In order to distribute a digital master of a song, acaTunes needs two different licenses.

As an acaTunes client, you will provide to us a Master Use License to any recordings you want us to sell for you. We'll take your word for it that you are in fact the artist who recorded the work, or are someone with authority to let us sell it for you (actually you'll assert and warrant that this is the case in the Agreement you sign with us).

But if any of your recordings are cover songs (songs written and originally released by someone else), we also need permission from the songwriter or publisher of each cover song, in the form of a DPD License (Digital Phonorecord Deliveries).

Most artists who have released an album have gone through the process of obtaining a Mechanical License (required for printed albums). The vast majority of licenses are available through the Harry Fox Agency (www.harryfox.com), which represents approximately 28,000 publishers.

But what even veteran artists may not know is, even if you have the licenses necessary to produce physical CDs of your recordings of cover songs (and we sure hope you do!), you aren't licensed to sell digital recordings of those songs. You need separate licenses to do that. Surprise!

The good news: the process is the same for digital tracks as for CDs. The bad news: without going through acaTunes, you have to pay up front, just like when you made your CD. To license a ten song album will cost you a minimum of $237 up front. And nearly every distributor will require you to have these licenses before they'll even touch your tracks. Not acaTunes!

acaTunes to the rescue!

acaTunes has entered into a bulk licensing agreement with Harry Fox, which allows us to acquire DPD licenses for no up front cost or service charges.

What does this mean for you? It means you don't have to get the DPD licenses; we'll do it for you! We'll note every sale of each of your tracks, deduct from your sales income the amount owed in royalties, and pay Harry Fox for you.

We aren't charging for this service; you pay no more than the standard statutory royalty rates(http://www.harryfox.com/public/licenseeRateCurrent.jsp), typically 9.1 cents per download. In fact, you'll pay less than you would if you had obtained the licenses yourself, because you'd pay a $10 processing fee for the minimum 150 up front licenses, or an extra 6.66 cents per download.

We're offering this service to make it easier for you, the artist, to focus your time on recording more music instead of worrying about the business details. We hope this means we can make more recordings available faster, meaning more sales for you and for us.

The big exception - Non-Harry Fox Publishers

Every great deal has to have an exception. It turns out that every so often a DPD license isn't available through Harry Fox. Instead, you have to go directly to the publisher (or publishers) and negotiate with them to obtain the license. Ultimately if you agree to pay the statutory rates they cannot turn you down, but the process can be time-consuming.

Unfortunately, acaTunes cannot provide licensing for songs not represented by Harry Fox. For a single artist, getting licenses for one or two songs from the publishers is time-consuming, but manageable. For acaTunes to do this for hundreds of artists and thousands of songs is time and cost-prohibitive.

In these cases we must do what most distributors do, which is require you to obtain and pay for these licenses. If you've obtained licenses from these publishers for the release of a physical CD, the process should be pretty much the same as the first time. If you haven't, you can find information about finding publishers and DPD licensing of songs through BMI (www.bmi.com), ASCAP (www.ascap.com), and SESAC (www.sesac.com), and through the US Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov/carp).

Once you've acquired the DPD license for these songs, forward a copy to us and we'll (finally) be able to sell these tracks for you.

It's a shame to even suggest making an artistic decision like choosing cover songs to sing based on whether or not Harry Fox represents the song 100%. But if you want to make it easy on yourself when it comes time to try and make money selling the track...well, we'll leave the decision up to you. If you're wondering whether Harry Fox represents 100% of a song, you can search their online database at www.songfile.com.

Existing Licenses

You may already have acquired and paid for licenses for Digital Downloads for some or all of your songs, in which case you might as well use them. Just let us know you want to be responsible for your own licensing, and we'll make a note of it for each track in our database, as appropriate. After you've sold 150 units of a track and/or run out of licenses, you can either renew your own license and continue to pay for them yourself, or ask us to obtain a license and handle it for you from then on.

License Exclusivity

We need to point out that the licenses we provide to our clients are only for sales conducted through acaTunes. Our agreement is non-exclusive insofar as your right to distribute your digital tracks is concerned, but naturally we're not interested in subsidizing our competitor's business. Besides, we have no way of tracking or verifying sales that we do not control.

What this means, of course, is that if you want to sell your digital tracks through someone else, they will need to get their own licenses, or more likely they will require that you get them.

Hmmm...maybe you should reconsider distributing your tracks elsewhere, after all...

If you have any questions about any of this, we want to know about it, so please contact us.