The idiocy here is beyond me. It just makes me so sad. I get called out for being on a company business trip where I saved the company money. It's just so strange. I don't get it. Why is the company spending its money this way? What's the end game? How does this benefit the company? If they're capable of doing this to me, what are they doing for artists?

Jeff is the "king of coach." He's such a frugal guy. Of all the criticisms you could have about Jeff, stealing $500 is not on that list. It's ridiculous.

It looks like the company has lost its path. There's no one left at TuneCore that has any meaningful background in music. Jeff was always the spokesperson for musicians' values. There's no evidence that the company has any vision, and I can only see this leading to a loss of credibility among artists.... There's a big, big issue with vision and leadership now. They have not articulated a vision and there's no one with the necessary experience left to help.... I don't know if it's ignorance or arrogance, but the damage is pretty severe.

Rather than pointing fingers at Jeff, they need to get on with it. The whole situation leads me to believe that there's something really wrong that has nothing to do with Jeff.

Personally, and as a shareholder, I am absolutely disgusted by these allegations against Jeff. It reeks of desperation and diversion. I have known Jeff for over 30 years, and while no person is perfect, I can personally attest to his high ethical standards, especially with regard to his tenure at Tunecore. More than anyone, you know how much time and effort he put into it. And now, after building Tunecore into the undisputed leader in the field, and quite literally, changing the model of the music industry, they now shout "lack of confidence" and "mismanagement"!? It just doesn't wash...and they know it. They have never been forthcoming about Jeff's termination.

I am so saddened that this situation has devolved into a stalemate. Instead of focusing on the continued growth and diversification of Tunecore, they have chosen to turn this into a battle against Jeff. It is abundantly clear that whatever the real reasons are for Jeff's termination, Tunecore has been on the decline since his departure. Jeff was certainly not without controversy in the public eye, but no visionary CEO ever is. He was the clearly best person for the job. What do we have now?....a company with no vision, no direction, low morale, and most importantly, no effective leadership.

Tunecore focuses on its core business of helping artists reach their fans and consumers. It is expanding into Japan, Canada and on campuses, and has several exciting initiatives on the horizon which will increase its value to its artists/customers. The matter of the dispute is one more appropriately handled behind closed doors with the parties’ attorneys, and if necessary, in a courtroom. It is not for public consumption, nor does it have any bearing on its work toward its core mission.

Under our tenure, TuneCore took significant market share away from the traditional major labels. As of July, 2012, TuneCore artists represent over 4% of all US gross digital music sales revenue and have sold over 610,000,000 units of music generating over $310,000,000 in gross music sales. More than four songs a second are sold on iTunes somewhere in the world by a TuneCore artist. Through the execution of the vision and the trust of the artist, TuneCore achieved about 40% of the market share of EMI and 25% of the market share of Universal in regards to digital music sales in the United States.

We were also able to attract artists across the spectrum: from emerging artists to the older legends and the new legends. Artists such as Drake, Soulja Boy, Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails, Zac Brown Band, Hoodie Allen, Civil Wars, Lecrea, Boyce Avenue, Kelly, Colt Ford, Ed Sheerhan, Alex Day, Aretha Franklin, Jay Z, Girl Talk, Blood On The Dancefloor, Jason Mraz, Nice Peter, Tiesto and hundreds of thousands more used TuneCore to place number one albums and songs on iTunes, Amazon and many other digital stores, breaking the control of the traditional industry while democratizing it.

We started the company with a mission and philosophy to make the world a better place for artists. I believe the success TuneCore has had under our guidance is based on never losing sight of that mission and philosophy. Stay true to the DNA of the company and no matter how the market changes you can adapt with a rock solid foundation. As the Founder and CEO I tried hard to instill my beliefs and passion into every aspect of the company, to never let the employees or board of directors forget the mission, the "why" of TuneCore's existence. My hope is the philosophies, vision and mission statement that have allowed the company to succeed are so entrenched that it continues on the path created for it. Serve the musician. Thats how you, the artist, the shareholders, the digital music stores and the consumers win.

