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Scaling up…

Christopher (Revolver Digital Team) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:06:29 +0000

A few days overdue, but nonetheless finally ready for prime time! We’ve been putting together something quite special at Revolver Towers for a while now, and we can finally unveil what we’ve been so excited about: our artists’ music can now be sold in more than 300 of the most prominent download stores worldwide.
Reflecting the scope of our catalogue, our expanded store list has quite an unusual blend of stores, each carefully chosen as they represent significant stores for their respective territories.

Whilst too numerous to mention individually, rest assured each gets equal attention from us. Some of these stores go on to provide functionality for other stores or portals — the full list is longer than my arm! Here’s a summary of our newly updated list of digital stores:

iTunes
Amazon MP3
Spotify
We7
Arvato Mobile
7Digital
24/7 Musicshop (>100 stores and operator platforms)
Beatport (where appropriate)
Beyond Oblivion
Bleep (where appropriate)
Buongiorno
Boomkat
Dada
Deezer
DJDownload / Juno Digital (where appropriate)
Dream On Korea
Eircom
eMusic
FNAC Music
Gogoyoko
HMV Digital
HMV Canada
iMusica
iPlay
Jamba!
Jazz en Ligne (Digimus) (where appropriate)
Loudtrax (Rock & Metal specialist store)
MediaNet
mFlow
Mobilisten
Mobivillage
MOG
MusicLoad
SONY Qriosity / Music Unlimited
Music Me
Musiwave
Napster & Rhapsody
Net-Music (Media Markt Italy)
Nokia Ovi Music Store
One Italia
Omnifone (who power many UK and international mobile stores)
RDIO
SFR (French mobile)
Shazam
Simfy
Satellite
Starzik
Tesco Digital
Thumbplay / iHeartRadio
Trackitdown (where appropriate)
TuneTribe
VidZone (for 45+ international mobile and PC stores)
VirginMega
Vodafone Live (Germany)
Valleyarm
Walmart (Liquid)
Wasabeat
YouTube
Zune Store

Through these partners, we also distribute to all major UK, American, European and Australasian mobile stores… And the best news? Existing Revolver Digital artists get all these additional stores immediately!

So, if you think your music passes muster (and you’re not scared of having it run the gauntlet of our A&R team for approval), consider us if you’re looking for a way to get your music out there. We look forward to hearing from you.

iTunes, iCloud, iTunes Match… cloudy, with a chance of windfalls?

Christopher (Revolver Digital Team) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:20:16 +0000

or, Problems for labels with iTunes Match?

On Monday the 6^th of June, Apple’s keynote at their World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC 2011) had many positive things to announce: OSX Lion, with its $29.99 price tag, its array of new and improved features and cloud download to every customer’s compatible Mac after purchase (ala Steam). At the same time iOS version 5 for mobile devices (the beta of which has already been jailbroken less than 24 hours after release), and their revamped mobileMe cloud service – dubbed iCloud – finally arrives on the scene to add another layer of integration to the mac user’s ecosystem.

Of all the hundreds of new ‘features’ introduced, most are unremarkable or arguably not very innovative (at least when using some of the things Apple have devised in the past decade as a benchmark!). If anything, they are just an amalgamation of features previously available elsewhere, except now in an Apple-mandated, fully synchronised, pain-free fashion. All you need to enjoy? An Apple device.

However, the real announcement (the one occupying most of the acres of print and online coverage, and the one also keeping the independent music sector on tenterhooks) has been Apple’s music service. Precious little was revealed prior to the WWDC keynote (in typical Apple fashion), but here is the précis for those who didn’t catch the keynote live:

One of the new cloud-based features has been dubbed “iTunes in the Cloud”
- Service offers customers ability to buy once, download many times (up to 10)
- Automatic synchronisation and permanent storage of their purchases online is included for no extra cost, all controlled from their account
- Customers can manually sync over prior purchases to their other devices
- If customer buys a track on their iPhone, it will also appear on their other devices.
The Complete My Album feature is implemented into the Cloud service, with the same features as before.
- Seamless cloud functionality (apparently), again tracks sync to all devices

But the “One More Thing” was the real kicker… iTunes Match.

