(Just to get in the mood, while I’m writing this, I’m listening to our Don’t Mess With Texas SX+Orch Sampler on Rdio. I recommend you do as well while you read this post. Its also up on Spotify AND Amazon!)
We’re talking SXSW here. No other festival in the world has Europeans Facebooking about breakfast tacos and Shiner Beer three months before their arrival. Nor can any other festival compete with the charm of the beloved Austin, Texas. Austin Hippies and Hipsters unite. If you’re not a Hippy or Hipster, you don’t even care – you’re in Texas, in March, and it’s 70 degrees. Not to mention you’re listening to an unmatchable variety of artists out of 2K buzz acts from around the globe.
That said, we can’t forget that it’s not all play. SXSW hosts a ton of amazing panels and educational events that reflect the side of SXSW that reminds us that we mean business, too. We have some of our very own staff members getting their panel on at SXSW this year:
Bring your questions and notepads as you’re bound to learn something from this crew!
This year, on the heels of some exciting news (did you hear?) we’re lucky to be joining our friends from IODA for their Day Party on Wednesday March 14th at The Red Eyed Fly. They’ve got a killer line up with the likes of The Oh Sees, Dan Mangan, Ruthie Foster, Y La Bamba and many more. Check out IODA’s Free SX Music Sampler here.
The Orchard and IODA have always shared the same DNA: we build technology to empower the people and companies that create the music and films that we love. We were both born out of digital, way before digital was a meaningful business to most others, so we were (and still are) highly focused on creating efficient and effective distribution platforms.
Our singular goal is, and always has been, to provide high value and impeccable service to our clients. On a macro level, we recognize that we have a responsibility as advocates for independent content creators, and we will continue to be a voice and a force to ensure their needs are addressed. We’ll continue to create more products and services around distribution, marketing and sales to benefit our clients.
Richard Gottehrer, co-founder of The Orchard, loves to remind us that our tagline during our early years was “A Place To Grow.” As we started working with larger independent labels we dropped the tagline (although Richard will argue that even the most sophisticated of businesses still has room to grow), but we’ve never stopped growing the opportunities for our clients. We want our clients — new and old — to have better opportunities to grow their audiences and businesses, which will enable them to spend more time making music, music videos and films.
The Orchard will continue to be a pioneer and a devoted partner to our clients as we combine these two great companies.
We recently invited our clients to submit questions that they’d like to ask Brad Navin, our CEO, so that we can post answers right here on The Daily Rind. However, after taking a look at the questions we realized that we’d be most helpful if we get the most qualified Orchard-ite to answer each question.
For the question below, we reached out to Jason Pascal, VP, Licensing & Associate General Counsel of The Orchard:
How does an independent recording company go about obtaining a “master license” for a specific song, not a sample, but the entire song. What is the correct process? There seems to be little information anywhere on the web on this.
Depending upon your intended use, the best answer to this question is that, in order to use a recording owned by another, you need written permission.
In the majority of cases, the record label that released the record (or its successor) owns the recording and that company would have to give you written permission to use their recording. Tell them what you want to use it for; they’ll quote you a price; and you’ll negotiate the license.
Alternatively, the artist will own the recording and you would have to reach out to that artist directly. Rights may have reverted to the artist (or the his/her heirs), or the artist may have created the recording on his or her own dime and now owns it (subject to any licensed he or she may have granted). Artist ownership is becoming more common as a result of the DIY world we currently live in.
Of course, there are exceptions, and if you’re looking for rights to use a recording owned by a major label, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to obtain a license unless you’re willing to pay large fees.
- Jason Pascal, VP, Licensing & Associate General Counsel
If you haven’t heard from us in a while, you must have been living under a rock… In addition to being all over Twitter and Facebook, we here at The Orchard have had a great many newsworthy things going on, and we just can’t keep quiet about it! It’s one thing to announce things like how The Orchard turns 15 this year, how we have some incredible new signings and continue to celebrate our devoted clients and how our EU team is undergoing expansion and restructuring, but those are just words! Where’s the face time you ask?
Well for starters, we just wrapped up our time at MIDEM this year. Our VP of Product Marketing, Jaclyn Ranere, hosted an informative session in the Innovation Lab to spread the good word about The Orchard. Also, not to be overshadowed, was the Orchard Penthouse Party that actually made headlines - yep, that’s right, start takin’ notes.
While some of our team was battling the uncharacteristically bad weather in Cannes, our SVP of Marketing, Pete McCarthy shipped off to sunny Cali to attend D: Dive into Media. He joined in on the timely conversation about what changes in media we can expect, what changes we’ve seen and what that means for The Orchard and the industry as a whole.
If you call New York home, you hopefully made it to our NYC Music/Tech Meet-Up. If you missed it, we forgive you and fear not! We plan to host more of these meet-ups as it was a great way for the NYC music and tech community to gather for some hang time that’s NOT in a meeting room.
As we continue on with our Tour de Orchardites, our CTO Josh Builder will be co-hosting a panel at San Francisco Music Startup Academy hosted by Digitalmusic.org. The panel, Getting Under The Hood: Music Operations For CTOs and Developers, will take place on February 14th, and Josh and his co-panelists will discuss action items from a technical standpoint for budding music companies. Can’t wait? Here’s a sneak peek.
Finally, lest we forget South by Southwest in Austin, Texas this March. We will be dusting off our chaps and boots and riding our purebreds down to the Lone Star State (we wish… great visual though, right?). The Orchard CEO, Brad Navin, will be moderating a panel called Navigating the Middle that will dive into the discussion of using (or not using) a so-called “middle-man” to market your music.
We’re moving fast, so to keep up: watch The Daily Rind for all things Orchard, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and if you’re attending one of the events mentioned above, please feel free to reach out at mbrown@theorchard.com.
The Orchard is 15 years old! We’ve been on quite a ride since 1997, when things like Google, the iPod, YouTube, music hack days and Facebook didn’t exist. (Can’t wait to see what the next 15 years will bring.)
So, in honor of this birthday, the community of businesses and people that have contributed to our history and the changes we’ve experienced in the music industry, each month we’ll post 15 things that we’re thankful for. Let’s kick it off with some key events:
