How The Process Works
1 - Submit your song to be Approved or Rejected: Due to the volume of songs we receive, this process can take up to one month, but we are always trying to get it done as fast as possible. Furthermore, you can only submit one song at a time until you have a Contributor Agreement on file with the Tunedge Artist Portal. After you have signed the Contributor Agreement you can submit up to 5 songs that are in the process of being finalized (Badged). Once a song is Badged you can submit a new song.
2 - Song Approved - Sign Agreement/s: On your first submission you will be required to sign both a Contributor Agreement and a Schedule A. After your first submission, once the Contributor Agreement is on file with us, you will only be required to sign a Schedule A for each song.
3 - Upload Masters: When uploading the masters we recommend that you upload a wav file but an mp3 will work if you don’t have a wav file. You are only required to upload the Main Mix Full but we give you the option to upload the following additional mixes.
If you are uploading a song with lyrics we always recommend you include an instrumental version. There are many Music Supervisors who will not even listen to a song unless it is accompanied by an instrumental track.
4 - Description: When filling out the Description we ask that you are as thorough as possible. The better your description the easier it will be for our sales team and customers to find your song. We give you the option to fill in the following description fields:
Please note, in the process of moving to the Description phase a new name (Edge) will be added to the end of your song name. After your song is Badged it will be registered under this new name with the PRO’s with Tunedge Music and/or Slynth Music as the publisher of the new song name.
5 - Badging: Once you have finalized your description you are done. You need only wait for our team to review your song and make any changes to your description they see necessary. After reviewing your song someone from our team will Badge your song.
What Does The Tunedge Music Portal Do?
From fad to fad to new programs and series, Tunedge Music Portal brings a birds eye view to it’s private artist community. Helping creators, producers and songwriters compose and present music that is more usable and relevant to the production community at large.
With our proprietary metadata tagging, Tunedge Music Portal readies music to be found in a variety of music search engines including all major networks and producers.
What Are The Rules To Upload A Song To The Portal?
No audio logos
No Loops
Poor recording quality and low audio levels will not be accepted.
Composers must have an IPI# and be part of a Performing Right Organization.
What Should I Expect When Submitting My Song?
The process of uploading a song consists of 4 simple steps:
1. Submit A Song: Submit a mp3 for review. You will need your composer IPI# and belong to a PRO to submit a song. Your song will typically be reviewed within 1-2 weeks but can take as much as a month. After your song is reviewed it will either be Approved or Rejected.
2. Agreement/Schedule A: Once your song is Approved you will be required to sign a Contributor Agreement and Schedule A. On your first song only, you will need to sign our contributor agreement. On each song you will need to sign our Schedule A. On the Schedule A you will be given the option to have your song Opt In on Blankets and/or make it Exclusive to the Portal.
3. Masters: After your Agreement and/or Schedule A has been approved you will be requested to upload the Masters. You are only required to upload a Main Full Mix but you will be given the option to upload additional mixes including; Main Reduced Mix, 60 second Full Mix, 60 second Reduced Mix, 30 second Full Mix, 30 second Reduced Mix and Stem 1 thru 6. We highly recommend you upload as many mixes as you have available for the song. Your Masters should be the best quality audio files therefore we ask for .wav files.
4. Description: After your Masters are approved you will be asked to fill out a description for the song. The Description gives you the following options to describe your song; 10 keyword tags, 3 genres, Style/Mood, Main Instrument, Key, Tempo, BPM, Sounds Like and Lyrics.
After you have finished your description, you're done! The rest is up to us, from this point we re-register your song with a new name. For example, if your song title is “Happy” we will re-register it as “Happy Edge”. You retain the publishing on the original song name. Once the song has been re-registered it will be included in the appropriate part of our catalog and search requests.
What Is A Composer IPI Number?
IPI (Interested Parties Information) is an international identification number assigned to songwriters and publishers. The number is used by both broadcaster and rights societies to uniquely identify rights holders. IPI numbers are assigned to composers by their Rights Society (i.e. USA Rights Society are ASCAP, BMI & SESAC). For more information about IPI numbers visit ASCAP "All About IPI Numbers".
What Is My (Composer) Affiliation?
Your Affiliation is the Performance Rights Organisation (PRO) you belong to. PRO’s are also known as a Performing Rights Society or a Rights Society. USA Rights Societies include ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. These Rights Societies, provides intermediary functions, like collection of royalties between songwriters and parties who wish to use songwriters works. Rights Societies also assign songwriters IPI numbers.
What Is A Composer Share Percentage?
This is the percentage of the song you own. For example, if you are a single composer you would own 100%. If there are multiple composer you can each composer could own anything from 1% to 99%. The sum of the share percentage must equal 100 percent.
What Is A Contributor Agreement?
Is an agreement between you the artist and the tunedge music portal. This agreement makes clear that you own the rights and have the right to enter into an agreement with Tunedge Music Portal. The following is a list of points to make clear the essence of the agreement.
What Is A Schedule A?
Each composition submitted requires a ‘Schedule A’ agreement. The ‘Schedule A’ becomes part of your Contributor Agreement. The ‘Schedule A’ identifies the song name, writer/s name, writer/s share and if the song is being submitted exclusive or non-exclusive and Opt In for Blanket License or not.
Why Should I Opt In On Blanket License On The Schedule A?
When we license music, there are two types of licenses we typically deal with: the Drop (Needle Drop) license and the Blanket license. The Blanket license is for TV & Cable Networks that want to pay a set amount to use as much music as they choose from our catalog.
We have a massive in-house library so we don’t have to include music from the Portal in our Blanket licenses. We give composers the option to be included in our Blanket licenses because of the possibility to make good money from the back-end (Writers Share) through the PRO’s (Performing Rights Organizations). Typically, music in Blanket licenses are used in Reality TV, Sports programming, etc.
