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@@RichardMasonOfficial that's mostly a collab app/an easy way to keep your files/lyrics in one place. I'm currently writing an anti-Zionist song using it and they haven't given me a hassle with any of it so I don't think they track what you do and seems generally ok.
@@cloudbloodmusic I was referring to the aspects of the service regarding how it allows songwriters to do song splits, licensing, royalties and credits. Tunecore and other distributors are joining it. I read some of the Terms of Service and found some really shady stuff in there. Getting her thoughts from a legal perspective will be helpful.
It's an incredible service you're providing here by stepping through these agreements - as you pointed out: "the only music industry contracts you can't negotiate".
This kinda click bait, you had me scared for a second, but after watching I was like oh this is all pretty standard stuff but overall Im glad I watched! All good information, and its nice to know you've got artists back and that there is a YT page dedicated to us! Def Subscribing and looking out for more!
@@TopMusicAttorney No, we greatly appreciate you! I use artificial intelligence to create my own music. Just watched the lawsuit video against Suno (which I use). but I use it to create the instrumental songs/ soundtracks, then I take the stems I have from each song I created using suno ai and then I input them into my recording software, tweak it, edit it, and turn it into my very own music. I therefore, did not go against any such copyrights, nor did I steal anything from anyone. Therefore, I have my own music. Right?
The Record Labels, and Record Companies are just jealous trash lol . I'm also a professional stagehand as well. I have seen and learned some things from working backstage. The politics that arise from backstage are absolute trash. LOL
@@BLACKF1R3OFFICIAL you essentially remixed or maybe reworked AI's tune. it's still art but imho not as much as if you work some midi of your own, just practice it :)
You may already have done this, but a step by step video on 'How to not get f*cked' when releasing your art would be great. At least the 'essentials' as you see them, maybe? So many people (and i was almost one of them before i saw a lot of your videos) finish their music and just sign up to Distrokid or similar because "that's what everyone says to do". But then there are so many other factors and conflicting advice (are you signed up to performing rights, this royalty management agency or that artist registration agency, etc, etc, etc...). It's all so opaque and impossible to understand unless you have the time to become a lawyer yourself, but i've spent a hell of a long time improving my skills as a musician, i don't have enough time left in my life to become an expert on the legalities too. Thank you so much for helping guide us, but yeah, a step by step of some kind would be really helpful! Thank you!
Make it free and post it everywhere it cannot be taken down. The people who like and resonate with it will find you by a different means. Art is a spiritual channel and not a product. So does not need to advertised or treated as such. Because it's a calling above the system that only looks to feed upon the artists to generate revenue that if they can will not share with you the creator. And will demonize anyone who speaks upon the evil practices necessary for 'their' business to exist.
@@holdenhurdle8831 While I wholly agree with the sentiment, the fundamental issue is that people like doing what they love for a living. You cannot do that by making it free and not advertising it. While yeah, art isn't a product, I like to eat food and have a roof over my head. I also love making music more than anything else. Getting to provide for myself WITH music seems great. Capitalism inherently disallows this.
@@holdenhurdle8831 that’s a nice thought, but my (and probably a lot of people’s here) dream is to make a living off music, and that means not giving everything for free. Artists should be paid for their work, whenever possible, and that is tragically limited as it is. We deserve to feed ourselves for producing something of value like everyone else. Both aside from that, and in service of trying to become stabilised in our genres for that goal, it would be bizarre to not put it on popular platforms such as Spotify and in my case beatport and so on. I respect a positive attitude but this is not very realistic for those who want to make art all day and have enough money to live.
Thanks for going through it for all of us, very insightful! It would be cool to see a comparison between the different distributor's contracts so us artists could make more informed choices about which one to choose...
I’ve tried CD Baby and now Distro Kid. DK seems a little easier to manage. I paid a lifetime fee to be able to manage my own IRSC codes. Also signed up with BMI for years…looks like the6 are going down?
As a full time musician/teacher who briefly considered law school (my Dad was a judge for about 25 years) I must say, I love your videos. This is all good and VERY important information that most people don't care enough about. Musicians are notoriously bad at keeping their money, and making sure their business is legally sound. Most don't even look at it as a business, most want to become a part of someone ELSE'S business (getting signed.) And they take like 10% sometimes even less. So on behalf of all the musicians I know, THANK YOU!