The challange becomes when a company loses that vision. Neither Peter or I are even remotely in the league of Apple or Steve Jobs, but you look at what happened to Apple when John Sculley came in as CEO. He changed the Apple vision from making "insanely great easy to use products" to one of "making money at any expense". When Jobs came back and reinstituted his vision Apple soared again. Its the vision that drives the success and revenue, not the other way around. We did everything we could to instill the vision as deeply as we could. We just hope it sticks.

Astonishing success under the original regime, really--that's been TuneCore these last few months. We fulfilled our promise to create a Publishing side, with a new office in Burbank, CA, and it represents another revolution for artists, the next step along the path we started along when the company launched. Back in New York, things have been fantastic, up to and including a launch of the new look of the TuneCore home page, which Gary, Jeff and I helped shape and which I think is superb. This real success makes me all the more puzzled at very recent developments

"Stunned" doesn't begin to describe it. Okay, so the company asked me to leave--I can accept that, I'm a founder at heart, the company is no longer a startup, perhaps it's time to move on. But Jeff is the heart and soul of TuneCore, and frankly, its brains. No one knows this space like he does, especially when it comes to publishing. I said earlier that TuneCore was having astonishing success--it is, and that's due to a lot of hard work from a lot of brilliant people (whom Jeff found and convinced to come on board). It's also due to Jeff's vision and leadership. Why on earth would Jeff be asked to leave? Why now, in the face of so many successes, and on the cusp of doing for publishing what he'd already proven he could do for distribution? It makes no sense.

Jeff is one of the few people who has genuinely moved the business forward. So many people talk about what the business could/should/might be, but Jeff actually had a vision and brought it to fruition with his founding and running of TuneCore. That's the key: bringing something to fruition. Jeff actually gets things done - implementing a vision via his role as CEO. In so doing, he, by creating a system that provided access to thousands and thousands of musicians who had - prior to Jeff's implementation of a vision - been denied access by industry gatekeepers, undeniably changed the music business for the better.

TuneCore was all Jeff. I remember the dinner where he first ran the idea past me, along with the old company name. I thought the idea sounded radical (it was), I thought there was a fair chance it wouldn't work (I was wrong), and I knew I wanted to be involved as an advisor (I am). Jeff didn't doubt the idea from the outset, and since we started talking about this, I'm not sure I've met a more tireless leader who is more singularly focused on executing on his vision. I feel pretty strongly that Jeff came onto this concept in a moment in time, just at the outset of artists starting to realize that digital distribution could be for everyone, not just signed artists. And he executed, and built what I consider to be a successful, remarkable, and growing business. I believe there are few individuals who could have delivered on this business idea the way Jeff has done for TuneCore.

I'm extremely concerned about the direction of the company without Jeff at the helm, as a shareholder in TuneCore, especially given the lack of information available about why he is no longer there. It should be clear from my responses to your questions that I consider Jeff Price to be the man who started or drove every major initiative at TuneCore of which I'm aware. I've heard no announcement of a new CEO, and I'm suspect that Jeff could even be properly replaced, given his unusual and unique combination of outspokenness, deep industry knowledge, wholehearted commitment to the company and to its staff. Jeff made you a believer, and even if you didn't believe, detractors largely respected his vision and commitment.

Well here’s some truth about the old industry that David somehow misses.

Previously, artists were not rolling in money. Most were not allowed into the system by the gatekeepers. Of those that were allowed on the major labels, over 98% of them failed. Yes, 98%
.

Of the 2% that succeeded, less than a half percent of those ever got paid a band royalty from the sale of recorded music.

How in the world is an artist making at least something, no matter how small, worse than 99% of the world’s unsigned artists making nothing and of the 1% signed, less than a half a percent of them ever making a single band royalty ever?

