most obvious; no, a 1 to 2 page contract cannot and will never be adequate if you want to be serious about your music
Pay out
Getting paid is something you want. However you need to realize that you won’t be getting rich anytime soon from just releasing a couple of tracks here and there. Keep in mind that releasing tracks is a way to raise your fee as a DJ. That’s where the money is. Now normally you will receive around 50% of the sales from the original track and 25% of the sales on the remixes. On bigger labels you are likely to receive even less or just get paid out in advance.
You also need to know that if you want to get paid you need to send them an invoice for it. So you need to be able to make these by having registered your own company. Without this you are basically working for free.
You can expect to receive around 50 euros for an average release, so don’t quit your daytime job just yet.
After you’ve signed the contract, the record label is probably going to make a good sized preview version for their own SoundCloud/YouTube. Just use the same one for your SoundCloud and replace the old file or make your own small preview.
So those are pretty much the things you need to consider when releasing a track. With some luck and hard work you will be well on your way in making a name for yourself and paving the way for bigger things to come. Just remember to stay true to yourself, be prepared to work and never be afraid to experiment with your music in new ways.