It goes without saying...

“If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.”

- Michael Jackson

REST IN POWER!

Masterbeat and Soundscan

Masterbeat's reporting integration with Soundscan has been completed and we will be an official Soundscan reporting retailer starting this weekend. I know this has been an important item for many label partners and we’re now happy to report that all of our (and your) sales will be contributing to Soundscan sales data (both US and international).

Label Update from Beatport

Here are important notices and updates from the Beatport camp:

"Introducing the Beatport Banner Generator

Beatport has created a new tool to provide graphic assistance for the promotion of your new music. The dynamic banners created by the generator will update automatically with links to your current releases. Here's the URL and easy instructions:http://cl.exct.net/?qs=71394588be9d60e3d6df5b4823b87dceb4c913a96103f8b6 Step 1. Pick whether you'd like to promote releases by Label or by Artist Step 2. Choose one of four color schemes Step 3. Choose from the eleven different banner sizes and get the code to embed to your website, Myspace, Facebook, email signature, or online newsletters.2. Updated Metadata SheetPlease make sure you are using the most updated version of our metadata XLS sheet. You can download it here.

Beatport Staff Changes

In addition to our new COO Matt Adell, we would like to congratulate three of our team members on their new roles within the Content and Marketing departments. Ronny Krieger, previously the Vice President of Content for Beatport has been promoted to Chief Programming Officer. He will relocate from Berlin to Denver July 1, 2009 to fulfill this role. Noura Labbani, previously the Director of Content for Europe, will now lead the Denver and Berlin based content teams as Vice President of Content. Finally, Carsten Kammerer, previously the European Marketing Manager will now fulfill the role of General Manager for the European office in Berlin, acting simultaneously as Head of European Marketing. We're very excited about the energy and direction these three individuals will bring to their new roles, and we look forward to the increased success provided by their leadership.

Positive Trends

We'd like to use the last item of our newsletter to speak about the positive customer-based trends we've seen at Beatport lately. Despite the recent global economic hardships many face, user interest continues to grow in each territory and genre, giving us an optimistic view for the future of dance music. We are sure that electronic music is here to stay, and hope that this continued commitment to our industry is evident in your individual label sales. All the best,The Beatport Team "

Trackitdown Celebrates!

TRACKITDOWN.NET CELEBRATES 5 YEARS WITH A NEW MERCHANDISE AND DJ KIT STORE!

The first dedicated dance download store in Europe comes of age with even more to offer electronic music fans on both sides of the CD decks.

Launching with some of the world’s most popular label brands on board including scene leaders like; Spinnin Records, Lot 49, Virus, Viper, Riot!, Discover, Armada, Dutch Master Works, Soma, Traum and Reinforced Records, Trackitdown.net now carries the worlds most extensive collection of label merchandise anywhere on the planet.

It’s hard to believe how many changes have occurred in the world of music consumption since Trackitdown.net helped start the digital revolution back in 2004. No Facebook, Bebo, Twitter or Myspace existed and the music industry was losing the battle against P2P download websites big time. Since then, Trackitdown.net has helped over 17,000 record labels in all styles of electronic music publish nearly 1 million tracks available to download in the highest quality format for a reasonable price. None of which ever go out of stock!

Fast forward to 2009 and Trackitdown.net has nearly quarter of a million real dance music fans registered as customers and helps to distribute over £1 million back into the industry every year to help producers and labels write and release more great music.

The fifth birthday is the perfect time to launch what is now the third version of the retail store and the Trackitdown.net team are eager for all fans to check out new offerings and features:

On Demand Merchandise department – having soft launched a popular merchandise store at Christmas, the team at Trackitdown.net hunted for great t-shirts and hoodies to sell but found the cupboard bare! The shrinking of record label operations and closure of traditional record stores meant most cool labels could no longer afford to make merchandise to sell despite having masses of fans eager to support.

Trackitdown.net invested in the hardware to manufacture all kinds of merchandise and is proud to partner an incredible range of cult record labels to present their range of clothing to fans all over the world.

