How to get local to go global
Global streaming music services like Spotify and Apple Music are easier to get onto than you think, and when local worship music is more available, it helps ordinary believers in their daily lives in their walk with God and encourages seekers who are starting to think about who Christ may be to them. This article is a roadmap for getting local worship music on the streaming services.
Context is everything, and this article is written with three main audiences in mind:
🛠️ Local worship music workshops
You may be dreaming of how you could facilitate local artists coming together for a songwriting workshop with the help of an ethnomusicologist or local musician – or you may have material from past worship song workshops hanging around in the archives. The workshop output may not be very polished, but a step in the right direction of helping local communities worship in their own languages and in musical forms that speak to their hearts.
🎹 Friends who are musicians
You might be aware of some ordinary Christians who are also extraordinary musicians, and you love what they are doing, and know that it would be an encouragement to the faith and the creativity of many. It might be a gifted friend who never plays in front of people, a church music group who plays together on Sundays, or a group who is currently performing publicly.
🎤 You are a musician
You may be making music already in your own language and wondering how to get it to a larger audience.
❓Something else
Your context may very well be another case yet! Hopefully as we flesh these out, you’ll get a vision for where these tools can help you.
How can you get these great resources out into the world?
Getting the copyright right
Before we get to the fun part, step one is to think about copyrights. There can be a few ways that thinking well about copyrights in the early going can help you avoid some big headaches down the road.
Who wrote that song?
If you’re in a situation where creating worship music in the local language is a priority, from a copyright perspective the emphasis should be on local musical styles and original compositions – this is much easier to handle!
However, if you or musicians you know really want to release a cover (a version of a song someone else wrote), it is not impossible, but takes some extra work. Some cultures think differently than others about copyrights. But when dealing with the worldwide streaming services, it pays to be aware of worldwide legal standards as we are acting in the worldwide community. Don’t assume that because it’s a Christian song that the writer would be happy with anyone creating an unauthorized version of it. If you put music online that the performers didn’t write – for example a local-language version of a popular worship song – you could end up owing money to the writers of the song, or you may have your music removed from the streaming services. If you or the musicians you are working with wrote the song, you’re ready to move to the next question.
Who owns the rights?
The simplest case here is that one person wrote the song, and one person sings the song. That person owns the rights. But if groups of people wrote the song, you’ll need to think through who could be a stakeholder.
Take the example of a local language worship song workshop – the most important thing is to have clear expectations from the beginning, including in the planning and inviting stages. Prior to the event, if everyone knows that the work generated during the workshop will fall under the custodianship of a designated entity (a mission or a church) for copyright and distrubution purposes, but the compositions will be shared so that any and all can use them, then there are no misunderstandings later on. Be sure to put the common understanding, whatever it is, in writing and have everyone sign it.
If you have done a workshop in the past and the participants didn’t have a clear written arrangement, you may need to have those involved sign an agreement at a later date to make sure there are no misunderstandings and hurt feelings later on before putting it online. It would be understandable if there were hurt feelings if someone saw their song on Spotify one day and they hadn’t know it was going to be there!
On the other hand, if you are helping a local established group get their songs online, who wrote the song? This may be different than who recorded the song. If of a four-person group, two people wrote the music and all four recorded it, how should any proceeds be split? These questions are often not talked about in the beginning – but should be written down and agreed on before uploading to music services.
More about covers…
The recording of the song you made and the music, the tune itself, are separate from a rights standpoint. Even – and as it turns out especially – when you translated the lyrics of someone’s song to a different language, you need to be sure you have permission to publish your cover. It’s actually easier to release a cover of a song where the lyrics and music don’t change.
If you did not change the ‘melody, lyrics, and structure‘ of the song, there are quick and easy ways of getting permission to record and release covers of songs that others wrote.
If you release your music via streaming services only without allowing downloads (via iTunes Store for example), this process is much easier.
If you do it in the right order (asking for permission first instead of for forgiveness later), your life will be easier. If you didn’t write the song, assume you’ll have to do some extra work to track down who did and give them credit.
For more on releasing covers, see this page.
More about album art…
Don’t forget about copyright for visuals:
- Album art must be original or licensed
- You cannot use random images from Google
- You cannot use photos of people without permission (privacy + publicity rights)
Who should put it online and receive any income?
We’ll talk about specific numbers on income in the next section – suffice it to say here that in most cases any income is likely to be small even if it is overall positive.
Workshops
Here it would be great if a local organization can own and run the online account. Perhaps the national church association, a denomination, or a local organization of some kind.