Lamenting the ‘landfill’ landscape – where have all the good bands gone?

Christopher (Revolver Digital Team) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:18:35 +0000

The headline of this article might concern some – and indeed, people have been saying for a while that the ‘signal to noise ratio’ of current music, both signed and unsigned, has been deteriorating. Just prior to writing this, I read on BBC News Online an interesting opinion piece discussing how the recent wave of indie rock artists has somewhat faded into premature obscurity. But why? There’s also a few interesting soundbites from respected muso and tastemaker Steve Lamacq, who currently curates shows on BBC Radio 6Music:

There are still thousands of aspiring guitar bands under the radar – but it does not feel like many are threatening to grab the public’s attention. The disillusionment can be traced back to record labels chasing quick hits rather than acts with longevity, according to BBC 6 Music DJ Steve Lamacq.

“In this current climate, people are signing bands who have got one or two good tracks, hoping they can make one good album,” he says. “And inevitably a lot of these bands are going to come and go. You end up ruining the sense of trust between tastemaker and audience, or record label and audience, or even musical genre and audience. If you stop believing in a certain sort of music, it’s going to take a lot for you to come back.”

Lamacq is 6 Music’s arbiter-in-chief of good new guitar music, and has been casting a critical ear over new bands since hosting Radio 1′s Evening Session in the heady days of Britpop. If Radiohead emerged with their debut album today, it would be “unthinkable” that their long-term prospects would be recognised, he believes.

“It’s the short term-ism coming home to roost, and that’s a problem for the music industry and the media. But it’s a problem that they’ve created for themselves in a lot of cases.”

There are still thousands of aspiring guitar bands under the radar – but it does not feel like many are threatening to grab the public’s attention. The disillusionment can be traced back to record labels chasing quick hits rather than acts with longevity, according to BBC 6 Music DJ Steve Lamacq.

“In this current climate, people are signing bands who have got one or two good tracks, hoping they can make one good album,” he says. “And inevitably a lot of these bands are going to come and go. You end up ruining the sense of trust between tastemaker and audience, or record label and audience, or even musical genre and audience.

“If you stop believing in a certain sort of music, it’s going to take a lot for you to come back.”

Lamacq is 6 Music’s arbiter-in-chief of good new guitar music, and has been casting a critical ear over new bands since hosting Radio 1′s Evening Session in the heady days of Britpop. If Radiohead emerged with their debut album today, it would be “unthinkable” that their long-term prospects would be recognised, he believes.

“It’s the short term-ism coming home to roost, and that’s a problem for the music industry and the media. But it’s a problem that they’ve created for themselves in a lot of cases.”

At the same time, Florence + The Machine received a welcome boost – and potentially finally “made it” in the States – thanks to an inclusion on the MTV VMAs back in September (hat-tip: DMN) which begins, “it’s harder than ever for bands to break through these days, and gradual fan-building is one way to slowly cut through the clutter. But despite endless post-Anderson musings and re-musings, big media remains a potent and powerful springboard.”

What’s eyebrow-raising about this article are the sales figures before and after the VMA ‘bump’:

(again, hat-tip: DMW)

Thisshows just how quickly you can garner interest – and sales! – after even the most unpredictable of media appearances. Having good music to back you up definitely helps but you will see more interest almost irrespectively. So why aren’t you on iTunes already? We can help you get a real presence on the important stores like iTunes, Amazon, 7Digital, Spotify, mFlow, Rhapsody, Thumbplay, VidZone, Limewire, TuneTribe etc., and we don’t charge a fortune (in fact, hardly anything at all). If you’re interested, why not send us an email and say hello?

Finally, Florence + The Machine are currently available through all reputable digital music stores. If you’ve not listened to them as of yet, go listen – you might just like them. (Not an official endorsement though, mind! – Ed)

What value music?

Christopher (Revolver Digital Team) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:21:15 +0000

It’s been a busy few months in the music industry, and the middle of the month’s been punctuated by an against-the-grain suggestion from former Warner Music label head Rob Dickins at this year’s In The City festival:

“What we need is a revolution. What we’ve got is an erosion. When I was running Warners, a chart CD could be £12.99. A chart CD now can be £6.99, maybe even £5.99.”