With hundreds of other labels waiting to be added to this list, once again Trackitdown.net is helping labels connect with their fans around the world. The store will be updated daily with new labels, clubs, DJs and other brands adding their range to the site.

DJ Equipment – as a trusted source of quality products, Trackitdown.net is now proud to offer a range of the best equipment for DJs, producers and sound systems in the UK.

We stock; Pioneer, Vestax, Rane, Denon, Alesis, Gemini, Citronic, Technics, Sennheiser products for shipment immediately at the best prices online.

With our massive range of sample packs and pre-sets created exclusively by some of the biggest producers in the world it’s now possible to buy the software, download the samples, make the tune, sell it and then play it on equipment all through Trackitdown.net.

We wonder what the next five years will bring, but rest assured, Trackitdown.net will be there at the front of the pack with new innovation to help keep dance music kicking!

www.trackitdown.net

For more information contact; Ed Jenkins / ed@trackitdown.net

Where U @? DETROIT!!!

So if you tried to call or email us anytime since last Thursday, you probably got a whole lotta nothing in return. That's because we were having a little GrooveMedia Group gangster party. Now we're back, feet sore and hearts heavy with love for our spiritual homeland. Jesse from MSTRKRFT once compared Chicago to Jerusalem where house was concerned. We'd like to extend that analogy to Detroit and techno. It goes beyond great shows and amazing crowds. It's deeper. Detroit is STILL magic and still very much alive. Don't believe the hype. GIVE THEM YOUR DOLLARS!! Now...is it May 2010 yet???? TICK TOCK!

Accounting Season Alert!

Hey guys! We just wanted to give both the labels and the stores a reminder that accounting season is again upon us. So, STORES: If you haven't made payment or delivered a report yet, we need you to go ahead and take care of both right away. LABELS: Please be patient. Your reports are coming at the end of this month. Thanks!

GrooveMedia Group

Diplo on Rob Threezy via Twitter

I love that we are getting Twitter sourced feedback on releases from the labels:

(From this week's release notes on the new Nightshifters release)

"Diplo:diplo Rob3 smashing this party in chicago right now3:39 AM May 10th from TwitterBerry diplo @sparkeltone Rob3 melted faces-Then Diplo melted the muscles and skulls behind those faces. Now the remains of them skulls are being juked"

Adspots Now Tagged by Label

Breaking News: Adpsots are now tagged by label so that our clients can simply click their imprints name in in the label sidebar and see adspot coverage that we have collected. These ads in no way represent the total number of ads that we've secured on behalf of the labels, but there is some nice stuff in there. Enjoy!

Rip Block Anti-Piracy Service

Hey folks,
This came through the tubes that make up the internet today via AudioJelly. Looks pretty cool. Might be worth investigating since so many labels of ours have been complaining of Russian download sites having their material available.

RIPBLOCK – TACKLING PIRACY


RipBlock are a new anti-piracy service that could be beneficial to your release sales.

RipBlock is currently working with a rapidly growing number of labels, and has proved to be an efficient, cost-effective and valuable service.

RipBlock essentially tackles piracy from the root of the problem, by conducting ongoing comprehensive scans of any blogs, forums and/or file share sites that are hosting or providing links to illegal downloads of your release.

RipBlock’s service includes:
• Scanning the web for your release
• Reporting any illegal content for removal
• Compiling a full report every two weeks, detailing all removed content and all offending usernames
A standard scan lasts for two weeks and costs from £50 / 53 euro / $78 per release.

In addition, Ripblock offers extended scanning tailored to your label’s requirements.

RipBlock’s clients include: Skint, Vandit, Cocoon, Border Community, Rekids, Bpitch Control, Discover, Baroque, Spiral Trax, Boxer, Soniculture, Enhanced Recordings, Kill The Lights, and many more.

For further info visit www.ripblock.com, or contact info@ripblock.com.