In one case there was a series of music workshops put on by a subcommittee of a networking group built around people ministering in a specific language group. Because the network itself is not a legal entity, one of the main groups involved is managing the copyright and released it Creative Commons so anyone can use the music. We’re working to figure out how to get that music online in the name of a local church or organiation and the proceeds put back to the network.
Friends who are musicians
Friends who are musicians may not be friends who are also techy! Sometimes they are – in this case if the friends can run their own account, helping them set it up may be enough help to get them going. Then you are not in a position of them wondering about if there is money going through your hands or not, and that may make the relationship easier.
If they are really not tech-capable, helping local friends help them may be a good option. Choosing the right friends obviously important here.
In some cases there is a critical mass where an organization is doing enough work with enough musicians and incubating growth in different ways that forming a record label, or functioning like one, could make sense. Here again make sure to have clear understanding of how the money is going to work and be proactive with clear accounting so artists know they are being treated fairly.
In all these discussions keep in mind the taxable income rules of your home country and the country you are working in. You don’t want to be in a position of having money coming personally to you and having it be added onto your income for taxes.
You
If you are the musician, and you are reading this, you have the techy knowledge you need! Open and run your own account, and keep yourself in control of your online presence.
In general:
| Someone outside the country wrote the song | Make sure to get the right licensing and permission in place before posting |
| A group wrote the song during a workshop | Make sure there is a clear written understanding as to the custodian and rights of the works |
| A local friend wrote the song | If possible help the person get their work on the services; if not have clear agreements in place before acting as their record label |
| You wrote the song | If possible make your own account and manage it. |
As you can imagine, no one article can cover all the possibilities. Bottom line: if you’re not sure about the rights, make sure before moving ahead with your streaming project.
OK, copyright is set. How do we get music online?
First, if you made it past the copyright stuff – you have the perseverance to make it in life, so congratulations.
When you are getting your music on Spotify, Apple Music, and the like, you don’t have to worry about communicating with those individual services – you will interact with one digital music distribution service that will then communicate with all the streaming services. Not just Spotify and Apple Music, but Tidal, Deezer, and many more that you probably have never heard of.
These are companies, and they need to make money themselves. You are their clients, and they are looking for you to pay them. They have two main models for how you can do that, and which one is better depends on your use case.
Model 1: subscription
Generally speaking this is the default in most services – you pay an annual fee in perpetuity for the service of the company making your releases available on the streaming services. These can be pretty reasonable in terms of annual cost – $25 per year is a good estimate for one artist, and $60 and up per year for more artists, up to $300 for unlimited artists. For this amount you will get a great set of options from the service.
Model 2: pay per release
The other main model is where artists pay a one-time charge per album, and the service will keep that music online as it is in perpetuity without the artist paying anything else.
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- Pay less (less than $10) if you agree that the music distribution service can keep 10% of the proceeds.
- Pay more ($40) and keep 100% of the proceeds, or pay even more for more options and services – but pay it one time per album.
How much income are we talking about?
This is where we need to talk about the streaming revenue, so we can help you figure out which of these models will make most sense for your context and case.
In streaming, each time someone listens to a song, the service gives the uploading account a small amount of money. The uploading account could be managed by the artist or by a record label or a friend acting as a record label.
The amount paid out to artists varies by country as the amount paid by residents of different countries for a given streaming service also varies.
For some quick calculations let’s take an example from a developing nation where Spotify pays out $0.001 (one-tenth of one cent) per stream for Premium subscribers and $.0.0005 (one-twentieth of a one cent) for free subscribers. For our example let’s assume two-thirds of subscribers are free tier, and one-third premium. That is the worldwide average split for Spotify. So each stream will pay an average of $0.0007 – so:
🎧 15 listens = $.01,
🎧 1,500 listens = $1.
Now let’s look at how many listens it would take to break even on pay per release. The amount you pay is per album, but the amount you receive is per track, so we’ll assume here a 12-track album and that a listen to the album is a complete album listen – i.e. one album listen is 12 track streams:
$.0007/track * 12 tracks = $.0084
For the first example, $25/year for a subscription, it would be almost 3000 whole-album streams to make back the $25.
$.0084 * 2976 = $25
On a subscription, you pay once for all albums, so if you had multiple albums published you would still have to have 3000 total streams, but they could be split across all your albums – but you’d have to have that number of streams each year.
For the pay per release example at $40/album, you’d need almost 5,000 whole-album streams.
$.0084 * 4,762 = $40
But you wouldn’t need to do that every year, just over the life of the album, or practically speaking let’s say 10 years. Even a small language group can do that number of streams over time.
