So you’re an independent artist that’s recorded some great music and you reckon you get in the UK or Billboard Charts? Surely I can just get my music on iTunes or Myspace and wind up in Billboard magazine or on Radio 1? Unfortunately not. There is a LOT more to it than that and I will now go through the basics with you.

So, is there a difference between ‘chart eligible’ and ‘chart registered’? There certainly is. ‘Chart eligible’ means your sales will be transmitted by the iTunes or Amazon etc to Nielsen Soundscan or PPL etc. ‘Chart registered’ means these sales will actually count.

When a company promises to make your music ‘chart-eligible’ this just means that you can sell your music online via a website/portal that reports sales to the chart companies. If you are NOT chart registered, although the sales will get transmitted, the chart companies won’t know who you are and you will get paid but it will not count to the charts. So you could sell 10,000 units of your music on iTunes or Amazon and not one would count to the charts.

Ditto Music register your release for the charts in the UK, US, Canada and Ireland. All stores we distribute to are chart-eligible (report sales to the chart companies). If you sign up for Spotify and 7Digital, fans can listen to your music on Spotify and purchase your track on 7Digital via a link. We7 stream and sell downloads.

Here are some common questions we are asked regarding the charts:

Can I Get On The Billboard Charts Through Selling Music On iTunes etc?

Only if you are registered with the Billboard/ UK charts. If you sell music on iTunes you will be chart-eligible as iTunes etc will submit your sales data to the Chart companies but unless you register via Ditto Music or directly yourself with Nielsen Soundscan/the PPL etc the sales won’t count and you WILL NOT get your music into the Billboard/UK charts.

I’ve Released My Music via Tunecore, CDBaby, Zimbalam etc. Does That Mean If I Sell Enough I Will Get In The Charts?

No. Not unless you have registered the track yourself with PPL/Neilsen Soundscan. Ditto Music is the ONLY distributor to register Unsigned Bands for the charts.

What Is The Difference Between ‘Chart Eligible’ and ‘Chart Registered’?

‘Chart eligible’ describes a download site that reports your sales data to the local chart company. ‘Chart registered’ means your music is registered with the chart company and all sales will count to the charts.

Should I Pay To Make My Release Chart Eligible Or For ISRCs?

Every main download site is chart eligible so paying more for something you already have seems pointless. If you purchase ISRCs for your tracks this is worthless unless the company that gave you the ISRCs register them as well. Ditto Music are the ONLY company that register Unsigned Artists for the charts.

If Someone Abroad Buys My Track Will It Count To The Charts?

The sale will count in whichever country they are purchased.

How Do I Register For The Billboard/UK Charts Myself?

You can. You will need to register with Nielsen Soundscan for the US and Canada, PPL for the UK and Chart Track for Ireland. So why pay for the service? It’s completely up to you whether you take the Ditto Music service or not. The registration and application processes are time-consuming and complicated. We can do this all for you to save you time and stress so you can concentrate on doing what you do best – making music.

Are The Billboard/UK Charts Important?

National charts are VERY important for upcoming bands. You will notice that new major label bands launch a massive chart-breaker campaign, get in the charts then they’re suddenly everywhere. It’s also the gateway to International compilations, get you noticed and generally gives you a massive PR boost. Ditto Music were responsible for the first UK Top40 hit by an unsigned artist and all hits by unsigned artists ever. We worked with Koopa to get a total of 3 Top 40 hits, they then got signed, toured the world and recorded an album with a top producer. Take a look at our Chart-Breaker package for the inside edge on chart success.

Are Label/Distributor Charts Important?

They are important to the bands on those charts and that is about it. The Music Industry takes notice of Official Charts from across the world as these show where the major revenue and fan base lies.

Digital distribution to Spotify

Today’s digital distribution news has been filled with the announcement that US based digital distributor Tunecore has finally caught up with the rest of us and are now able to distribute content to streaming service Spotify.

For Tunecore customers waiting nearly 18 months to get their music on Spotify, this is a sigh of relief.

This announcement was to be expected with Spotify due to launch in the US during the third quater of the year. The move will see Tunecore artists be able to stream their content within the application and for their troubles receive 100% of revenue back.

But hold on, let’s back track a month or two. Back in April a research report did the rounds outlining the sales and streams required to make the average minimum wage in the states. I won’t bore you with the details, if you want to read the article you can click here.

