Independent Distribution

Writing and recording songs are of course the key activities of song writers, but making them available for the public consumption is another important stuff we need to consider, and also collect money from the sales.

A friend of mine leads a surf rock band and I use him often as a help in terms of questions. He does cut albums and his music is available on CDs and iTunes. He told me that he uses CD Baby.

Going that route means that I can call myself a recording "label."

In summary here is how it seems to work:

• They stock 5 of your CDs for a $35 per CD processing fee.
• For CD sales you name your album price and they take $4 per CD.
  
• For digital distribution (i.e., iTunes) they take 9% commission.

I have a bit on online sales experience through my surf web site, and if you go completely your own route of distribution here are the some of the headaches you would run into.

• You need to collect money that means you need to take a credit-card. I use Google Checkout and that's easy enough. You could also open your own Amazon shop but the commission significantly higher than doing through CD Baby.
• People do fraudulent or semi-fraudulent things like claiming not receiving the orders. Google Checkout and Amazon shop can largely shield you from taking orders from repeat offenders and provide a convenient way of refunding but again the time is something you need to consider.
  
  And never take a personal check unless it is from your close friends (and if they are close friends, give your CDs or send them the MP3 file. Word of mouth is a huge marketing tool.)
  
  
• You also need to fulfill the order. That means you need to ship the order. This is a lot of leg work. Most of us work a full-time day job so when do we got a time to go to the post office? Also what if you go on a vacation or a long business trip from your company? You cannot make your customers wait. It is best to have the distributor deal with that sort of things and you concentrate on your own production.
• You may need to deal with cranky customers who have received damaged orders.
  
• How are you going to go on iTunes?
  

As I wrote in my previous post, public distribution evidence is required to join the ASCAP or the Grammy, and they both seem to accept CD Baby is a recognized form of public distribution, so basically when I will be ready to sell my tracks, I would go that route.

One important thing to note on distribution deal, especially digital media, is that it is highly discouraged to sign up multiple distributors for the same song or album you create. This will cause a confusion in the distribution and retail channels.

Copyrighting

We were wondering about the copyrighting the songs you create. This article is not a legal advise but here is what we seemed to have found out.

• Best and foremost, it is worthwhile for you to visit the US Copyright Office web site and read the Law and FAQs
  

The following were the main questions we had and were all answered in the Copyright Office FAQ. Again, we are not providing you a legal advise, so please don't use what we have written as the authoritative answer to secure your works.

• Do I have to register every song with the Copyright Office to get a protection?
  
  The answer seems to be no. We interpret that for us, song writers, as long as we save the recorded work in your own CD-ROM then the copyright will take effect. So the answer is that you do not have to register every song. The registration provides an official record of the copyright in case there is a legal claim against what you wrote. For this, if we are not making a lot of money and no very famous from our songs so we would forgo this, or wait until we have a major publishing deal. We would save them on CD-ROMs, make a written record of when they were created, and then don't share them with the public in any form if you think you could make a deal.
  
  It is also important to note that if you wrote a song under an employment contract (work for hire) from someone else, say composing a video soundtrack, then the copyright is most likely going to belong to the employer. We are not sure if you can include a clause written in our own contract to specifically sate that all the songs we write under the contract shall remain as ours. This has some implications for group efforts, for example, a rock band.
  
  
• Can we register online?
  
  Looks like we can. They prefer that you upload MP3 or other supported media format files using electronic submission and pay $30 (at this time of writing).

• $30 a song? That's way too much! Can I register multiple songs?
  
  So long as they were not previously published at different times, then the answer seems to be yes. We would interpret then all of my online demo songs were published so we need to individually register, but moving forward, we should publish multiple tracks under one title on the same day or an "album". Again, though, that is if we decide to register.

So this blog post is (C) 2008 Manabu Tokunaga.

What is ASCAP and how to join.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Producers (ASCAP) is member owned organization protecting the rights and hence the revenues of people who create and present music. I like the fact that ASCAP is one of the performing rights organization in the U.S. created and controlled by composers, lyricists, songwriters and music publishers.

To join them, they charge one time membership processing fee of $25.00 and they somehow collect royalties from various venues, and send you a check every so often. You do have to have some evidence of having created some music before you pay the due and join. I would personally cut some tracks and sell them through some only sales media like CD Baby or such.

You are probably familiar with Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) as well, which is another organization who can represent your performing rights.

Both organizations clearly state that you (as an individual) can only be reprsented by one of these organizations. However, it seems to be interpreted that if you are a group or a band each member can join either the BMI or ASCAP so tha both ends are covered.

Logic Pro and KORG M3 EXB-FW and USB-MIDI Integration Notes

On this article, I am going to jot down any knowledge that I came to acquire in terms of integrating KORG M3 and Logic Pro. As you read this, please do not expect that I have the in-depth knowledge of Logic Pro 8 nor KORG M3.

These points are what works for me. If you know more about it, be sure to provide a comment in this blog post and I will make sure to update it here and also the KARMA Lab Wiki Page. Pictures included are too small on the post but clicking them will enlarge to the size that you can see better.