Another way DistroKid "earns" money is to sign people up, reject their releases, then pocket the sign up fee. Even if this happens to a small % of customers, that's potentially millions of dollars. When DistroKid rejects a release, they'll claim it was actually the DSPs that rejected the material due to editorial discretion, and that there's absolutely nothing they can do. People quickly discover on Reddit that the solution is to simply try with another distributor, and they should be fine. Which indicates that the problem was with Distrokid's automated screening service, not the artists' material nor the DSPs, as they claim. Claims that are impossible to dispute: they literally tell their customers to not dispute them, whilst depriving them of any information whatsoever as to what was allegedly wrong with their release, or which DSPs allegedly had the problem.
@@TopMusicAttorney Yes. I should add that while the rejection (and permanent ban) happened to me as new customer, all of their customers run this same risk. Just google the phrase "releases has been rejected due to editorial discretion" for the horror stories.
@@mapofthecat Show me your music that was rejected. I have seen everything online and there are _zero_ "horror stories". They're all user error or fraud.
> Another way DistroKid "earns" money is to sign people up, reject their releases, then pocket the sign up fee. Even if this happens to a small % of customers, that's potentially millions of dollars. Doesn't sound like something a company would do, even for the profit. They could post the releases and keep receiving the annual feeds for distributing them. Why would they forfeit all that money (and the money from you giving them also your future releases) just to pocket the sign up fee? Instead I believe that if this happened to someone, the DSPs actually DID rejected the material... It's either your lyrics, images, accusations of some copyright issues for the music, or something like that.
@@foljs5858 NOT TRUE BECAUSE THEY PAYED ME10 K N STLL PAY ON THAT ACCOUNT TOO , I MADE A NEW ACCOUNT FOR NEW RELEASES AND CONTINUE TO PAY 30 A YEAR TO KEEP GETTING ROYALTIES I JUST CANT POST MUSIC ON THAT CHANNELBECAUSE I POSTED A UNLISCENSED COVER ITS SIMPLE LETS STOP PLAYING VICTIM
This video is super clutch, and I'm deeply appreciative to you for making it, as I'm a broke-ass artist looking to begin distributing tunes that are just chillin' on my hard drive.
yup, that happened to us, 50+ albums removed overnight, no heads up, no warning, no email, nothing, gone overnight, claiming "fraud" on our part, whatever that means right, or that some stores do not want to distribute our music. Of course, I uploaded the music to a new service and no store issues. I wish I would have found your channel 8 years ago, never saw any back royalties owed to us. Just awful company. Thank you SO much for what you are offering to the artist community! 🙏 you have some good harvest karma coming your way!🔥
Distrokid, for years, insisted that I’d never had a sale or radio play. I was there when people bought digital albums, & I had a bunch of radio play on a radio show that I hosted. But nope, not a single sale, not a single radio play, according to them. I told them to take down my music, they asked why, I said “because you’re a scam artist”, & their response was essentially ‘yep, that’s fair’ & they refunded the last payment they’d taken & took my stuff down
dk took our 350+ dollars streaming money out of our bank-that was for two years worth of streams-they did not send us an e-mail to tell us.they also greyed out two thirds of our music on spotify etc - dk said it was spotify and spotify said it was dk -welcome to the music business - lol
we never signed off the June 2021 t.o.s update. suddenly they wanted hundreds of dollars. we cancelled everything instantly. it was an old catalogue anyway, a singer songwriter no longer active -
We can't, so the solution is to go directly to CONSUMERS! Sell your music on your own website, and cut out the middle men! Glad you can be here. I'm live here every Wednesday at 5pm PST if you want to come say hi!
Very kind of you to walk us through this contract. I appreciate the detailed depth of information you have given. One thing about cover songs and DK. It was indicated to me by them that even though I had a license from Easy Song for the cover song my project released, I still have to pay the $12 yearly fee for them to distribute that song. The reason seemed to be because they themselves did not wish to go through the trouble of verifying every cover song license from every one of the artists using their platform.
I just put my main band's first album out via DistroKid, I'm watching this and saving the video in case any problems arise due to their TOS and/or contracts. All of the nonsense going on with streaming lately is a perfect example of why and how physical copies of albums and movies will always be relevant and necessary for making any lasting impact, creatively speaking.