The report was heavily critical of the revenue generated for independent artists from Spotify based on it’s streaming platform.

How does Spotify affect unsigned artists?

This image taken from the report indicates that for an artist to make the US minimum wage they require 4,549,020 Spotify streams. Now with all due respect to Tunecores artists unless you are Lady Gaga , Justin Beiber, or pull off the scam of the century, you don’t have a cat in hells chance of hitting that figure.

Having been distributing artists to Spotify for 18 months now, here at Ditto Music we are more than aware of the revenue constraints our artists face, and we have therefore taken action to improve the potential revenue. We have done this by distributing to digital online retailer 7 Digital ,whos platform is integrated into Spotify to allow for users to not only stream music but also purchase and download content.

At Ditto Music we have been delivering to even newer stores like Mflow, www.we7.com and Sky songs and have thousands of artists generating brand new revenue streams. Along with The Guardian and The NME, Ditto Music are lucky enough to provide one artist per month with a we7 presents slot. The first winners of this Hitchcock signed a record deal in a matter of days. This type of promotion is clearly beneficial for unsigned artists.

Will Tunecore continue to ignore these new stores until they affect their US artists? Time will tell

To browse our full list of digital stores click here

We recently came across a blog post from Tunecore claiming to make artists live on iTunes within minutes.
There is a lot of information regarding getting your music on iTunes quickly and we have daily requests for this. So to ward off any potentials scams, we would like to give you some information directly from iTunes themselves.

Here is an excerpt of the Tunecore article.

As of last week, the amount of time for most TuneCore Artist’s albums, singles, EPs or ringtones to go live on iTunes was less than 24 hours. Even more amazing, on Thursday of last week, we had one TuneCore Artist’s release go live on iTunes within 28 minutes of completing checkout. These incredibly fast live times are happening for the majority of TuneCore Artist releases, our goal is to have them happen for ALL TuneCore Artists releases (and we are working on it!).

So Tunecore would like you to believe that by uploading with them, you will be on iTunes within 24 hours.
The truth is that iTunes take 3/4 weeks to get content live. They ingest tens of thousands of tracks per week and have a constant backlog of content. So whether Tunecore deliver your music to iTunes in 5 minutes or 5 hours, it will still be at least 4 weeks before you are live on iTunes.

iTunes do however give us a facility called “flagging.” Distributors are allowed up to ten flags per week.

We recently offered this as a service. It was a manual process that took several hours to do.
iTunes were unhappy with us charging for this though so we of course stopped the service.

It would be unfortunate for anyone to sign up with Tunecore or any other music distributor and expect their content to go live in 24 hours, because it just isn’t going to happen. It is an impossibility for iTunes to do this and I challenge Tunecore to explain HOW they plan to make new customers live in 24 hours.
It would be a very sad thing for unsigned artists if a company like Tunecore was making false promises in order to scam artists out of their hard earned money.

I sincerely hope that this was not a cheap ploy to gain more customers by selling false hope to prospective clients.

Ditto Music claim back your digital PRS for you free of charge, meaning that you earn 54 pence per iTunes sale. Thats 5p more than any other distributor.
Our new Tunemore package means that you are released to over twice as many digital stores as Tunecore, for less money. We urge everyone to thoroughly research all music distributors and lets keep on making new opportunities for unsigned artists.

We have been digitally distributing artists for 5 years now and have become the number one choice for the music industry, with well known chart acts alongside  unsigned artists all over the world using our services.

Newer companies often surface and we are constantly comparing ourselves so that not only are we the most established, but the best value for your money.
So we decided to review digital distributor Zimbalam and get some feedback for our customers.

Zimbalam digitally distribute to 15 stores, not including their 5 dance stores which cost extra.
In comparison to Zimbalam , we (Ditto) cover over 28 great sites like Sky Songs, Myspace Music and mFlow being very popular amongst our customers. These stores deliver to hundreds of retailers worldwide.

So lets look at releasing a 1 track single through all of Zimbalams 15 stores.

Zimbalam
£19.99 + £10 yearly subscription
Zimbalam Total = £29.99

Ditto Music
£4.50 (15 x 30p) + £5 yearly subscription
Ditto Music Total = £9.50

Ditto Music is a full £15.50 cheaper than using Zimbalam
Lets look at a bigger comparison table…….

