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Who Pays What?
A simple guide to royalty streams in the digital age

October 5, 2004

CHART 1: Revenue Streams for Artists, Songwriters and Copyright Owners
based on the broadcast/webcast of their music

This chart shows who gets paid when a song is broadcast, webcast or streamed. Note that traditional analog radio stations have the fewest licensing obligations as they have avoided paying a performance royalty for decades.



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Websites for
Artists, Labels, and Bands

Check out these websites offer tons of current resources, tips, articles, links, and connections for bands and artists.

CD Baby A fantastic, practical way for indie musicians to sell CDs online and to post their digital tracks to all the major online music services.

Host Baby From the folks at CD Baby, an affordable web hosting service with very practical features for musicians including an online calendar, guestbooks, links to online sales, and special email capabilites.

Just Plain Folks With a membership of over 42,000 songwriters, Just Plain Folks has become one of the best ways for musicians and songwriters to network, share resources, and work together.

KnowtheMusicBiz is an online community for emerging artists, musicians and music executives. KTMB members can find, exchange and contribute valuable information about the business of music plus get advice and insight from industry thought leaders.

Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA) helps independent labels to build a legitimate online presence and ensuring their fair share in the digital music future.

TuneCore helps indie and unsigned bands have their music available on all the best digital music stores. Band keeps all the royalties for sales.

Ariel Publicity Great website chock full of novel ideas about how to use new technologies to your advantage to promote and distribute your music.

Indiecentre is a great resource for bands, musicians and aspiring labels. Includes a directory of resources for manufacturing, distribution, and helpful articles about starting a label, touring, and promotion.

Indie-Music.com A mind boggling amount of information for indie musicians and labels. Practical articles, links, advice.

TAXI acts as a liaison between songwriters and major label A&R representatives. Artists submit songs which are then critiqued by former major label employees, and the strongest submissions are passed on to the A&R reps.

Starpolish Great resource about indie promotion.