Finally, as much as I hate to say it, being an artist does not entitle the artist to get money. They have to earn it. And not everyone can.

This is empirically false. Revenue to labels has collapsed. Revenue to artists has gone up with more artists making more money now than at any time in history, off of the sale of pre-recorded music.

Taken a step further, a $17.98 list price CD earned a band $1.40 as a band royalty that they only got if they were recouped (over 99% of bands never recouped).

If an artist sells just two songs for $0.99 on iTunes via TuneCore, they gross $1.40.

If they sell an album for $9.99 on iTunes via TuneCore, they gross $7.00.

This is an INCREASE of over 700% in revenue to artists for recorded music sales.

In addition to vastly overstating the generosity of record labels toward artists in the old paradigm, Lowery openly sneers at the booming avenues for income that define the new music industry, merchandising and live performance.

As is true every time an industry changes, the people who used to have it easy claim the new way is not just hard for them but fundamentally wrong. The reluctance to adapt is a kind of embarrassing nostalgia that glosses over the many sins of the old ways, and it argues for a kind of pity fuck from the market.

It's doomed thinking. When it became obvious that the studio recording industry was not going to remain an analog domain, we built Electrical Audio to be as self-sufficient as possible so we could continue to use those methods we thought had important advantages despite changes in the greater industry. We didn't whine at the moon and expect the rest of the industry to indulge us. We also bought a Pro Tools rig to accommodate the sessions that weren't going to be done in the analog domain regardless.

Adapt to conditions or quit. Bitching is for bitches.

This is my bias: the decline of scarcity seems inevitable to me. I have no doubt that this fight over mp3s is just the first of many fights we're going to have about this stuff. Our laws and ethics already fail to match up with our behaviors, and for my money, those are the things we should be trying to fix. The change is already happening to us, and it's a change that WE ARE CHOOSING. It's too late to stop it, because we actually kind of like a lot of the things that we're getting out of it.

Innovation was antithetical to value for content, as it diminished the use of accessibility to increase relative worth.

It is not a musician’s god given right to make money from their art. No one ever said this would continue as is.

This is a hard lesson. It doesn’t mean that copyright isn’t important. It doesn’t mean that artists can’t make money. It just means that it’s not a given, nor is it the responsibility of others to make this possible.

Music is so important to people. It is majorly important to young people. And to me? Literally somewhere below water and air but above food. And I just went for it. I bought a lot of music; I got a lot of free music from whatever sources were at hand; I just had to have it by any means necessary. If you duped a copy of a Dismemberment Plan record in college or something, it's cool. I guess I'd like to have the money, but you know what, I hope you just listened to it with even 1/10 of the consciousness I gave to the music I listened to as a kid--copied, stolen, or bought. And you know, maybe take some of the sermonizing from my peer group with a grain of salt. I think some of them did some of the things I did. Or... maybe a lot of them.

You are a member of ASCAP, BMI or SESAC. These three organizations are in a relationship with other performance rights organizations around the world to collect and pass back and forth Public Performance royalties.

Your song sells via download in Japan (the same scenario plays out in just about every country).

The digital store pays the songwriter’s money to the local collection agency in Japan (called JASRAC) for the right of Public Performance. JASRAC has the right to issue licenses and collect money for the songwriter’s Public Performance as the right of Public Performance was passed to it by ASCAP/BMI/SESAC.

Now here’s where it gets really screwed up:

JASRAC arbitrarily splits the money paid by the digital store between mechanical royalties and Public Performance. For example, JASRAC decides 70% of the money it got paid by the digital music service for Public Performance goes to mechanical royalties and 30% of the money goes to Public Performance royalties.

There is no basis in copyright law for how the split is determined. The split differs from country to country and from collection agency to collection agency. It is based on who sits on the board of directors at each collection agency. If there are more publishers on the board, the split goes more toward mechanicals; if there are more songwriters, the split favors Public Performance.

