Starting August 7th, 2019 all previously branded 'Mastered For iTunes' content is changing to 'Apple Digital Masters'. The change will be featured both in the iTunes store and Apple Music streaming service.

Independant artists have difficulty getting into the Mastered For iTunes program, but if you wanted to try to deal directly with apple to get in here are the requirements directly from Apple. Even if you meet the requirements they may still referr you. On top of that, they also have payment thresholds and you may never get paid if you don't meet the threshold for your first payment. And now the requirements.

Technical Requirements:

Recently, I had a client that ran into some problems with the cover art for their project. It seems iTunes has some rather stringent (in my opinion) requirements for the cover art. Part of me understands that there needs to be some requirements or checks in place and I agree with Apple that people should not be 'misleading' in the representation of their music. But, I felt this particular case may have been a bit ridiculous.

This week, the authors of The Indie Band Survuval Guide, Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan, spoke at the Grammy Pro Business Summit in Austin. They gave an information-dense presentation of basically everything a band trying to make money needs to know.

It seems that every day I hear of a new way to get your songs to the digital marketplace, so it's about time for an update on Digital Distribution methods for your music.  In a more strict sense of the term, digital distribution relates not just to music but eBooks, movies, ringtones, photography, software programs and apps among other things.  There are a lot of stores. . .

This question has come up with relative frequency, so I'm going to write the step-by-step directions to let you get your reference CD into your computer as .wav files or mp3 files.

These step by step directions are for converting a disc to .wav files, but the steps will be similar for converting to MP3 too.

In my years as a music publisher I’ve had the honor of working with hit-songwriters to beginning songwriters, singer-songwriters and musician-songwriters.  Many of them have shared with me their journey and stories of dealing with music publishers, recording artists, record label executives, and their statements of mis-information and even worse. . . stories of unpaid royalties.

An update from the previous post dealing with online music distribution. Things to think about when choosing a digital distribution service:

In this world of low-quality codecs and single song sales with a customer base that demands product instantly, I wish there was a place music fans still appreciated an album as a whole and understand the value of music. . .

Many clients ask me about what to do after mastering.  I don't really have a very technical understanding of the nuts and bolts behind publishing and distribution, so I just send them to our local reputable CD manufacturing broker.  At Terra Nova, we recommend Matt Eskey with Any and All Media.  He has done a great job on every project I've sent to him and will continue to recommend Matt without reservation.  While I