Dickins then went on to proffer a price point of just £1 for an album on CD. His suggestion forms part of an enlarged theoretical “360″ model – where labels are involved with every aspect of an artist’s career and thus profit from a share of proceeds from not just CD sales but gig tickets, promotion, merchandise and licensing tie-ins. From BBC News:

Making the comments during a debate with REM manager Bertis Downs, Mr Dickins advocated a “micro-economy” in which fans would make many small payments.

He said: “If you’re a fan of REM and you’ve got 10 albums and there’s a new album coming out, you’ve got to make that decision about whether you want it or not. “If we lived in a micro-economy, that wouldn’t be a decision. You’d just say ‘I like REM’ and you’d buy it.” Major albums would sell 200 million copies, he predicted. Last year’s global best-seller, Susan Boyle’s I Dreamed A Dream, sold eight million. He added: “To a degree it solves piracy because if it’s such a small amount people are more likely to pay it than [download for] free.” In his scenario, record labels would be able to make “big money” from other sources such as gig tickets and merchandising.

There can be no argument that Dickins’ comments are controversial, however it could be argued they are deliberately so. What do you think? As an artist, how would you feel about your music being available for £1 – if not, what kind of price point might you be happy with? Or if you’re just a music-loving member of the public, what are your thoughts on this? We at Revolver of course have our own opinions, both based on an ”ideal” and the “real” world, but we’d love to know what others think. Leave a message in the comments.

Debating the effectiveness of the industry’s current antipiracy stance

Christopher (Revolver Digital Team) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:48:13 +0000

After reading this article from Broadcast Magazine, it got us thinking:

Don’t demonise piracy, says IT Crowd creator

12 August, 2010 | By Ellie Broughton

Graham Linehan, the writer behind comedy The IT Crowd, has said the entertainment industry is gambling with its future by “ignoring or criminalising” the issue of piracy. Speaking at a debate on piracy last night, Linehan said the current response to online pirates was unrealistic and aggressive.

“It seems a bit like the big corporations are saying, ‘put down the gun or I’ll stab you’,” he said. “The discussion at the moment is not particularly reasoned.”

The television sector mirrors the music sector in many regards – sharing and unlicensed distribution of telly is almost as rampant as music, what limits its spread is more the unwieldy size of the resulting video files more than anything else (which is where we in the music industry have more of an uphill struggle with as music’s far more squeezable than video!)

We’ve traditionally taken a fairly lenient stance towards issuing takedowns, going instead after those originally uploading our music to sharing sites – largely because it’s a pointless exercise to spend all of your waking hours chasing pirates, unless you have VERY deep pockets and sufficient human resources to dedicate to solely pursuing the culprits. We do issue takedowns to the sharing sites when we find our artists’ music available without permission, but pursuing individual filesharers is like cutting the head off a Hydra.

By contrast, sites like Youtube – although they have music by our artists uploaded without our permission – serve to be very useful as promotional tools and aid exposure to new audiences, so it can be a balancing act deciding how heavy-handed one should be when enforcing copyright infringement. From our standpoint, it’s refreshing to see that other large programme producers can step back and highlight that neither side is totally blameless in this ongoing saga of legit vs pirated… Imagine what it would’ve been like if the music industry had cottoned on Napster upon its launch and then rolled out a pay service model on top of the existing system? They could have cleaned up!

We are fortunate that most of our customers are still music fans in the truest sense of the term – they buy CDs or the downloads, they respect the musicians for their hard work and investment and they also respect the role the label has in the process, a role which has dramatically changed over the past decade. We value those customers immensely and always seek to reward them for their honesty however we can If you have a suggestion for a competition we can run, or the kind of things you would like to see us offering (interviews with bands, backstage features, exclusive podcasts featuring an artist’s Top 10 tracks etc) then hit us up on Twitter at either @revolverdigital, @heavymetalrecs or @revolverrecords!

We’ve got a new Friend!