Keep in mind: if a composer “Opts In” on Blankets, it doesn't mean we aren’t trying to license the music under a Drop License where we split the synchronization fee 50/50--we are. If you Opt Out you will only be pitched for theatrical, in show, promo and commercial use. You're more than likely wasting your time with instrumental uploads if you're not “Opting In”.
Also, remember that most theatrical, in show and promo pitches are for FULL SONGS, not instrumentals. They are looking for Top 40, Indie Pop, Folk Pop, and Indie Rock songs with lyrics. Another thing to keep in mind is Reality TV shows are now asking for more and more full songs with lyrics and hooks.
If you would like to update any of your previous "Schedule A's" to OPT IN please contact us at musicportal@tunedge.com and we can help replace them for you.
What Does It Mean To Make My Song Exclusive On The Schedule A?
Making your song Exclusive on the Schedule A means the song is exclusive to Tunedge Music Portal. In other words no other company besides Tunedge can license the song for synchronization.
The advantage of making your song exclusive to Tunedge, is your odds of getting pitched to music supervisors and producers goes up. I.E. Many music supervisors who request music from Tunedge will give us a limit on how many songs we can send over. If we can only send over 5 songs but we have 10 or more songs which will work for the project, we will only send the 5 songs that are exclusive to Tunedge.
What Is A Full Mix?
The ‘Full Mix’ is the main version of the song with all of the instruments included and including and vocals. Note: The length of the song has nothing to do with a song being a Full Mix.
What Is A Reduced Mix?
The ‘Reduced Mix’ is the Full Mix minus one or more instruments and/or vocals. Note: The length of the song has nothing to do with a song being a Reduced Mix.
What is a Stem?
A Stem file is an audio file that contains a track split into musical elements: i.e. A drums stem, a bass line stem, a harmony stem, and a lead stem. All stems are bounced out as individual audio elements from the zero time on your audio sequence. This means a music part that appears half way into the composition will have an audio file that has dead space/air (No Sound) until the audio part appears.
All stems should be the full length of the song allowing editors to place stem files all at zero in their sequence and rebuild the audio mix to the picture. Stems for a typical Pop/Rock track would be Drums, Bass, Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals. Stems for orchestral tracks would be Percussion, Low Strings, Mid Strings, High Strings, Woodwinds, SFX. The Tunedge Music Portal allows for six stems, this means that very often stems must be combinations of multiple tracks (i.e. guitar stem could have multiple guitar tracks) (i.e. a string stem could have multiple string tracks). Remember the point of stems is to allow the end user to rebuild the mix. Combining multiple tracks together into a single common stem helps video editors and mixers with little knowledge of music re-mix the composition.
Rock Stem Example (Review all elements of a stem song here)
Orchestral Stem Example (Review all elements of a stem song here)
What Should Be In The "Sounds Like" Description?
Descriptions should always consist of Tags only. Free form descriptions (i.e.: Sounds like a fun day walking through the park) DO NOT WORK! A proper Sounds Like description should consist of tags and keywords that relate to commonly known things like; Artists, Songs, Movies, Names, etc. Here is what a Sounds Like description should look like; Led Zepplin, Stairway to Heaven, Godfather the Movie, James Bond Theme, Star Wars, Katy Perry, Firework, Beethoven, Mozart, Beyonce, Drake, etc.
What Is An Original Composition?
Is a composition where you are the original artist or composer of the song.
What Is A Cover Recording?
A Cover Recording is a new performance or recording of a song by a person other than the original artist or composer of a song.
Who Is The Cover Recording Artist?
The Cover Recording Artist is the original artist or composer of a song.
Why Is Metadata So Important?
"Data has become an increasingly important part of the music industries, and music streaming is no exception. Many streaming services as well as companies such as Chartmetric, Soundcharts, and Viberate offer artists and their labels extensive data analytics tools. Not only do these tools provide easily digestible statistics about play count, followers, and social media activity, they also break down user demographics, including activity by city and country.
If you’re an artist, knowing where your fans listen to your music and are most engaged is invaluable, and can influence decisions such as how you decide to route your tour. If you’re a streaming service, this data is indispensable both for assessing the viability of markets and creating localized, targeted advertisements.
For many parts of the world, this level of data availability is relatively recent. It was only last year that Billboard and MRC Data finally launched the “Billboard Global 200” and “Billboard Global Excl. US” charts based on streaming data and digital sales.
“IF YOU’RE AN ARTIST, KNOWING WHERE YOUR FANS LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC AND ARE MOST ENGAGED IS INVALUABLE.”
In addition to user data, the presence and quality of music metadata – the data encoded into audio files, such as artist name, genre, track length, etc. – is another important factor that varies regionally. Many services now use “enriched” metadata that tags everything from cultural associations (related artists, subgenres, venues) to musical content (tempo, key, instrumentation). Locality – where the music and artists are from – is also an important metadata tag that impacts how music is organized in streaming databases.
Metadata can affect everything from the quality of a service’s search function and algorithmic recommendations to whether or not rights holders get properly compensated for their music, so it’s important to get it right. Incorrect and incomplete metadata has been a major issue for music streaming, and this is especially challenging in many emerging markets where metadata is barebones, inaccurate, or missing entirely.
This poses a particular problem for niche services launching in local markets, but major services also need to ensure that their metadata is specific enough that it won’t, say, lump distinct local subgenres together. Because metadata is so closely tied to music recommendation and discovery, it has important implications for cultural diversity in music streaming." (courtsy of https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/six-reasons-why-regionality-still-matters-for-the-global-music-streaming-business/)