Well... if you read through the contract it pretty much sums up what you'd be getting yourself into.
They say they'll put a CD and packaging together and list you on their website. It doesn't spell out what the design and artwork would be like or whether you'd have approval over the 'look' of your CD.
You have to pay $100 to be listed on their site or they have the right to remove you from their catalogue if you fall below 10 units per month.
They have the right to increase their rates at 10% per year, which means in 10 years they would own 100% of your music, worldwide.
It's also questionable from the wording of the contract whether you actually retain ownership of the masters and publishing.
So far it just looks like this one company with a plan to put together a pay per MP3 site where you can also buy artists CD's that they distribute.
They have the rights to the first 100 cd's that you sell (ie, no royalties) and there's also no royalties on any CD's distributed to radio stations or anywhere else for publicity. Plus no royalties on any CD's sold at wholesale or below.
No mention of how they plan to prove what is sold and where....
They only pay royalties twice per year.
This is basically a distribution deal and not a very good one. I can get CDBaby distribution for about $35 plus $20 for a barcode and manufacture the CD's myself. It looks a little less professional because it's a CDR with inkjet liner notes but it only costs about $2 - $3 per CD to make them, the quality of the sound is identical and I can sell a double CD (which is what my next one is) for $10 and still make a profit.
CDBaby also uses 21 other distributors like Apple iTunes, TowerRecords.com etc... as part of the deal where people can download individual tunes. There's no contract that you can't get out of and with 29 songs I stand a much better chance of selling songs individually.
Not to mention there's no freebies given away for publicity. No 10% increases per year....etc etc..
As far as shopping to tv/film and multimedia companies, I question how effective their company would be considering how many artists they would need to have signed onto their site to stay in business. ie, how much attention would they be able to give to my CD when they have 200 other bands to worry about?
It's just as easy to sign up with a few publishers and shop the CD's yourself.
Last but not least, the negative threads I found on the internet pretty much spelled out what I just said above and killed this deal before it even started.
If I'm gonna sign with anybody, I need to know everything there is to know about who I'm dealing with first. If anything negative comes up, I tend to believe the comments from people who aren't out to make a buck.
Anyways... here's a rough draft of my email to them.
http://s93744050.onlinehome.us/Questions.doc
Check back same bat time, same bat channel.