Carl Wicker
RipBlock Anti Music Piracy

Accounting Reminder for All Stores and Labels

Hey labels and stores: As a reminder q4 accounting has officially come to a close and we are or should be processing your accounting with us (receivable or payable). Here's what this means...

If you're a store: you should have sent your statement and/or payment by now. If you haven't, then please do so.

If you're a label: Your statements will reach you on the 1st of March. If we are able to get them out sooner, we will. That timetable will depend on the stores. Please be patient.

Update from Beatport on Mechanicals

"Your labels Q4 statements are now available on Baseware. These statement show deductions for the performing rights societies. The information below outlines how and why these royalties are withheld.

Laws and regulations dictated by the performance and mechanical rights societies ("PROs") outside of the United States require that payment for music publishing royalties on downloads be facilitated by the download site.

Up until this time, Beatport has based its handling of music publishing royalties on the laws in the US which allowed payment of music publishing royalties to the record labels and the labels were then to pay the proper music publishers. As Beatport has grown, especially outside the US, Beatport has been required to comply with the systems used in other countries where track downloads are sold.

Having the Labels manage these payments is not acceptable to the PROs.

These payments will be directed to the PRO in the country into which the download was sold. So, for a customer in France, Beatport will direct payment to the French PRO SACEM, for a customer in England, the payment will be directed to the English PRO (MCPS/PRS Alliance) and for a customer in Australia, the payment will be directed to the Australian PRO (AMCOS/APRA) and so on in respect of each country where sales are made.

How does Beatport report to the PROs?

Beatport will submit a list of all sales for a given territory to the appropriate PROs. The PROs will review the list to check which tracks are controlled by members of any PRO and submit an invoice back to Beatport.

If the writer of the track is not a member of any PRO and if the writer has not signed a publishing contract with any music publisher who is a PRO member, then the PRO reviewing the sales information cannot make a claim for the publishing royalties. For such sales, Beatport will pay those monies to the Label controlling that master and it is the Label's responsibility to pay the writers.

How will Beatport report to the labels?

Every quarter, Beatport will withhold a flat 10% of revenues for sales in all territories affected by the PRO's requirements outside of the United States. Beatport will report back actual claims made by the PROs on reported revenues from previous quarters. Any differences between the 10% withheld and the actual fee and volume of sales charged will be either refunded or charged to the label.

For the upcoming payout of label commissions for Q4 2008 at the end of January 2009, Beatport will withhold 10% of sales for Q4 2008. With the payout of Q1 2009 at the end of April 2009, Beatport will be withholding 10% of sales for all territories affected by the PRO's requirements for Q1 2009 and retroactively for Q3 2008. From Q2 2009 onwards, 10% of all sales per quarter will be withheld.

Data to Appear in Baseware

To assist Labels in monitoring these deductions, Baseware will be updated so that the quarterly statements will now have another column that displays the amount deducted for mechanicals. The quarterly statements show every track sold on an individual track basis, so Labels will be able to see how much is deducted for mechanicals for each individual track sold.

Please email your label representative with any questions

Thanks,
Beatport"

FYI: We are now getting in statements from stores and will be processing them over the next 30 days. You will receive your aggregated GrooveSource statements at the end of this month.

Christmas Break Delays

Dear Labels,

Lots of stores are understaffed [drunk in a gutter] for the duration of the holidays and as a result, we anticipate sparse and sporadic content related issues all the way through the middle of January. We have worked as far in advance as possible to preclude any problems related to live dates and minimize other issues [wanton alcoholism] related to the holidays. We believe that we have cut most of the delays off with planning, but a stray few issues may slip through with store staff being unavailable [unconscious] to make late changes or fixes to deliveries.

Thanks in advance for your patience [resentment] and good holiday spirits [drunkenness] with regard to this issue.

Everyone have a great and safe holiday!

Marea

Suspending Dancerecords.com

Hey guys. We are suspending our relationship with Dancerecords.com. We have issued a takedown of all material from their store until further notice. We hope we will be able to resume sales with them in the future and are working hard to do so. We'll keep you in the loop when we get some more information.