Important: JASRAC does not represent the songwriter for Reproduction and has no right to split the money paid to it by the digital store. Nevertheless, the collection agencies ignore this (and apparently so do many digital music services).

For the mechanical royalties, JASRAC takes around 15% of the songwriter’s money as an “administration” fee despite not administering it (not to mention it had no right to the money in the first place).

Then, as the songwriter never joined JASRAC to get the mechanical royalties that JASRAC had no right to collect, JASRAC gives the songwriter’s money to Warner Bros., EMI, Sony, Universal and others based on each company’s market share in that country.

In other words, they give some portion of the songwriter’s money from Public Performance away to other entities. Eerily close to stealing the songwriter’s money…

The digital store has not gotten the right to Reproduction and has never paid the songwriter the money he/she is owed.

• The collection agency has taken the songwriter’s Public Performance royalties, split them into two, taken a % of the royalty it does not represent and then has made it impossible for the songwriter to get what’s left over.
• Other entities that have no right to the songwriter’s royalties knowingly take the royalties from the collection agencies.

From the portion of the money JASRAC was legally allowed to collect and arbitrarily assign to the Public Performance royalty, it takes somewhere between 15% – 25% of it as an administrative fee (it is not clear how much as they will not reveal the exact % they take from a particular source) and then about 6 – 12 months later, JASRAC passes it back to ASCAP/BMI/SESAC.

ASCAP/BMI/SESAC then takes an international administrative fee of around 3.7% of what’s given to them and then splits the Public Performance royalty in half, assigning 50% of the money to the songwriter and 50% of the money to the “publisher” (side note: there is no basis in copyright law for this, but it was done to protect songwriters in publishing deals).

ASCAP/BMI/SESAC then pays the songwriter 50% of the leftover Public Performance royalty 6 – 12 months after having gotten it (almost two years after it was generated) and the other 50% gets sent to the publisher; if the songwriter is both the songwriter and publisher, the songwriter receives both payments. If the songwriter is in a publishing deal, the publisher payment goes to the other entity that takes another 10% – 50%. This entity then sits on it for another 3 – 6 months before finally sending the remaining royalty back to the songwriter close to over three years after it was generated.

No one can follow exactly what is going on due to the complexity, lack of transparency and audit trail, and time delays. In the process songwriters’ royalties are either being taken from them or not paid to them in the first place.

It’s one hell of a global copyright shell game that funnels songwriter money into the pockets of everyone but the songwriter.

The RIAA has become part of the problem of protecting copyright due to its occasional less than honest approach to things.  You just can’t take what the RIAA says at face value as their agenda is not clear—is it to protect copyright or is it to protect the interests of its label members at any cost?

After all, this is the same organization that had the RIAA employee Mitch Glazer attempt to sneak language into a bill on Capitol Hill changing the definition of “work for hire,” depriving artists of their rights (there’s a great article about this in the Austin Chronicle).

Now add to this that as the RIAA demands that its label members’ copyrights be respected and properly compensated, its members have knowingly taken hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples’ songwriter royalties over the past few years.  Knowingly taking money generated from the copyrights of others—aka “Black Box Money”—sounds eerily like stealing.

However, if the original SOPA and PIPA bills were passed years ago, TuneCore most likely would not have existed, and power would still be concentrated with the old regime; they would have found a way to slow the market shift away from them. In the guise of “protecting copyright” the original SOPA bill would have provided the RIAA unilateral and almost unchecked power to kill the new emerging industry.

All the RIAA would have had to do is claim that music distributed by TuneCore was infringing on its label members’ copyrights. With limited to no due process, TuneCore could have been shut down just like Dajaz1.

And I can assure you, from time to time TuneCore gets illegitimate and wrongful claims of infringement by the RIAA (and some of its label members).

But for all those that may comment suggesting most are making less, my response is, you've got to be kidding me. These artists, all of them, are outside of the traditional system. Some are earning hundreds of thousands and some are earning $20.