I've started to make my own website to promote my music and mechanise etc so if they go and do something I don't like I can just sell it directly from the website as that's all I will be promoting going forward and I can also monitor every vist and where they are watching from also its the way forward
@@TopMusicAttorney I’m also considering going back to college to study either pre-law or engineering. If I go the law school route I’m planning to focus on civil rights issues (specifically guarding against violations of the Bill of Rights). Your channel is helpful because it applies law concepts to something that I understand.
Most people don't realise that a contract is a legal document that is agreed upon... why are we signing contracts that we can not add amendments to before signing... A contract is meant to serve both parties...
It's not a contract. Just because these corporations have managed to use their money and power to get precedent for a time does not make a digital checkmark become a contract. It's just who can afford the better attorney
Thank you for pointing out the importance of the IRC #. I was worried about losing all the views and plays if I take it down and move distributors. Thanks so much!
distrokid claims that i've been acting “suspiciously” (i think due to my music becoming popular) and because of this i can't get my revenue from songs i made. i wish that distributors allowed artists to get money directed to their accounts instead of to the distributors first…
Thank you lovely top music attorney for your video. Very educational,and I appreciate you point aspects of the agreements out to artists who sometimes forget or haven't read it all.
As always my bro... a record label I been doing this for years EVERY1 AROUND THE WORLD is fooled by this fake computer industry... its still about the labels and yes u must pay them 1st and have everything ready for them... i deal with relaps records... what kind of mudic u do... theyr more like grindcore deathmetal punk hardcore... I do other projects with people too but with tjose genres relapse rec. Is my people :) Iv played with Deicide sufgocation canibal corps all the big guys... not showing off, trying to help 1 love Let me know if u do any of them genres
On your point regarding covers, you don't need ANY license at all if your songs are only on streaming platforms. That mechanical license is for downloads. Spotify and other streaming platforms already pay the necessary license fees, so Distrokid's model is outrageous. I think RouteNote allows you to only distribute to streaming platforms so you don't pay a fee, but most don't allow this and just charge for the license regardless.
When it comes down to someone claiming you stole their music. That can be easily protected and disputed. And here's how. When you make your tracks. Always Keep your tracks up dated. From beginning to end. And if the claimers produced track date. Is after your produced track date. Well who stole whose music. This is why the produced track date is always important. You can also protect yourself with your own added track ID number and date. Then email this information back to yourself. Began date and product completion date. So once again you now have your track produce date. And the two most important things not to do before doing this is. One. Not to share this information with any one. And two. Make sure not to put your tracks out there before doing this first.
Really interesting information! I’m a musician, DJ, starving artist myself and I’m so glad I ran into your video, I have so many questions and I’ll look to see if any of them are answered, wow thank you so much because this really opens one’s eyes to what you sign and don’t know.
@@TopMusicAttorney I will definitely work on catching a live, I’m in Eastern time zone and today I have a gig. Looking forward to understanding more, thank you for the videos!
I recently graduated from Harvard Law. I will soon be uploading a video about how unbelievable shady this “company”’s practices are. As a fellow lawyer and musician, thank you so much for this video.
This is great information, not only about Distro Kid but other legal issues that should be addressed, so thank you for sharing! Looking forward to seeing more videos from your channel! ❤
I used to use Distrikid. I now use Amuse. Also there is CD Baby, and Soundcloud has distribution now as well. Not saying any are better than the others though.
Find the time to do it yourself or pay a trusted friend who isn’t doing anything or much to distribute yourself… it’s literally the only way you’ll be safe 🙌
Well put Krystle! I’ve been trying to tell my affiliates, artists and co-writers the same thing for over a decade. It is a whole new landscape with streaming and digital distribution. IP, copywriting and royalty structure have completely changed and quite frankly I’m burnt out on the music industry. I will continue to develop artists because I love music and enjoy working with musicians but the money making days are over unless you get into licensing and rep yourself.
@@CommentbycommenterI am still taking on new musicians. Most of what I invest my time in these days are pet projects or artists whom I truly love their music. I recently just finished producing an EP for an artist and am developing/mentoring another. However, most of my focus these days is cowriting/producing one offs to license for film/tv. I have worked more in the film industry for the past decade than the music industry but I’ve been with ASCAP for over 20 years. Please feel free to contact me through my channel.