New Info on Mechanicals, Pricing and more from Beatport

"Dear Label Partners,

In January, Beatport will celebrate its five year anniversary. Along with our business planning for 2009, Beatport is announcing some enhancements to our business that better reflect the needs of both our label partners as well as our loyal customers. These changes are in response to the issues brought to us by our labels partners and customers over the past few weeks.
Changes for Labels:

Mechanical Royalties: In the past weeks Beatport has heard concerns raised by our labels about music publishing monies. These labels were concerned that Beatport would seek repayment from them as Beatport itself has been forced to make retroactive payments by the music publishing rights societies on downloads made since Beatport.com was launched. In response to these concerns and in the spirit of unity and a sign of good faith, Beatport is announcing that it will relieve our label partners from all mechanical royalty back-payment liabilities prior to Q3 2008 for the territory of the world excluding the United States. For all labels, this represents an average bonus of about 10% of the total sales price generated by track downloads. Even though the legal responsibilities have always been clearly defined in our existing contracts, we understand that the practical impact of potential back payment liabilities would be time consuming and chaotic for many labels.
Commencing with the period Q3 2008, for sales throughout the world, excluding the US, Beatport will deduct the music publishing royalties payable on downloads from all labels and remit it to the applicable music publishing rights collection society. For sales within the US, Labels will still be responsible for paying all music publishing royalties to the appropriate parties as is contemplated in the Beatport content contract.
Standard Label Agreements: As an additional concession towards our label partners, Beatport has decided to dispose of the allowable expenses charge starting Q2 of 2009. These changes will be stated in a new agreement, which will need to be signed by all label partners prior to that start of Q2 of 2009 in order for this change to be effective.
Exclusive Label Agreements: For our exclusive label partners, we will be offering a more flexible time frame for the sale of exclusive content on Beatport. As with the Standard Label Agreement, the Exclusive Label Agreement will also have any provision for allowable expenses removed and the current higher split of Net Revenues shall remain in place regardless of the agreed exclusivity time frames. Further details will be announced in the coming weeks.
Changes for Customers:

New Pricing: In an effort to stay ahead of the changing global economy, Beatport is making proactive adjustments to its content pricing strategy in the European and UK markets. The new prices are a reflection of the rapidly changing digital environment and the greater economic challenges our customers are facing. Effective Wednesday December 03, 2008, prices will be as follows:
Exclusive Classic / New Release General
USD $2.49 $1.99 $1.49
GBP £1.73 £1.30 £1.12
EUR €2.17 €1.56 €1.30

Lastly, while there may be tough economic conditions worldwide, Beatport will continue to defend the value of your music against market forces that benefit from discounting or stealing your content. Beatport is continuously monitoring unusual shopping behavior, blacklisting customers who purchase to upload music for free downloads and processing take down notices with music blog sites worldwide on a weekly basis.
As always, we are grateful for your partnership and continued support in our efforts to support electronic music around the world.
Beatport Management "

Update on DJ Download ISP Issues

Hey guys,
As many of you know, DJ Download has just moved offices. This morning we were informed that they are experiencing some unfortunate connection issues. They have been kind enough to set up a temporary delivery option, which will allow us to deliver all the content we have on deck, with the same release dates, in advance of the time we would normally deliver it. We're not sure how this outage will affect us with the coming holiday schedule that we were informed about earlier this week though. Hopefully their ISP will pull it together fast enough for us to get one or 2 other deliveries in before the break, but we're trying to prepare for any outcome.

Good luck Team DjDownload! We certainly understand what it's like to work with a difficult provider! Soldier on!


Here is their message to us:

"We are experiencing some problems with our new office internet connection which is causing delays for labels uploading content.

I have set up a temporary account on the server which has a large connection- we will be taking this server offline on Monday morning (17th Nov), so please can you deliver as much content as possible by then to this address and we’ll start processing it on Monday

Sorry for the late notice, we’ve been messed around by out telecoms provider and I wanted to be sure that we get your content for the next few weeks sorted out."

