It bears repeating that there are two different licenses associated with online sale or distribution of digital media, DPD Licensing and Master Use Rights.

DPD Licensing is the one people think of first (when they think about licensing at all). DPD (Digital Permanent Download) is the virtual version of the mechanical license commonly found in meatspace.

When you record a song written by someone else, you need their permission in order to sell it. The compulsory license allows you to obtain permission automatically, in exchange for agreeing to pay a statutory fee for every copy of the song you sell. acaTunes, of course, provides a licensing service through special agreement with the Harry Fox Agency, making it easy to acquire DPD licenses for the large majority of cover songs.

Master Use Rights are those not associated with the original writing of the song, but of the actual recording itself; the 1's and 0's that, played in proper sequence over a music player, produce the sounds originally sung into a microphone and mixed, edited, and mastered into a final track for the listening pleasure of fans everywhere.

These Master Use Rights originate with the artists. If an album is part of a record deal, these rights might end up with the label or a publisher, but for most college and high school groups, the right remains with the group.

The key point about Master Use Rights is that, unlike mechanical or DPD rights, there is no compulsory license provision. In other words, no one can use your recordings without your permission!

You know those "Hits of the 70's (or 80's, 90's, etc)" compilations advertised on late-night television? For each and every song included, the publishers of the compilation had to go out, find the group, person, or label that controlled or represented the Master Use Rights of that song, and get permission to use it.

And here's the punch line: even if your group has given permission for someone to put your song on a physical compilation CD, you still retain authority over the Master Use Rights to distribute that song digitally. In fact, if someone is selling digital downloads of your recording without your permission, they are in violation of copyright law, and are effectively stealing income from you.

You are free, of course, to permit someone to sell your mp3s, at whatever rate and for whatever cut you can negotiate. But if you don't like the terms of the deal, you can take your mp3s and go home; it's not compulsory. Like the Hits

And even if you do decide to give permission, you should be compensated for sales of your mp3. I believe that groups' rights should be respected, and their work properly compensated. That's why you'll often see tracks on acaTunes that aren't actually for sale. Either we haven't yet obtained a DPD license for the song, or the artist hasn't granted us the Master Use Rights. We can still play short clips for educational purposes under Fair Use (as acaTunes serves both as a commerce site and as a growing Archive of a cappella information), but we'll never sell a track for which we do not have permission.

...so I started selling CDs over the Internet almost exactly nine years ago, with my company Virtual Voices. My very first client was Sean Altman, and our very first sale was a copy of his album seanDEMOnium, the order placed on Halloween Day, 1997.

It's already hard to remember (or to imagine if you've been active online less than a decade), that back in those days a band had to actively teach its audience that there was something called The Internet, and that it had your web site on it.

It also took a fair amount of effort, tech savvy, and money to start an online business, set up a web site with a shopping cart, convince a bank to give you a merchant account etc etc, all in order to sell CDs online. I was singing with Five O'Clock Shadow at the time, and once I realized how expensive it would be to set up online sales for FOCS, I decided to open it up to other groups as well, and Virtual Voices was born.

Fast-forward nine years and the Internet is a very different place. It is now easier than ever to find online content and have it delivered right to your hard drive, and many people consider CDs (and the catalogs that sell them) to be nothing more than relics of an earlier century.

The a cappella community has changed greatly in the past nine years as well. Collegiate a cappella has exploded, with high school a cappella rapidly following in its wake. Three years ago the nations first and largest high school contest series, NCHSA, was formed, and is now launching a new collegiate contest series. The advent of ever-cheaper, ever-easier digital recording equipment has led to hundreds of new albums being released every year.

And just a few months ago, I teamed up with Freddie Feldman and his studio VOCOMOTION to bring Virtual Voices into the 21st Century. Together we developed and launched this new site, acaTunes, a single-source for direct online downloads of a cappella music.

Welcome. Join us as we take conventional wisdom and give it a good shaking up. Get ready to rethink the way you think about a cappella.