If you’re an artist looking to distribute your music, we can help; whether that is directly or through a distributor. We recently shared the following email with some artists who wanted to understand how Grooveshark could help directly or through their distributor TuneCore. Although the email is largely TuneCore-focused, the message for all artists is the same, Grooveshark’s open music platform is designed to help connect you with fans who will discover, love and share your music. If that sounds interesting to you, let us know at artists@grooveshark.com.
Here’s the email we shared with the TuneCore artists:
Thanks for reaching out to us. We are glad you did and we want to work with you.
You are not alone in your interest in working together. Jeff’s blog post introduced Grooveshark to many emerging artists who hadn’t leveraged our platform before. We’ve received calls/emails from multiple artists wanting to understand more about Grooveshark, and after learning about the millions we’ve paid artists to date and the millions of fans we’ve introduced to emerging artists, want to license their music for distribution on Grooveshark.
Given our commitment to open music innovation over closed music control, we want to give as many artists as possible the opportunity to connect with the passionate/influential fans using our service. In fact, its worth reviewing Grooveshark’s artist media kit https://grooveshark.box.com/s/25794b84df07dee0534e and our CEO’s recent interview with evolver.fm to understand the open music synergy we see between online exposure, fan engagement and offline revenue.
Before detailing the ways to get paid or promoted on Grooveshark, it’s worth communicating our respect for artists who may not support Grooveshark’s open music philosophy. If those artists believe that ANY Grooveshark user has uploaded one of their songs to our service and wants it removed, we will gladly take it down. The process for doing that, either directly or through TuneCore as your authorized agent, is defined here: http://www.grooveshark.com/dmca In a world where rights are transferable daily the artist knows better than any service provider who owns a track streaming from a specific URL on a given day. Artist control is a core component of what open music means and our takedown process is designed to put the artist in control.
That said, our preferred outcome is to license your music for distribution to Grooveshark’s millions of music-loving users.
If you are an artist that owns your master rights, we can get started in two ways:
1) Register with us directly at http://artists.grooveshark.com/ and upload your music. Our direct registration path is setup for artists looking for payment in the form of promotion instead of cash. Then email GSlovesTCartists@grooveshark.com to take advantage of a special “Grooveshark <3 TuneCore Artists” promotion our Artist Services team has launched. Note that artists.grooveshark.com is on the verge of a major redesign so we’ll also put all registered TuneCore artists who email us on our private invite list for the soon-to-be-launched artist dashboard and open music insights platform called Beluga.
2) If you are only interested in cash payment, direct TuneCore as your distributor to sign a Masters rights agreement (DSLA) with us for your songs, and ingest your content with us so we can report accurately and get you paid going forward on a recurring basis. Feel free to CC GSlovesTCartists@grooveshark.com on that email so we can follow-up from our side. We have the ability to sign TuneCore to a DSLA that only covers the TuneCore artists like you, that opt-in to licensing Grooveshark. This also allows TuneCore to represent what each artist wants for their music instead of making one distribution decision for all.
If you are an artist that owns your publishing rights, but not masters, then you unfortunately do not have the necessary rights to ingest content with us. This complicates reporting, but we’d like to find a solution. In that instance, direct TuneCore as your distributor to sign a Publishing rights deal with us to handle reporting and payment. Feel free to CC GSlovesTCartists@grooveshark.com on that email so we can follow-up from our side. We have the ability to sign TuneCore to a Publishing rights agreement that only covers the TuneCore artists like you, that opt-in to licensing Grooveshark. This also allows TuneCore to represent what each artist wants for their music instead of making one distribution decision for all.
At the end of the day, you the artist are our partner. If we fail to get TuneCore signed to any of these flexible arrangements, we have a list of fantastic distributors who would be glad to help you get paid or promoted by Grooveshark. We hope this detail communicates how much we want to work with every artist, including TuneCore artists like you — whether your goals are promotion or cash. Let us know any questions and let’s get our fans loving your music!