• Whenever you can use the USB-MIDI interface in addition to EXB-FW. In spite of the speed of the FW interface, the MIDI signal goes through it is at the same speed as the original MIDI Standard. The USB-MIDI interface implements significantly faster transfer rate.
• At least another person and myself have experienced that M3 won't start right on the beat even the M3 is slaved to the Logic. The best way to get around this issue is to let the Logic run for at least a bar and then start Bar 1 of your own material.
• Out-of-the-box, you cannot make the M3 to be the MIDI Clock master, or at least you cannot get the Logic to start when you start the M3 sequencer. This feature appeared to have been removed from Logic and Express based on Version 8. It was available in Version 7 based Logic software. Source: http://www.logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=22957
  In addition I have confirmed with Stephen Kay of KARMA Lab that the M3 does not send MIDI Machine Control (MMC) which is implemented as SysEx message to Logic so out-of-the-box it cannot trigger the Logic to start from the Sequencer start button. M3 sends System Realtime Message (MIDI SRM) that contains Sequencer Start and Stop commands, but this is not recognized as an input to the Logic. Though, the Logic (express) manual clearly states that when the MIDI Clock output sends most of the M3 supported MIDI SRM. I have posted a message on Apple Logic Pro 8 support forum and a response from there pretty much confirmed that the for the input into LOGIC using the MIDI SRM is unsupported. I've also checked the Yamaha Motif XS manual as well as Roland Fantom series, they do support MTC and MMC features.
• Out-of-the-box, you do and can slave the M3 to the Logic's MIDI clock. Logic manual clearly states also that Logic does and will send the MIDI SRM message to get external (M3's) sequencer and such in sync. This is the preferred method to use the Logic in most MIDI production scenarios. To configure this on the M3 side, go to Global MIDI setting and set the M3 to sync with USB MIDI and then Logic's Project Sync to output the MIDI Clock on ALL interfaces. You may run into the issue that M3 starts significantly later than actual start. You may want to make sure to include an empty bar or two in your M3 sequence so that it will have ample time to get whatever internals started and drive the actual sound out (I am still investigating this to work perfectly.)
  
  

• Don't confuse MIDI clock with Audio Sampling Clock. The Audio clock is the 44 Khz stuff that is the sampling rate of the audio signal. And it seems to work the best if you set the Audio sampling clock on the Mac Audio/MIDI control panel to the "Device." In this case the "Device" to mean your M3's FW audio output.
  
  
  
• For recording the sound output from the M3 what works best for me is to use it as the Software Instrument, then divert the output of the instrument to another Audio Track. In my case, if you just bounce the tracks without first having the live-audio recording, the bounced track contains nothing but noise.

Some of the parameters that works best for me includes setting 2 Milliseconds latency and High CPU on the M3-Plug-in editor (read about the Audio Sampling Rate above as well). For the Core Audio option, set it to whatever audio output you are using (but not the M3). In my case I set this to M-Audio FastTrack. I will make sure that I will set every volume control knobs on your audio device to be in the dead center just so that you have not faded the input completely one way. Not doing so may result in a "dumb" error where you will only find out later (taking 1 hour checking cables, drivers and etc.) that it was just the volume control set all the way to left or right and the actual source was there but not hearing it.

• Speaking of using FastTrack, be sure that A/B input switch is set to A or the output will direct to channels 3-4 and you won't hear a thing unless you also direct the output of the software instruments to 3-4.
• The description of taking multiple inputs in the M3 Editor manual (about going to Environment window) seems to be wrong or other way around. I only get 2 channels under the software instruments. But on the stand-alone mode, you can feed all 6 channels into the audio channel strips (again though I have not figured out how to output those back into FastTrack without changing the AU settings between M3 and FastTrack).

I would like to thank KARMA Lab Forum users Coronado, Oddeo and also Stephen Kay in producing this article.

Please check out the following threads in the KARMA Lab Forums, if you have more problems or have answers, or post a comment to this article here and I will update.

• OS2/FW Low Latency..Yay!!! Clicks & Pops...Booo!!! (http://www.karma-lab.com/forum/showthread.php?p=74142#post74142)

• Syncing the M3 & Karma to your DAW (Logic) (http://www.karma-lab.com/forum/showthread.php?p=74228#post74228)

In addition, I do plan to make most of this content to be available on KARMA Lab Wiki Page at http://karma-lab.wikidot.com/ in late October 2008.

Update: Stand-Alone Mode Recording and Playback with M-Audio FastTrack

You can also the M3 Editor in the "Stand-Alone" mode and record the audio straight from inputs 1-2. In fact the signal does route through to Logic but if you are using the M-Audio FastTrack then you may wonder how to route the output. To do this you need to make an Aggregate Device in the MIDI Setup Utility and create the M3 and Input and FastTrack as the output device.

• Once you named the Aggregate Device that's what you need to select in the Audio setup of the Preference section of Logic
• You can now add an Audio track and if you record enable the track you should be able to hear the sound from M3.
• Add an External MIDI track and set the M3's MIDI to LOCAL CONTROL OFF (Press Global Settings button and then press the Page button, then select MIDI from the screen.) Then record enable the MIDI track and the Audio track at the same time.
• If the sounds (i.e., the MIDI events are) are doubling up sounding like in Unison mode (you can find this in the Event List) it is likely that MIDI is coming from both the FW and USB-2 interfaces. This is pretty standard. I will always Pull out the USB and see if that is what is going on.
• Turn the input knob of the FastTrack all the way right so that you are not getting the line input signals into the Mix. If you are trying to mix in other live signal you do need to do so into the IN of the M3. I'd personally finish the M3 segment of recording first then move onto the live stuff.