Differences in revenue across the world
The most expensive Spotify country is Denmark, where you’ll pay $19/month for Spotify Premium. In the USA, it’s $13, and in the least expensive country for Spotify, Nigeria, a subscription costs $1.20/month. The amount paid from listeners on free ad-supported accounts is less than paying accounts but higher in higher-income countries where ad revenue is greater.
See here and here for more info.
Apple Music has no free tier, so is numbers-wise behind Spotify in most markets. Because it has no free tier, the payouts are better from Apple Music.
Which model is best for us?
Contexts can vary widely, but let’s sketch out a couple of simple cases.
We have lots of artists or lots of albums
If you are managing eight artists or groups and they are each putting out an album or two each year, or an album and a couple of singles, you may be better off going subscription. If your artists are serious about continuing to release music periodically, this could be something worth looking into. It does mean that you’re in for annual payments for the long haul.
We know we’ll have few albums, or we’re just not sure
If you are in the position of one artist, or relatively low output, the pay per release looks better – and is less of a risk. If your organization is running periodic local language worship workshops, putting out the result as pay per release into the world is a relatively modest expenditure, and it is then available forever, even if no-one is actively managing it year over year.
At this point, you probably have a good sense of what your situation is.
What are our options?
As you can guess, there are many companies out there who would like to work with you (i.e. take your money). We’ve taken some time to research the main services and have come up with some suggestions that seem to balance service and affordability and communicate most openly about what you get and what you don’t. First we’ll go through the pay per release options.
Pay per release
iMusician
Starter- Unlimited artists
- 10% commision on all earnings
- Music online forever
- YouTube Content ID = + $1/track
- Playlist pitching: $20 add-on
- Pre-save not included
- 4.3 rating on TrustPilot
iMusician
Rockstar- Unlimited artists
- You keep 100% of revenue
- Music online forever
- YouTube Content ID included
- Playlist pitching included
- Pre-save included
- 4.3 rating on TrustPilot
EmuBands
Basic- One artist only
- You keep 100% of revenue
- Music online forever
- No YouTube Content ID
- No playlist pitching
- No pre-save
- 4.8 rating on TrustPilot
⛔️ Imporant note: these distributors both are there to make money, and make money from you, so be sure to tread carefully! EmuBands has several plans – and some of them are both subscription and pay per release! So you get the worst of both worlds. It’s specifically the EmuBands Basic plan we’re talking about here. On the iMusician side, it’s the Starter and Rockstar plans.
YouTube Content ID? Pre-save? Playlists?
❓ You might be wondering about some of the items in the grid above.
ℹ️ YouTube Content ID: helps monetize your music by identifying videos using it on YouTube and automatically giving you a piece of the ad revenue.
ℹ️ Playlist pitching: A listener-engagement tool on streaming services that enables an artist to suggest their best songs.
ℹ️ Pre-save: A listener-engagement tool that allows an artist to build anticipation for upcoming releases by allowing users to pre-save unreleased music and get a reminder when it is released.
➡️ These are extra features that are more for bands who are really working on building their brand and their follower group. For artists who are doing that kind of work, the iMusician Rockstar plan may make sense. For others who are just looking for an easy way to get local worship music out and not worried as much about making money, EmuBands Basic will give you the essentials without that extra functionality.
Subscription
For most ministry contexts where the main concern is simply getting locally produced worship music available widely, the pay per release model will generally make the most sense.
But if there are larger groups of musicians with long-term plans or low tech ability, there will be some cases where subscriptions will work well. But because things change and people leave, it’s good to have an idea of what is going to happen to the music if the people who are managing the subscription need to move on. For that reason we have a subscription recomendation that permits a downgrade from a multi-artist subscription to a free online-forever model.
The iMusician plans charge:
- Amplify: $29 for 1 artist
- Amplify+: $59 for 2 artists and increases on a per-artist basis up to $221 for 20 artists
- Amplify Pro: $300 for unlimited artists
The unique thing about iMusician is that if you want to cancel your subscription, you can downgrade to the Starter plan – that leaves all your music up, but lets iMusician take 10% of proceeds from then on. Much better than taking the music down, which is what happens on other services! See here and here for more on this.
Wrapping up
Getting your music on streaming services can get great music in front of people and travelling with them encouraging them in their daily lives. In your context different copyright agreements or release strategies (pay per release or subscription) may make more sense. We hope that this will help you as you seek to reach your audiences.
iMusician
Amplify/Amplify+/Amplify Pro- Unlimited artists
- You keep 100% of revenue
- Music online forever if you need to cancel
- YouTube Content ID included
- Playlist pitching included for Amplify+ and Amplify Pro
- Pre-save included
- 4.3 rating on TrustPilot
