Personally I think it’s worth the shot. It always is with music as exposure is key. Even if people aren’t setting out to buy your music per se, it still appears in radio streams and steaming playlists etc - so the music will pass by ears like it or not! It’s up to the listener to take action on that, and as an avid user of Google Play Music myself, I’m often earmarking songs, albums and new artists - and if I like it that much, I’ll go on to buy the entire album, if anything to support that artist.
Also remember, you’ll be showcasing your music to a very different crowd; a listening crowd - so it’s worth considering that in both marketing and contents of the album. ie you may want to use an artist name instead of your business name and think carefully about the artwork and order of tracks on the album. Kind of obvious, I know, but a very different world to the one we’ve gotten used to the world of RF!
Also, if you’re going with TuneCore, just double make sure you’re not opted-in to any ContentID distribution, or that could cause problems on your licensed RF music.
Thanks, Matt, for your useful information! I’m just wanted to ask - is this possible, that distributor can hide a part of sales from you? I’ve noticed a different statistic results in my statement (they said it were some problems)… Is there any way to check iTunes sales statistic directly from iTunes support? My sales and streams are really not big at the moment, i must say, but with tendency to grow…
Hey Alex, yes as with any online music business, it’s always possible that what you see isn’t necessarily what’s really going on. There’s no way to see the data directly from the retailer (ie. iTunes). Most of these distributors have limited and delayed data sent back from the retailers, so it will always be inaccurate. As usual in the music industry, we just have to grin and bear it I’m afraid!
Matt, could you also explain please what’s the “upload to music key” feature available via AdRev for? In which case one should choose to upload music there? Just something that’s been puzzling me for a while…
The YT Music Key submission tab is for music (usually albums, EPs) that you are selling via iTunes and have been assigned IRSC and UPC codes.
Once you upload this music via this tab and provide the associated codes, when a Google Play Music All Access and/or YouTube Music Key subscriber watches YouTube videos containing your music, they won’t see any advertising and your earnings on those views come via the subscriptions instead, instead of on-screen advertising.
Subscribers to Google Music Play All Access and/or YTMK will see an ‘AD-FREE’ notice below the video, as seen below.
I’ll be getting in touch with AdRev tomorrow (Monday) about this, just in case we don’t need to resubmit the music via both tabs - as submitting the music twice may cause problems.
I’ll report back here when I know the situation a little better, so hang in there!
Hi, Matt! It’s been quite a while since you were going to ask AdRev about the use of Music Key and whether we should submit our songs to both systems. Are there any updates on that matter? Thanks in advance!
Apologies for not getting straight back with a response on this, but I did get to speak to AdRev about it, but preferred to write about it here once it’s all finalised and up and running properly.
So far, they’ve advised that the Music Key program is still in beta phase and there’s been some possible teething problems with the data reports YouTube have been sending back to them. So AdRev have been assessing and correcting these and also working on a dedicated dashboard for Music Key to be rolled out sometime in the near future.
Regarding uploading our music to be included in the program, they advised that we should resubmit our music as high quality, non-watermarked WAVs (along with high res artwork and relevant publishing info) as YouTube won’t allow the usual mp3’s to be submitted for this. I’m assuming this is because the MK streaming platform requires the file to be the best quality to begin with before it’s converted.
Hope that throws some light on it anyway and I’ll make sure add more news on it here, if and when I hear about it.
Hi, I know this is an old thread however I would like to ask if the RF songs you published on iTunes or Spotify has to be different versions from AJ ?? or you can just upload the same file you sell here and push to Itunes or Spotify.
Hello Sonicbyte,
To answer your question on based what Iam aware of. You cant use the same file, but if you are doing some small changes in your music, to be able to notice unallowed use then its ok. For example adding just a “fill in” or “reversed crash” on a specific place.