And this is bad because...?

With the music industry democratized more artists are making more money than ever before. All of this money you are seeing is going directly into these artists' pockets; this is money they would have never ever seen before.

Now add the songwriter money on top of this money.

Someone needs to explain to me why an artist earning something vs. nothing is a bad thing, as I truly cannot understand that logic. As far as TuneCore, as I have stated over and over, it's your music that causes it to sell. It's up to you to decide if the services and fees TuneCore charges work for you.

But now, it turns out there's an even more depressing figure: 99.875% - or nearly all - of Tunecore artists are making less than minimum wage through the platform, based on revenue figures recently shared by the company.

And that only counts revenues - not costs for creating content or annual fees owed to Tunecore. It also assumes that Tunecore revenues are being paid to one, solo artist, instead of being divided by a group.

Paul, why do you put down artists for making money? These artists did it on their own, drove every sale, earned every penny without having to give up their copyrights or sacrifice control, something never before possible in the history of the modern music industry. I published the numbers in response to statements claiming artists cannot can sell music without a major label. So why on earth are these tangible, actual results being painted as failures?

The "average income" formula you created may be the most useless, meaningless statistic I've ever seen. Here's an example as to why:

An artist that makes $20 a year in music sales sits alone in a room. Average made per artist = $20. Now an artist that makes $1,000,000 a year enters the same room. Average made per artist = $500,010.

So what did we just prove exactly? Same thing you did; nothing.

The truth is, most artist don't make that much in music sales a month, and we all know it. Most make much less. So what exactly is the point of your article? Are you saying that artists should give it up, as it's a tough business? What exactly is your news story? Drop your guitar and go work at a fast food restaurant?

The "odds" of becoming a household name in music during your lifetime, of becoming a superstar, have always been microscopic, and we all know it. But until recently, every single one of the artists who "made it" and did not "make it" were forced through a system of gatekeepers, opinion-shapers, cultural and business guardians that took their copyrights and took advantage. Are you advocating a return to that system?

It can take years, thousands and thousands of dollars of investment, endless hours of work and sacrifice before something finally gives and the stone wall you've been banging your head against finally cracks. Your pseudo, baseless "analysis" suggests independent artists can't "make it". Bullshit.

Tell them the truth: it's hard, it's going to be tough, most of you won't become a superstar. Here's the information you need to know, here are the options, it's up to you to make it happen. Go into this with eyes wide open. No promises.

So some artists made a "mere $1,280" a month from digital music sales (this is a put down?). Newsflash, many made less, but had they gotten those sales while signed to a traditional record label, they'd have gotten no money and, most likely, six weeks after street date, they would have been dropped. That's the fate of 98% of the acts that came through the majors alone.

80 percent of all records released are just noise -- hobbyists. Some companies like TuneCore are betting on the long tail because they get the same $10 whether you sell one copy or 10,000. Who uses Photobucket and Flickr? Not professional photographers -- those are hobbyists, and those are the people who are using TuneCore and iTunes to clutter the music environment with crap, so that the artists who really are pretty good have more trouble breaking through than they ever did before.

We're sorry that the fact that people are buying music from TuneCore Artists is stopping people from buying music that Tommy likes. If Tommy could only control what music you get exposed to you would be more inclined to buy his music. It's actually a brilliant strategy: limit choice, force the releases you want to sell down people's throats, control what music is exposed by the media outlets (like radio and MTV) and then take all the money from the sales that come in. Oh wait, my mistake, that's the way it was in the old music industry, and 98% of what the majors labels released failed. I guess limiting choice does not make music sell.

Clearly the ease of making and distributing music does not benefit "breaking" music. Breaking music requires mass exposure which requires luck or money or both. I can say with great authority that less new music is breaking now in America than any other time in history. Technology has not helped more great music rise to the top, it has inhibited it. I know this is a bold statement but it is true.