DJ Download winter schedule

Labels, please liaise with the staff at labels@groovemediagroup.com to see how this will impact your release schedules for the coming 2 months.

From DJ Download:

Another year has flown by... We would just like to say thank you for all the support in the past 12 months. We have some great stuff coming up in 2009 including a new label reporting system.

Product Deliveries for Dec/ Jan
We will be working over the December period but will only be operating a skeleton staff.

Please can you ensure you deliver all products with a release date between December 10 and January 10 to us before the 30th of November to ensure we have them on the site for what is always our busiest period.


We hope you have a great December and a top New Years! - the djdownload.com team

DON'T FORGET!

NUFF SAID!

ALERT: A few stores experiencing slight delay...

Alert: We have a few stores running just a little late on ingestion. Currently: Wasabeat, What People Play, Stompy, DJTunes and DanceRecords are running more than a week behind on ingestion. There are no underlying technical issues causing these delays. These are just garden variety data clogs and the stores are backlogged trying to get all the great content up and running.

We will let you know when they get back up to speed. But for now, please be patient as we wait along with you for your content to go live.

Thanks
GMG

Slight Delay for Beatport Releases Going Live Today (10/21)

This should be rectified shortly, but we've had a handful of releases, 5 or so, that are going to be delayed by a few hours going live on Beatport. The issue is being fixed now and full service will be restored this evening.

Thanks for your patience!

GMG

A Statement from Beatport on Witheld Mechanical and Performance Royalties

We will keep you posted on how this specifically affects GrooveSource artists. Right now we anticipate no change in terms of the way your statement works, as all this takes place prior to reaching us. But we'll let you know how it all plays out.

Thanks,
Team Groove

"Dear Labels, Artists, and Songwriters

Under the threat of litigation from various European music publishing rights
organizations (PRO’s), Beatport must begin to withhold mechanical and performance
royalties from the payments made to Labels and make those payments directly to the
PROs. These withholdings will begin on Beatport’s next quarterly payout Q4 2008 in
connection with sales made in Q3 2008 on Beatport.com. The amount withheld from the
labels next payout will be determined by:

1) The territory in which a track was purchased, and
2) The percentage of the sales price that the particular PRO charges in connections
with sales into that territory

These music publishing royalties will be held in escrow until the appropriate PRO’s have determined which songwriters and tracks are represented by them. Even if you are not a member of a PRO, the PRO must audit the sales data and determine based on their database which songwriters are members of their societies.

We anticipate this initial audit with the various PROs to take roughly two quarters. Once the PRO’s have determined which songwriters they represent, Beatport will payout in one of two ways:

1) For tracks cleared of any society involvement, Beatport will release the full
amount of the funds to the labels, in their next quarterly payment, as usual.
2) For tracks where the PROs have claimed songwriter representation, the funds will
be released to your PRO immediately upon notification. To determine when you
(the songwriter or music publisher) will receive your portion of the payment you
will need to contact your PRO directly (typically 12 to 18 months).

Any payments made to the PRO’s will be fully documented within Baseware. If a label or songwriter disagrees with a PRO’s songwriter claim, they will need to address this directly with the PRO in question. Beatport is in no way affiliated with any of these PROs and cannot negotiate on your behalf.

Moving forward, Beatport will be extremely proactive to capture publisher and
songwriter information when the tracks are delivered to Beatport. This will let Beatport better serve our label partners and the PRO’s to make sure that the music publishing royalties get back to the proper songwriters and music publishers. Additionally, once these initial audits are complete, retrieving additional information on track delivery should let us move towards releasing funds to non-PRO songwriters in a much more timely manner.

Also, please note that the end result of these payments to the PROs is that with respect to the tracks and the sales into those countries where Beatport has paid the PRO, the Labels will not be required to pay the music publishers and songwriters as Labels have been required to do in the past.

This message is a public announcement, so please forward this to all your songwriters/artists so they are aware of Beatport’s plan to comply with the PRO’s requests.

For more information on PROs and societies, please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_rights_organisation"