Christopher (Revolver Digital Team) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:44:34 +0000

Revolver proudly announces Revolver Digital Store with Friend For Music

As part of Revolver’s longstanding commitment to music, we have always been at the forefront of new developments in the industry.

Be it Direct Metal Mastering and releasing music on the (then-new) CD format in the 1980s or our support of the first mass market music services in the early 2000s. Today, we continue to release CDs and make increasing amounts of our catalogue available for instant purchase or via one of the many streaming services, satisfying the shifting customer demand we have witnessed over the past decade.

Like many other indie labels, we have no illusions as to the state of the music industry – whilst revenues began to decline in the 1990s, that decline has no doubt been accelerated by the widespread availability of copyrighted music via the Internet. For all the inches of copy, coverage and layoffs in the “Big Four” labels, it has directly hurt independent labels to a far greater extent. And not only that, but artists have felt the pinch too – for labels releasing new material, it’s more important than ever to preserve the integrity of a release prior to its full release whilst still offering promotional copies to radio stations, journalists and selected individuals.

The ease of ripping, encoding and sharing digital music is a double-edged sword for music lovers. Releases that leak weeks or months in advance become trivial to duplicate and distribute. There has been limited success with individually identifiable promo CDRs, but what about people who buy a track and then seek to distribute it for free via the Internet? Up until now, there has been no cost-effective, simple way to identify these customers.

Revolver’s partnership with Friend for Music demonstrates previously unimaginable opportunities that can directly benefit independent labels alongside their artists.

The brand new Revolver Digital Store, operating on the Friend for Music platform allows labels to upload, automatically watermark (at their discretion) and then sell tracks in the industry-standard MP3 format directly from a completely customisable portal. Tracks are invisibly watermarked with a robust unique ID, allowing a label to simply and efficiently trace back any file found on a web site or P2P platform to the exact person who made the original purchase. For indie labels and artists, who can’t afford a court case to identify a potential filesharer, this is a real boon. The evidence is clear as day, with no ambiguity whatsoever… Any unwanted leaks can be eliminated once and for all.

What does this really mean for fans, artists and labels?

For artists and labels, they can work together safe in the knowledge that where their work may once have leaked, wasting time, money and effort in prerelease promotion, they can be confident in the knowledge that unscrupulous people cannot take their hard work and share it for free any more. The end result? Artists and labels are fairly compensated, ensuring that there is money to reinvest into releasing more records! A true win-win situation.

For music lovers, it rewards them for their honesty and helps to weed out the unscrupulous people who place less value on a musician’s creative output than others. Quality new music simply does not get released for free, and the Friend for Music platform not only provides a safe, secure and trusted platform for labels, it offers the same for the many valued customers who still appreciate great music and want to pay a fair price to support their favourite artists.

FFM offers us guaranteed traceability of unlicensed sharing, absolutely identifying the culprit if our artists’ music is leaked or shared.
FFM offers our artists the opportunity reinforce their most loyal fanbase, guaranteeing that every copy of their music has been paid for. No need for stupid DRM restrictions on music, allowing enjoyment without limitations.
FFM offers fans the ability to still enjoy MP3s of their music, with an absolute guarantee and proof of purchase. It removes the possibility for allegations of filesharing or piracy and if questioned they can prove their innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt with the very files they have purchased.

The only people who lose out? Those who don’t value quality music.

We at Revolver are very excited to be rolling out our new Revolver Digital store with Friend for Music as one of the first independent labels on the service. We’re actively increasing the catalogue available via our store on a daily basis so come back soon to find even more great music… With over a thousand releases from hundreds of artists you’re bound to find some music you love.

Latest BPI industry figures highlight the continuing role of digital music

Christopher (Revolver Digital Team) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:56:03 +0000

As you may have seen on Hypebot or NME.com this week, the BPI’s final summary of 2009 music industry figures have been released and it’s ‘a mixed bag.’ The gory details:

Total UK recorded music trade income rises 1.4% overall to £928.8m
Trade revenues from physical formats down 6.1% to £739.9m
Digital income now a fifth of total recorded music revenues – up 47.8% to £188.9m

The main observation: digital sales have offset the losses accrued in physical sales, leaving not a very large margin of growth at all. Forrester Research usually provide their insight into BPI stats and figures, and once again they’re on hand for an expert opinion:

What does this mix report mean for the future? According to Forrester analyst Mark Mulligan, the glass half empty perspective is appropriate. “The UK recorded music market has lost close to 40% of its value since 2003. Though this isn’t necessarily a dead cat bounce, it is going to take a lot more than 1.4% annual growth to turn things around”.