@@Commentbycommenter I am still taking on new musicians. Most of what I dedicate my time to these days are either pet projects or artists whom I personally love their music. I have personally sought out most of the artists I’ve worked with lately however I have been approached by a few. If I have the time, we have goals that align and the project feels right I’m open. I’ve recently just finished producing one artist and am currently developing/mentoring another. My main focus these days has been co-writing/producing one offs to license for film/tv. I’ve worked more in the film industry these days than the music industry, though I’ve been with ASCAP for over 20 years. Feel free to contact me through my channel.
@@Commentbycommenter I am still taking on new musicians. Most of what I dedicate my time to these days are either pet projects or artists whom I personally love their music. I have personally sought out most of the artists I’ve worked with lately however I have been approached by a few. If I have the time, we have goals that align and the project feels right I’m open. I’ve recently just finished producing one artist and am currently developing/mentoring another. My main focus these days has been co-writing/producing one offs to license for film/tv. I’ve worked more in the film industry these days than the music industry, though I’ve been with ASCAP for over 20 years. Feel free to contact me through my channel.
@@Commentbycommenter I am still taking on new musicians. Most of what I dedicate my time to these days are either pet projects or artists whom I personally love their music. I have personally sought out most of the artists I’ve worked with lately however I have been approached by a few. If I have the time, we have goals that align and the project feels right I’m open. I’ve recently just finished producing one artist and am currently developing/mentoring another. My main focus these days has been co-writing/producing one offs to license for film/tv. I’ve worked more in the film industry these days than the music industry, though I’ve been with ASCAP for over 20 years. Feel free to contact me through my channel.
Question: for a while now I’ve been uploading videos to RU-vid of me doing live improv on a modular synth. Over the last couple of months my channel has taken off, and I’ve started earning a bit of cash via RU-vid (I’m not signed up to a distributor or anything like that). A couple of days ago someone lifted the audio from one of my tracks, stuck a scream sample over the top, and released it as the opening track on their new album. Distrokid has laid claim to my video, sending my YT income to this “artist” instead of me. I’ve filed a dmca against the track (only thing I can do really). What’s the best approach to preventing this happening in the future? As a kind of follow on from that, sometimes I record entire live sets, which can be an hour or more. I want those sets to be available on YT without any ads in the middle, but as I understand it, a distributor would force ads into my YT videos if I was to upload them to a distributor? I don’t suppose you’d have any advice for someone who is totally new to all of this stuff? (I’m probably going to be watching a lot of your videos today, if you have any videos you think I should check out first, that would be amazing!) Thanks! (Great video by the way!)
I would LOVE to see a video like this going over the ToS for Ditto, Landr, or especially Too Lost as well (if you haven't already ofc). Def subscribing immediately and checking out all your other videos!! Thank you for doing this so we understand what we're signing! This is exactly what smaller artists need!!
One bad experience does not mean every distributor is doing the same.....Most important , I have seen artists having problems with their distributors but that is the case with only those artists who don't know how to operate the dashboard properly or they are technically weak. I never had any issues with distrokid and tunecore. Used both services they are great. Also, sometimes you get a reply late, but that doesn't means they are fraud or a scam. They are taking care of lakhs of artists and handling their catalogue. So , it is really hard for a team of 50-100 people to care of thousands of artists. These are big companies. They need time to rectify and clarify all the issues and matter. So relax.....guys. it is all subjective in the end.
909 on likes, magical box……. Thank You for these informative videos !!!!!!! You are “unborning” all us suckers…. I wish we could be naive innocent musicians, without all the corporate-types seeing us as prey.
It's their business and their agreement, so they should be able to terminate it at any time but forfeiting future royalties when doing so wouldn't be right.
You freaked me out for a second when at 22:08 when you said, "Hey John, this is what you made during this month..." lol Thank you for this video tho, I am going independent and have been thinking Distrokid was probably my best bet. Now I know what I need to be aware of going into it! Thank you!!
It’s okay man. Distrokid is awesome. And the support is amazing I can tell you for sure in my personal view so far using distrokid. It has been great! Don’t get scared man. Just do your stuff and if for whatever reason something comes up which for me nothing hasn’t happened and it’s going super great for me. But if something comes of course reach out to the support or seek lawyer help
I cancelled my Distrokid in December. They still took my money for another year! I had to contact them to claim that back. They did eventually refund me. However! My music is still up on streaming services etc. So surely still earning royalties? So are they saying they will contact me and still pay? I removed my music in part, because I didn't agree with the new Spotify 1000 plays or less no longer receiving payment. Also they kept messing up my music with another artist of the same name. In short should I contact them again and ask if there is any monies left owing?
