More Choices at Songbay

Hi Songbay users!

It’s been a very busy time for us of late, the upgrade to our our online service of Music and Lyric Sales is almost here. We have made many changes which offer greater choice and autonomy to our users.
Specifically, we will be expanding our service by offering these additional features:

• Lyric sales
• Sample sales
• Digital downloads
• Entire Copyright Sales
• A New Single use audio/ video synchronization licence (replacing the existing complex licensing categories)

Users will be able to select any/all of the above options when listing material and be able to determine their own sale fee for each. Our aim- to put the artist in control at all times.
We are also making changes to our website to make it easier to use and introducing an exciting comments feature and ranking system for all material submitted.

How will existing listings be absorbed into the new system?

If you are an existing subscribers to Songbay, you will still be entitled to the same amount of uploads as determined by your current package; the start and end dates of subscriptions will remain unchanged.

When listing new material you will see a new user interface something like this:

We will invite you to set a fee for each of our new options. To help you in this process, we will supply you with an average market guide price for each. You can of course choose to set any price you wish for your material and decide which of the features you wish to use.

As before, we will supply completed contracts to all users at the point of sale without charge.

Fees and Royalties
Current subscribers will still be able to use all our services without charge and as before, will continue to receive 100% of any sales fees and royalties.
We have decided to use Paypal to handle all financial transactions.

I am an existing user, what will I need to do once the new service is operational?
We will email you as soon as the service is in place and invite you to select and enter a sales value for each option. (We will initially set all fees to the standard market rate for each selling option, with the exception of copyright sales, which will only be available to buyers should you select it).

Quality controls
We will analyse all submissions to our library to ensure they meet our quality requirements. In order to attract buyers, we cannot accept material displaying poor recording quality, low composition standard or major musicianship issues (such as tuning and timing). Any unsuitable material will not be visible for sale and be removed from our site within 24 hours. Should your material not meet our selection requirements, you will be notified by email. (Current Songbay subscribers will receive credits to allow further upload opportunities).

Changes to our current subscription package system
We will be removing the package options in favour of a much simpler per song/ lyric upload system. There will be two listing options available, a ‘free’ (percentage of sale) option or a ‘listing fee’ per song/ lyric option (no percentage of sales taken). Other options such as ‘promotion’ and ‘extended artist profile areas’ will be made available as additional paid features. We will not ask for any percentage of subsequent performing or broadcast royalties with either listing option.

That’s it for now, we sincerely hope you will enjoy the new features and that you will continue to gain sales and contacts through Songbay.

As always, we wish all our users the very best with their song searching/ song writing

We will be in touch very soon.

Songbayteam