By using our new Tunemore package you get ALL 15+ retailers for just £2 per track. So you get a wider coverage and you pay less.

And don’t forget that should a new store come on the market you can upgrade to this for just 30p/45c.

Support

Zimbalam have been operating for around 12 months now and are powered by French company Believe Digital.

Zimbalam are based in France and do not have telephone support. If you have any support queries you will be directed to the their French office.

We know from releasing thousands of releases that every release is different. So we have full time phone staff dedicated to helping you with these issues, something that helped us have 7 UK Top 40 singles, all with unsigned artists.

Take down fee

Once you have uploaded your music to Zimbalam, if you should need to take it down for any reason you have to pay £29.99.

(Ditto Music do not have any fees for this)

*From Zimbalam Website

So if you change your mind about tracks, sign to a label , want to re-record or just want to remove the music from the service provider, Zimbalam are going to charge you £29.99.

iTunes
Zimbalam only distribute you to your local iTunes store. You have to sell 500 tracks for your music to be distributed into the rest of the worldwide iTunes stores. So if you are in the US and have fans in Japan, they will have to wait until your US fans have bought enough copies for you to be upgraded.

*From Zimbalam Website

At Ditto Music we send you to ALL iTunes territories for just 30 pence.

We will keep on reviewing our competitors to make sure that Ditto Music are the cheapest digital distributor and give you the best value for money.

Sign up for a free Ditto account and begin uploading your music to hundreds of stores worlwdide

This guest blog post was written by Marcus Taylor, a UK based music marketing guru and author of The Musician’s Guide to World Domination.

They say that one of the main components of success in a competitive industry is “it’s who you know”, and the music industry is no exception.

The trouble is that most people hear this phrase and get frustrated because it is often implied that one has very little control over who they know, but I couldn’t disagree more. Ok so there may be a minority of musicians who have a slight advantage (rock star families) but that’s no excuse for you to not be proactive in building equally influential contacts within the music industry.

So how can you build music industry contacts?

Leverage social media – Social media sites such as Myspace, Linked in and Twitter are great for building contacts because you get to call the shots on who you want to network with. Unlike attending networking events where who you meet is determined by who turns attends and is approachable, sites like Twitter allow you to find any one who you would find interesting and want to connect with.

However, it’s important to contain your desire to connect with people who you don’t already know within the professional networking sites. Facebook is the main exception here because it is considered more of a personal social network opposed to a professional one. That said, it’s perfectly reasonable to use professional networking sites like Twitter to develop a professional relationship into a personal one over time.

Tip: Run a Google search such as “record label managers in London” to find a collection of targeted potential contacts names, then go ahead and add them on your preferred social media site and start building a relationship with them.

Personalised emails – The trick to building contacts successfully via email lies in how you present yourself, and what you offer the recipient. Similarly to social media sites you can choose who you contact, but unless you offer the person you’re contacting a reason to reply then you’re probably wasting your time. I would recommend spending a few minutes doing some research on the contact to figure out what it is that they would react to, and then offer it to them.

Networking Events
There are so many conferences, seminars, networking events and expos in the music industry all over the world that there really is no excuse to not to get involved.

If you’re a bit on the shy side then invest in developing your people skills to the point where you are comfortable making conversation with almost anyone and everyone who is approachable, if done right attending music events can be an incredibly valuable activity to furthering your music career.

Tip: There is a comprehensive list of upcoming music industry events on the AIM website, which includes some of the most popular ones including Popkomm, SXSW, Midem, ADE and In the City. Becoming an AIM member will also allow you to get discount tickets to these events.

Use Music Services – When you record an album or perform a gig you don’t just walk a way with a piece of recorded music or a few extra quid from CD sales, you almost always build new music industry contacts. Always be sure to talk to as many people at gigs and keep in contact with any one who might one day be vital to your success.

Network all the time – Musicians are in abundance. You can bet that pretty much any Tom, Dick or Harry will know someone musical that might be able to help develop your music career one way or another. Developing your people skills and making a habit of striking up conversations with as many people as possible will help to rapidly increase your number of contacts.

Image Credit: Stephen Mitchell, Pinelife

Great new vid by Ditto Artist Alan Seeley. It’s certainly filled the Ditto office with joy!