Take all if this with a pinch of salt – especially when you consider alternative viewpoints, such as those expounded upon by The Guardian in late 2009 (around the same time, InformationIsBeautiful highlighted how the New York Times took the MUCH longer view).

Even more interestingly, at the end of last year Synthtopia published a graph comparing recorded music revenue versus live music revenue, based on figures from the BPI and PRS For Music (formerly the MCPS PRS Alliance, who handle all royalties from recorded and live performances). The evidence is clear: recorded music is now overshadowed by the vast amounts of money potentially available through the live sector – but nurturing and developing recorded music is still crucial for all artists who are seriously considering a career in music.

Looking to the future, it remains true that digital music continues to be the mainstay of many artists’ revenues. Whilst we at Revolver still love our albums, they’re incredibly inefficient from a cost perspective to manufacture, to store, to distribute… And while there are still some painfully obvious problems with the digital music industry as a whole, you cannot afford to ignore it.

Putting your best foot forward is incredibly important – making sure you have your material in pristine quality available on the digital stores to complement touring, gigs, any promotion you have coming up… Today, you must consider your digital music as on par with a vinyl or CD release. And, when it comes to finding someone to help get your music onto iTunes, 7Digital, Spotify et al, Revolver might be able to help you with that. Get in touch to find out more.

New year, new stores, new artists

Christopher (Revolver Digital Team) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:14:39 +0000

Following on from our Gogoyoko deal earlier this year, we’re now pushing ahead with new agreements with MediaNet (suppliers to many of the highstreet digital stores and Tesco Digital, amongst others), HDTracks (a specialist vendor with a heavy focus on High Definition audio and 24bit/96kHz high resolution recordings) and LoudTrax – a rock and metal specialist. (Their list of subgenres is incredible!)We’re also working on a few more which we’d like to keep under our hat for the minute, but rest assured they’re very interesting.

We’re also happy to announce that we’ve signed several new artists, as well as welcome back an existing artist. Justin Willis has just released his second album, The Butterfly Zoo, which was released last weekend with a companion album launch at the JB’s venue over in Dudley. We’re also very happy to announce new releases from Stoke-based Operation Error (their debut album, A Sign of Faith, is available now) and the Portugese group Blasted Mechanism (their latest album, Mind at Large, is also available to buy right now).

Most exciting of all, we’ve been working with The Superions – brainchild of The B52s member Fred Schneider and co. – and their eponymous debut EP is also available to download. Featuring the hit single ‘Who Threw That Ham At Me’ (check out the video on the Revolver Records front page!) the Superions have gone down a storm in the States. (Have you got Superions fever? Tell us!)

In the meantime, we’re just doing what we do best – supporting new artists, answering any questions they have and continuing to offer some of the best value digital distribution services around. Get in touch with us to find out more.

Have digital downloads democratised the music industry?

Christopher (Revolver Digital Team) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:04:24 +0000

Once upon a time, the major labels controlled the charts absolutely with an iron fist. Radio stations only playlisted tracks from major labels, payola was rife and pluggers knew the station controllers on a first name basis, they were in their offices so frequently.

Today, the major labels control the charts, but independence is slowly making itself felt. Radio stations still really only playlist tracks from major labels, but even with the passing of John Peen there are still some notable torchbearers for new, fresh and independent music (think Zane Lowe et al). Payola? Well, it’s still probably there to an extent, but everybody’s pursestrings have been tightened for a whle now. Pluggers still do the rounds but more artists are embracing the music machine and arranging their own marketing and promotion with the same people.

But what’s changed in twenty years?

