See a live sample of our "Buy Download Now" service at work:
http://Museeks.com/download_previews/ArthurSulit/Pipe_Organ_Story.html
Pricing:
| Starter Plans: | |||
| FREE 5MB | |||
| $1.99/mo. | 20MB | Plan A (takes you to login first) | |
| $4.99/mo. | 60MB | Plan B (takes you to login first) | |
| $9.99/mo. | 150MB | Plan C (takes you to login first) | |
| $14.99/mo. | 250MB | Plan D (takes you to login first) | |
| $19.99/mo. | 400MB | Plan E (takes you to login first) | |
| Label Plans: | |||
| $29.99/mo. | 750MB | Plan F (takes you to login first) | |
| $39.99/mo. | 1GB | Plan G (takes you to login first) | |
| $69.99/mo. | 2GB | Plan H (takes you to login first) | |
| $169.99/mo. | 4GB | Plan I (takes you to login first) | |
| $269.99/mo. | 10GB | Plan J (takes you to login first) | |
Need more? 73GB? 200GB? Write us for Discount! (Clint @ Museeks dot com)
(You may cancel at any time.)
Reserve your space now, and start uploading your audio files this weekend. We will have our upload servers fully operational by tomorrow at noon, Sunday, November 30.
1b. How much does PayPal deduct?
A: As of 12/27/03, PayPal deducts approximately 30 cents per transaction, or 2.9% of sales price, whichever is greater.
We feel this is fairly reasonable given the tremendous cost savings they enable
by alleviating many of the tech support headaches which are all to common
with other competitor's systems.
1c. Who does the accounting of when I get paid?
A: PayPal does. As soon as you have your PayPal account set up and verified, every
purchase goes direct to YOUR PayPal account. There you can log in
and get your own spreadsheet of all transactions, or even export
to your favorite accounting software. No more waiting months to get paid!
For most artists, that alone saves you and us much more costs than the transaction fees they
are charging. For artists with extremely high sales, you can hire additional
programming to automatically update your online databases or websites with stats
for you.
2a. Can I set the pricing for my own tracks?
A: Yes, absolutely. You can choose from between $0.49 and $4.99 per download currently.
$0.49 still leaves you room to make 19 cents after PayPal deducts its 30 cents.
We suggest, however, that you do not under-value yourself and all artists in general.
If you labored and paid thousands of dollars worth to record your track
and it is quite good, then you should be charging 99 cents and up for your track,
not giving it away.
2b. What if I want to offer some of my downloads free?
A: You can still do that, for some or even all of your songs you
upload to our servers, by merely selecting "FREE" instead of a price in the song upload form.
However, we encourage that you charge for most of your songs, and only give away
30 to 1 minute snippets, which you can upload separately.
The old mp3.com almost literally forced you to give away your
downloads just to climb higher on their charts. That was a grave offense
to artists in our opinion, which made the general public fall deeper into the bad habit
of expecting most songs for free. That kills our overall market worth--leading
to continued declines in musician's job opportunities and income for radio, commercial and even educational
use. We artists should uphold our value, by
consistently asking a higher price for our better works and getting OUT
of the habit of giving away the kitchen sink for free.
3. PayPal deducts too much. I want to keep all of it. Why do you go with PayPal?
A: PayPal is currently the easiest, most safe, and most reliable payment system to set up and maintain in our current opinion. This
of course may change, and we will continually look for ways to reduce this cost. However, compare with other systems
which charge 15% of sales, and are a headache to program. For instance, Authorize.net might charge only
17 cents minimum per transaction, if you get their full merchant account (which takes a lot of money to set up).
However, think of the costs you would incur programming your site's back-end. We feel
the PayPal system currently offers the most cost savings in the bigger picture,
for the time being.
4a. Can I upload covers, or my own versions of popular songs?
A: Yes, however, it will require that you send proof of mechanical license
(right to record YOUR PERFORMANCE, not samples nor snippets from anyone else's,
to a fixed medium) to us, perhaps as a scanned jpeg image sent to us via
email, and then approval first by our content managers.
4b. Where can I get legal clearance for my cover songs?
A: You can clear "mechanical licenses" by searching online for the Harry Fox Agency, and doing their
song-search, and paying their license fee (typically 8 cents per track
per copy you sell, usually a minimum of 500 copies paid for up front at first
--and none of it can be allowed to be downloaded free without additional
permission, even for 30 second snippets). For song titles not
covered by Harry Fox, you will have to contact the song publisher or artist(s)
who wrote it directly, or get a compulsory license from the US Copyright Office.
In general, works before 1922 are in the public domain, and do not require
additional licenses for fixed recordings. However, be careful that these
tracks are not used for other purposes, such as ringtones or in presentations or in
home wedding videos--which almost always require special permission and fees paid.
We will offer tutorials soon on how to do all this, and where to go online for it.
4c. Are there any strings attached when I upload cover songs?
A: Yes--you warrantee that you do in fact own the recording, and agree to be responsible for all liabilities which may
arise from uploading cover songs, and to hold us harmless. We will attempt
to preview and monitor every song uploaded (cover or not). If a person
uploaded a song without proper licensing clearance, that is generally considered
illegal, and will likely invite a lawsuit by us as well as the copyright
holder against the person doing the uploading. Do not upload
a cover track unless you know the copyright law, and have everything cleared first.