YouTube creator experience but for audio?

The Lounge General Discussion
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Hi, I have read the threads about how to put music (or audio in general) on spotify. I was intimidated by all the legal stuff and on first glance incomprehensible license transfer models etc. I read the recommendations (CDBaby).

I had soundcloud and deleted it because of bad sound quality and very bad plagiarism detection algo and rather bad app (UI).

No GEMA for me

I had not become member of GEMA out of principle and what I thought the system had done to independent parties, radios, covers, inspiration etc. (more the paperwork than the actual costs). And they demand your soul forever - you become member as a natural person, for everything you will ever do in the future, not just as a project. My approach is more the citation, give credit and remix approach. And I also appreciate the Jamaican style.

Basically I just want to

  • upload some of my music or other own creative productions to audio streaming services like spotify,
  • don’t want any royalties,
  • but want to keep all rights to it,
    • authorship,
    • right to produce physical copies
    • right to license/upload elsewhere
    • and right to withdraw or alter it at any time.
  • Aldo, I don’t want to meet any quota criteria just to be in a catalogue

This seems pretty difficult to accomplish. It is only possible through distributers with difficult to understand terms.

The deal could be: the service hosts the music so that it is available to wider audience. And the service may profit from many indy artists available what also leads to paying subscribers.

Basically I am looking for simplicity of use as with YT, but with an audio service that allows people (myself in the first place :slight_smile: ) to listen to it in the car, while commuting etc. It shouldn’t be a indy only platform because one would have to switch apps etc.

I don’t want to do business, it’s just a hobby, I don’t want any micro income that leads only to more administrative costs. On the other hand, I’d rather not want to gift it to companies (while absolutely fine with giving it to the world, to listen/watch - but not to capitalize in unaltered form like use in ads or for profit in any other form than people paying for the service of hosting and streaming). And I want to maintain the copyright so that I myself can do with my stuff whatever I want, whenever I want - even release it as regular LP or whatever or license sounds to game companies with or without compensation as per my own decision.

Are you aware of simple ways to achieve this? Where natural authorship and copyright are maintained (like German Urheberschaft) but right to display, stream, etc. is given to the host until I decide to set them to private or delete?

If not existing:

An idea could also be a wrapper app that remote controls spotify or apple music for regular stuff and injects it, together with music from other sources including indy streaming services or even self hosting on a private or rented servers, into a unified UI.

Thanks for all comments and ideas :slight_smile:

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afaik you can’t upload directly to spotify/apple music/youtube music without using some service and they all cost something.
why not upload to bandcamp? no charge unless you want some extra features like batch upload, you can put your music on $0 and your music by default copyrighted.
there’s a pretty good app, works good over the web players too, way better quality then spotify.

if you plan to upload to youtube as videos - you can do that, I started doing that because wanted to get deeper on TouchDesigner and I love it, but it takes way more time investment then just uploading to bandcamp. not sure how licensing works on YT though, there’s only an option to choose between the “standard Youtube license” whatever it is, or Creative Commons which means you have the copyright but anyone can use your stuff:

If you’ve marked your video with a CC BY license, you retain your copyright. Other creators get to reuse your work subject to the terms of the license.

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Yes, that’s the problem (need of a distributor for spotify). Maybe spotify podcasts is an alternative, but that’s a bought and integrated service, again a lot to read to understand what one is doing there.

The aim is to have it available in a common music player app together with all the rest.

I looked at bandcamp. Seems easy, but again lots of legalese and more focused on selling than just making it available. Will have a look into the automatic copyright thing.

Many things I do aren’t necessarily tracks, EPs or so - but work in progress, recordings of sessions, or concept or purely sound focussed audio like a very long stream of stuff to sample (like 1 hour of basedrums from the AR).

YT is ok for that but needs video format and shuts off when you close the phone or put the app to background. And the rest on YT isn’t necessarily music.

Will look into YT licenses again, thanks for pointing that out :slight_smile:

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I’d still use yt if I were you, bandcamp is maybe more suited for (i.e. people visit the site often expecting) finished tracks. Imho you don’t necessarily need to make videos for long jams etc, maybe some pics or some type of patch notes on screen. I personally put on yt jams etc without looking at the screen if it’s about music.

You’re going for a small target audience there :smiley:

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Funny combination :slight_smile: It’s not only such stuff. But maybe meditative as well :wink:

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Just to throw in some alternative wild cards for sharing, even just for an introduction to the platforms and some unconventional means of release.

Whenever you want to share or on a set schedule, you could air on Blast Radio and then as a bonus archive the output, for yourself and would-be listeners. For this I’ll highlight Samply as an alternative to SoundCloud: it’s wonderful for works-in-progress, drag and drop a file on top of another for versioning in ‘stacks’. Different project folders for different types of your output etc…

Just some food for thought :slight_smile:

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