The advantage of going through us versus going to iTunes or the other over 550 important sites directly is that you will actually be available at these sites if you work with us. Good luck trying to go direct. Even if you successfully negotiate a deal you still have the issue of encoding, delivery and ingestion. After that you need to develop a relationship with the programming staff so that your music gets placement on the site. And you have to do this for over 550 of the major digital music services like Napster, Emusic, Virgin, etc.

All our fees are pointed clearly long before you go to agreement, please check it here. It's a small fee when you consider that you get your CD into all the over 550 most important sites in the world. If you do it yourself you will spend an enormous amount of time dealing with all the administrative work for each site, encoding for each site, meta-tagging for each site, accounting for each site, etc.

None. You keep all your rights. You keep all your publishing. We just license your tracks to sell in all the ways described in the agreement during the period of the agreement.

Every company is different, but the average in dollars as most of the companies are based in USA is $0.55 cents per song downloaded, $5.50 per full-album download, and 1 cent per listen or stream (when people listen to your song as if on a radio station, but don't download or buy it). Remember we only keep a 19% cut of the total income, and pay you 81%.

Unfortunately we do. According to the applicable tax law, when AMAdea pays to you royalties for the sale of your musical albums or compositions, AMAdea shall have to withhold and remit to the state budget an income tax at the rate of 10% of the amount due to you. This is the so called personal income tax.

It is possible that personal income tax under point 1 above may not be withheld or that the amount due to you may be charged with an income tax at a lower rate in cases where an Agreement on Avoidance of Double Taxation so allows and provided that you explicitly request so from AMAdea. You can download the request form from here: On your demand AMAdea shall provide you with any documents you may need, evidencing the amounts of personal tax withheld from you, to be presented to the tax authorities in your country of residence.

At this point, you have not reached the minimum necessary per quarter to be paid by us (€50). If you can continue to promote the release and encourage fans to buy, you will increase your sales overall and easily make the minimum.

Most artists understand that it is not worth the administration costs to send so little money at a time. Remember, you pay the fees associated with wire-transfers so this is actually for your benefit. In the end you make more money because you have fewer fees.

2 weeks to 3 months, once you've given us ALL the info we need, and we've received your CD. We have to encode it into 17 different formats for 550 different companies, so that's why it takes a while. Plus we have to verify all your songwriter and publisher info is correct before we send it out into the world.

Each company is different, but in general it takes from 3 weeks minimum, to 4 months maximum. (Usually 2-3 months.) Once we send it to them, it's out of our hands and they do what they can to get it imported and active in their service. We push them to get it added as soon as possible, and they always do it as soon as they can.

Most companies only report to us every 1 - 3 months. Apple, for example, sends us the monthly report about 4-6 weeks after the month is finished. Meaning: you won't see your January sales until the first week of March. Some companies report a full 3 months after the quarter is done. But we ALWAYS show you everything we get as soon as we get it, and add the money to your account immediately.

Yes, but this will be only available for the top selling digital sites. Almost none of these companies let us know when your music is active! We're surprised and disappointed at this, and we hope it will change some day. But for now, we can only let you know, when your music is active on the top selling digital sites, which is still something instead of nothing. In addition we show you what date we sent your album to it, in your members login area under digital distribution/albums. Of course you're always free to go search for yourself on their system.

Basically what happens is that we send out every release that we have to all of our partners, and it is ultimately their decision what they post. That doesn’t mean that all of these sites have denied posting your music, as many of these sites have more limited capabilities and it can sometimes take a long time to get new material up. They also will be focusing more on getting the top selling albums uploaded before they worry about anything else. Therefore the answer is that it will either take more time, or that they have decided not to post the material.

Naturally we can’t promote all the bands we have all the time. BUT if things start to happen for you, then you have someone to contact and let them know. We speaks with the programmers of these sites on a daily basis and runs 100 to 150 promotions every day, so even if we can’t guarantee a blinking banner on the front page of iTunes, you will have at least someone to get a hold of when it’s time to push your hit single. But you should know that you are still responsible for marketing your act. It is not the job of a distributor to create demand for your product. You still need to head up that front.

If you give us a list of all the sites you are presently on, we will not disturb your presence there. We will help you cover the rest of the world.

No, sorry! These digital retailers were built around the major-label retail model, where once an album is released, it is NEVER EVER changed. So - just like the majors - if an album is remixed or changed in any way, it has to be put out as a whole new version: a new album with a new barcode, signed up as a new release.

Once you sign your album up for Digital Distribution, we'll inspect it to be sure all the info (publishers, composers, barcode, etc.) is correct. Once we've approved it for delivery, you'll be unable to change the number of tracks on your CD, or any of their attributes (ISRC, name, publisher, etc.) in your members' account. So the moral is: be ABSOLUTELY SURE everything about your album is in order before you sign up for Digital Distribution! Changes will be difficult to make.

No, we can’t do that as we are not distributor, but label. This means we care about our artists and we offer them full service of physical and digital distribution. If you need only digital distribution, you can search for another company over Internet.

All major digital music outlets require your album to have a barcode. It doesn't have to be on your CD artwork. It just has to be in our computer, so we can tell it to these companies. If you already have an UPC barcode from some other place, please send it to us, so we can attach it to the cover of the CD.

If you are going to send us a barcode, please make sure that it is exactly 12 or 13 numbers. Also make sure you have not used that same barcode yourself on another album. If not, let us know the code and we'll try to help.

First: make sure you're entering exactly 12 or 13 numbers. If it's telling you the barcode you're entering is already taken, make sure you have not used that same barcode yourself on another album. If not, let us know the code and we'll try to help.

Nope. Sorry. For now we can only do your entire CD.

Talk to some lawyers about sample clearance, but do NOT sign up for digital distribution until you've paid them for permission, or else some mean nasty lawyers will sue you.

DMS is the abreviation for Digital Music Store. (i.e. iTunes, MSN Music, etc.)

A DSP is a Digital Service Partner or Digital Service Provider. (i.e. iTunes, MSN Music, etc.)

DMC is an abreviation for Digital Music Content.

DRM is an abreviation for Digital Rights Management. Read more about DRM here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/drm/default.mspx