To start with, ‘Specialist’ stations like Kerrang Radio (playlisted in the AM and daytime, DJ-chosen in the evenings) are still going strong, and the rise and rise of the Internet has given birth to scores of high-quality, free online radio stations. Online retail, driven by the likes of iTunes, Play, Amazon, Tesco, 7Digital and HMV, continues to take market share (almost 100% of UK single sales are digital, along with a good dollop of albums).

But yet, until this year, the one remaining safe haven for the pop industry – the Christmas Number 1 – had remained unspoilt (for the major labels) since 1998, when the Spice Girls were (within 5,000 sales) almost usurped by Chef’s Chocolate Salty Balls. From then onward with little exception, we witnessed manufactured pop song after manufactured pop song, with the SyCo Pop Factory doing its bit for novelty singles and two-week ‘hits’ (up to #1 in the first week of sales, then falling down past #40 within a month). But in November 2009, Jon Morter took the pulse of the music-loving nation and spearheaded an online campaign – to push Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name to the Christmas Number 1 spot. This campaign proved marvellously successful, with RATM easily making the Number 1 spot over Joe X-Factor McElderry’s (cover) single by a margin of more than 50,000 sales.

This grassroots fan campaign, coordinated through Facebook, Twitter and word of mouth, also set a couple of remarkable precedents:

Killing In The Name is the first UK Number 1 achieved purely from online sales
the track also achieved the biggest download sales total in a first week ever in the UK charts (more than 500,000 by the cutoff point for that week’s chart’s sales)

How’s that for democracy in action? The pop machine, if only for a week, had a massive spanner thrown in the works. Not only did the X Factor content fail to secure a Number 1 position for its winner, a first since the trend began in 2005, it showed just how much can be done by a galvanised group of passionate fans to promote and support great music (even if it’s twelve years old!) when the means to do so are already in place. Without digital downloads of the track being available, this would have never been achievable.

If your faith in the industry has been shaken over the past few years, with the overall contraction of the market and smaller revenues, hopefully this should restore some faith for you. Getting your music up online on the major hitters is now easier than ever before, and it’s one of the core services we take pride in offering to quality artists. Additional services, like promotion, plugging and tour management, are increasingly accessible to independent artists. There’s still no such thing as a free lunch, but even on a meagre budget, a surprising amount can be organised and put into action.

Through all of this, the single most important aspect of any musician’s career is the fanbase. Today, it’s far simpler than ever before to directly connect with your fans. RATM4Xmas should have proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt, first with Morton ramping up his campaign through Facebook and then with Tom Morello tweeting directly from his Blackberry to the campaign’s supporters (and showing that support to the campaign right to the happy end). Negative comments from Cowell and McElderry were forwarded by campaign supporters and industry publications (NME took delight in reporting that McElderry, upon finally hearing the Rage track for the first time, denounced it as ‘dreadful’). Rival fans duked it out in cyberspace, sales figures and rumours were swapped and spread about and – in the meantime – a large amount of money (over £65,000) was raised for charity by the RATM4Xmas fans.

Upon winning, RATM confirmed that they would donate the majority of their earnings from sales to charity, and also hold a free concert in the UK in 2010 to say thank you – the ultimate payoff for the campaign’s supporters. Would any of this – could any of this – have ever happened before now, before the rise of social networking and all the other simple means of engaging with people en masse? Probably not, not even in the 90s. The web had very little to offer in terms of small-scale communication during the first few years of the 21st century, but instant messengers, MySpace, Friendster and others began an upward trend which has not slowed since.

But irrespective of how well people could have communicated or not – everybody managed with email and texting before AIM and MSN took hold – in the 90s, there was simply a lack of legal digital music venues available for customers. Napster was still reigning supreme, downloading was on the rise and habits were changing incredibly quickly. Portable music players were still very much a novelty.

Today? Digital sales are on an equal footing with the good old polycarbonate CD single. In fact, they have an edge – a band can record a single, have it professionally mastered, given to a record label or digital distributor and available for sale within a month, if they’re in enough of a hurry. A fe years ago, the Official Charts Company granted full permission to digital music to be included in the Top 40, provided that the shops selling the tracks pass on a de minimus “Dealer Price” to the label above a threshold which is set out in the OCC Rulebook. Currently, the Dealer Price is 40p per track for digital singles; this is where some of the confusion arose around the 29p Amazon deal during the RATM4Xmas campaign (the Dealer Price is not the retail price, showing that Amazon was selling this track, and the X Factor track, as a massive loss leader… Shrewd marketing from Amazon as always).