Question: iHeartRadio made a music channel for my (our) music but I never received any money except for... idk... all I know is I never got paid. However, Tidal, Pandora and everyone picked up every song on my album. Is there a way to show they owe us royalties?
Thank you for the video! 🙏 Is the contract the same in 2024? It would be great if you later keep people updated :). So helpful to have a music attorney opinion on that. Such fine print can be daunting and overwhelming to process. Most people probably sign up with DK and other distribution companies without fully reading and understanding the agreement(s). Plus conditions change at times and as you say without any power to negotiate them. Love also your language and the manner of explanation, for a non- native speaker it helps as well.
Several platforms pay royalties to "record companies" based on how much plays that record companies have spread over all their artists. This means that the big artists bring in more money for that record company than the small ones. If Distrokid has a deal like this with the platform, it means that Distrokid will be distributing the money according to the rules they have in their terms and conditions and maybe not by number of plays or something alike.
Thanks for the info. What I got from your vid is that as long as I don’t do something illegal myself I should be ok. But I don’t love the false claim thing, where someone can screw me wo them checking into it first.
Really good look at the issues in signing with Distrokid as well as other contractual distribution com panies. I would like to know if you have any "How to and Why To" videos about starting ones own music publishing company. I am very concerned here. Thanks much!
I subscribed immediately because I’ve been with Distrokid for 4 years and them only and I’ve generated over a millions of streams which I’m pretty sure I’m not lost out on millions of dollars but I am interested in how I can find out how these numbers are actually generated and how royalties and payments are legally distributed!?
Other than the useless “extra” features which we bit on in the beginning (but don’t opt for anymore) and still get charged almost $180 a year for (and we emailed them and they said they cannot remove the extras unless we re upload, to be honest other than this Distrokid is the fastest DSP we’ve ever used. In a world of of content and speed we can literally finish a single about a trending topic and have it released everywhere with 4-6hrs. Which is pretty incredible. I don’t think any DSP is perfect but again other than our past “extras” we bit in with distrokid we don’t have any issues with them.
This is helpful! Does it make sense to pursue an organized lobby for change? If clients and lawyers came together with a clear call to action and a value statement that is quantifiable in measurement of what they stand to lose and gain distrokid could evaluate if making those changes would be feasible and asses their risks and benefits to making the change. If they know the size of the impact they can do the math and either get leadership on board or at least get them to consider how large the problem is.
Do y’all know how often the payouts in the “We Owe You” section update? I get that royalties take 2-3 months to come in but recently around a week ago I was checking my payouts daily and it was going up for three days in a row and then it stopped which doesn’t make sense since I’ve been getting consistent streams ever since. I guess my question is do they update the payouts weekly/monthly?
@@operationbasscrime She's likely a shill. Going on their website, Priam seems even less transparent. Is their Terms of Service / Contract as upfront on their site? Nope. Their CEO is based in Albania but they pretend to be U.S. California based. Yet the default currency is Euros on their site. They say they only have 2-10 employees. Distrokid has at least 50-200. So who has more risk for being a shady company? So good luck sueing them if something really goes wrong with your music.
Yep, I signed up to release our new single with DistroKid only to then see the "you agree to the following T&C's" AFTER I paid. That didn't sit well with me and then to read it's auto renew and the music gets pulled if you don't pay was total BS. I immediately asked for a full refund (which they did within 2 weeks) and released my songs on CDBaby which is a one time payment. The devil is always in the details......
Idk how but distrokid charged me today. I don't even have a fully set up account on their platform and haven't even released anything through them. I removed a song a few years ago for someone who went on to release it through the service but I told them to do what they want
Question: I'm getting ready to start publishing my own original music to distrokid. I really like my musician name "Gr1dSh7ftR" (pronounced GridShifter). But I'm unsure if this name is going to help me or hurt me in the long run since it is spelled with a 1 and a 7 in place of the letter I, and it ends in "R" instead of "er". I'm worried that people are going to search the name the way its pronounced and not spelled which will in fact lead them to another musician who currently has the same name but spells it the way its pronounced. (Ive only just recently found out about him and he doesnt have any of his music on the streaming platforms, just bandcamp and a youtube channel.) So what do you think is the best approach? Should I keep my name the way it is? Will it confuse people? Or should I do a complete name change to something different altogether? And is it best to just spell my artist name the way it sounds? Or am I just overthinking this?
