Web record companies fight for clients
Posted on February 27, 2008
Filed Under Vnunet |
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Iain Thomson, vnunet.com,
Tuesday 26 February 2008 at 00:00:00
New music industry as fractious as last one
A war of words has broken out between two internet record companies after a
band decided to switch from one to the other. North London band Trail was
signed to Sellaband, the first in a new breed of record companies that lets
fans invest directly in music they like. But after raising over £15,000
from investors the band upped sticks and went to rival label Slicethepie, where
it has already picked up around £5,000 in investment. “Sellaband’s scheme
is one of the first to allow fans to fund the making of your album, but they do
get it wrong in one crucial way,” said Charlie Afif, Trail front man and
co-writer. “They take 40 per cent of the publishing [song writing copyright]
for life, yet the band’s believers [investors] see none of that, even though
they front the money in the first place. “Slicethepie allows us to use a very
similar fund-raising method but keep complete ownership of our songs and the
master recording rights. Plus the investors get a share of the money we
generate through album/single sales.” Sellaband has denied the gripes over
publishing rights. “There is a big misconception about publishing,” said Johan
Vosmeijer, ex-head of Sony BMG in Holland and a co-founder of Sellaband. “You
do not sign away the rights to your music, but you buy a service from a company
to actively market and promote your songs. “Trail has now chosen between 100
per cent of nothing and 60 per cent of something and have obviously made the
wrong choice. “I still don’t get their model and I really can’t see why anyone
would want to leave us and go to them but, hey, I’m biased.” Vosmeijer pointed
out that fewer that two per cent of Trail’s Sellaband ‘believers’ have followed
them to Slicethepie, and that the band will be missing out on the promotional
experience of the Sellaband team. “The main difference for artists is that we
offer a program [that] bands can benefit from, and we offer a team of experts
in promotion and marketing,” said Vosmeijer. “From what I’ve been told,
Slicethepie just sends you the money and does not care what you do with it. We,
on the other hand, see producing an album as a profession we take pride
in.”
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