Thanks to some visionary organisations and small groups of intensely creative people, all of the tools an artist needs to be heard are available and free to use – with a small amount of money spent, a web site can be put up, MP3s shared, social networking profiles used to chat directly with fans. Today you can find Radio DJs on national stations busy on Twitter and Facebook, talking directly with listeners and bands before, during and after shows, and bands talking to their fanbases directly, bypassing The Label. At every step, it’s more engaging. Given the right push, and enough support, almost anything can be achieved.

We at Revolver like to think we offer that step up many bands need to find their feet online, navigating the complex maze that is international digital music retail. We handle the paperwork, the legalities and the massive amount of different requirements every digital music store insists upon… And with that headache out of the way, artists can set about doing what they actually love to do (writing music, playing gigs and building their fanbase) in the knowledge that we’re handling the tricky stuff for them.

It’s still a two way street, whatever the circumstances – if you have a fanbase, provided you connect with them and give them a good enough reason to support and promote your work, what you can achieve with very little promotion and marketing (compared to splashy, big budget campaigns) is nothing short of astounding. So next time you’re having doubts, just remember: the music industry’s not dead, it’s just sleeping. Time to help wake it up!

Headline image credit: “Wrecking Ball” by Paulie Brierley, via http://ragefactor.co.uk/#/propaganda/.

The Industry Insider: What’s in an ISRC?

Christopher (Revolver Digital Team) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:36:25 +0000

Although the latest BPI statistics show that an all-time record of 98.6% of all UK single sales were digital (over 117 million!), the digital world has not fully divorced itself from its history in the real world. If you’re an artist selling your music online, you still need the essentials - EAN13 barcode, catalogue number and (most importantly) an ISRC for each track, or you simply cannot have your tracks on any of the major online stores. (As a label with 30 years’ operating experience and almost a thousand albums under our belt, this irony’s not lost on us!)

However, unless you work with them on a daily basis, ISRCs can look confusing. How are they made up? What do they mean - and what purpose do they serve? In the first of our Industry Insider articles, Revolver explains it all – read on to find out.

ISRCs, or International Standard Recording Codes, are actually defined as a worldwide standard as ISO 3901. Think of them like the music industry’s version of the ISBN system. There’s several mandatory elements, and a five character ‘free text’ area which the label can define.

Here’s a sample ISRC: GB-AB3-09-429-01

… and here’s what it means:

Country code (as per the two-digit ISO country codes; for the UK, it’s GB)
Three letter alphanumeric label code (e.g. AB3)
Year of release (two digits, e.g. 09)
Five characters which the original label defines. Some labels have complex ways of generating the last five digits, but we prefer to use the last three digits of the release’s catalogue number, and the number of the track in question (e.g. 42901)

ISRCs are unique to each track and can’t be reused. Occasionally clashes occur for whatever reason, and when they do you must reassign a new ISRC. The code’s used as a unique tracking device for helping to calculate royalties, tracking radio play and keeping tabs on if a track is included in a compilation or rereleased on another format (for example, released digitally, then later released on CD and 7″). If a track is remixed, it must have a new ISRC assigned to it – likewise, if the track length changes (for example, if a track’s made into a radio edit) then it must also receive a new ISRC. You can imagine how quickly some releases acquire lots of ISRCs!

You might sometimes see ISRCs written with hyphens. This is purely for readability – some online retailers like iTunes won’t accept them if they have hyphens in (the release will simply fail validation if they’re left in) but this isn’t the same for everyone.

Keeping a detailed list of all relevant metadata is one of the most crucial aspects of digital distribution as you manage catalogue across all the many hundreds of online stores, but if you’re a Revolver Digital artist, we handle all that tricky stuff – leaving you to focus on making music. If you’d like to find out more, browse through the rest of our site or get in touch with us.

Image credit: 37Hz on Flickr.