Has anyone seen where they take a portion of your earnings and apply it to someone else's account that stopped paying on their account. Like.. whoever you have splits with....if one or more stop paying for their membership....they take it from yours!!! I know...because it happened to me.
@@TopMusicAttorney Awesome! Will do. Thanks for the heads-up. 5pm your time is actually 1am my time. I'm gonna have to start taking my coffee black again
In regards to unclaimed royalties, maybe they're referring to when there might not be enough data to determine what a royalty was for. For example, a bug in a vendor's software causes underreporting, and now no one can determine why DistroKid was paid.
Which platform is fair and gives the Artist what they are entitled to? I don't see any difference with the old labels, now the labels have changed to music platforms and nothing has changed.
So I have only ever used DistroKid to distribute. Is there ANY distributor like this that doesn't have good and bad? Who is the best for a small fish wanting to swim in the big pond? Is DistroKid a bad choice? Watched the whole video and didn't know one way or the other if you were saying it is a good or bad option. I don't really make any money from the music so far though. :)
I have one thing to say about the small commercial at 16 minutes. When you say Top Music Attorney... don't say Tommy needs a new flurry 🤣. Articulate that just as well as the rest you did please. You are a big help and I really love watching your vids, but that moment I had to rewind to really know what you were saying. Keep it up and thank you for everything!
I am not a lawyer but is it correct to assume that the following statement is NOT bound by the statute of limitations? "You shall have no right to inspect or audit our books and records, or those of Digital Stores." This sentence immediately "follows" the sentence that that mentions statute of limitations but technically, this is a standalone sentence and I imagine it is absolute. And if that is the case, is there any concern here? That you can _never_ audit their books and records?
So basically they're prepared to take your royalties. Now even though I paid the 20 something dollars to get my music out there. I haven't posted any of my music. So that's going to be a delay because now I have to do further research. Because I don't want to set myself up to have my royalties stolen..
Amazing video. So bottom part to me is - you can trust DistroKid. I just don't understand - so they can takedown your song if any copyright claim is made, even if this is a fake claim. So how I'm going to defend then? On RU-vid they give you the chance to dispute the claim and it is a simple procedure, I did it several times. How does it works with DistroKid?
Distrokid really isn't bad as a distributing service. Even if i didn't make a dime. My music got out their. Funny thing about being poor. You can't miss what you never had 😂😂
Scratch that I just went to go listen to my sing on Spotify and someone else song plays in place of mine. Distrokid 👎🏾 for that one or Spotify one of em
Ok, so all of the first 2/3 of agreement is irrelevant coz in last 1/3 they just say: if we don't like anything and call this act of unliking "reasonable ", we can suspend, and delete your accounts,and music, withhold and take your money, and if you do something about it WE found reasonably satisfactory (for us) we (maybe) do something about it. I'm not a lawyer, but it's looks like " we can do whatever we want" sort of "agreement" 😂
@@TopMusicAttorney . I've been looking at going with CD Baby for distribution mainly because they are local to me. Less than a 15 min drive from my house.
Question: HIGHLY IMPORTANT! Can you make a video on Tiktok's Distribution Service i.e SoundOn , find their contact a bit suspicious and have held off on song releases ever since.
Now the lump sum thing reminds me of RU-vid shorts recent monitization program where they share ad revenue (if I understand that correctly) to all creators of shorts who meet specific view thresholds. Once one platform does it, others may follow, so lets say they get 10 mil in ad revenue for shorts in quarter 2, you would expect they divy that with the short creators who meet audience expectations.
Hi @TopMusicAttorney, I seem to have missed the explanation about the UPC codes. You mentioned the ISRC codes, but the UPC....would you mind writing what those are for?
Re ISRC codes; In Norway (Europe, most ROW except US?) this code also binds to performing rights for _every_ contributing musician. They have individual rights outside of the song’s copyright, whenever the recording is “shown” (played) on radio, stores, cafes, media… (public performance besides primary distribution). This means that the ISRC is much more than ‘a number’ - as it also indicates the owner of the ℗ rights, the entity that owns the recording outside of creators’ rights. That’s why we would _never_ advise an artist (own label) to receive or ‘rent’ ISRC codes from anyone. Register your (private) label - should be free - and generate your own codes. _(Info relevant to Norway, former Gramo board member, not legal advice - Check your own territory…)_
