You’ve come up with a hot track, one so pant-wettingly epic that it’s guaranteed to be used by every DJ in the world, and be heard coming out of every car and by every passive listener on public transport. You put it out through an online shop like leading house music purveyors Traxsource, lean back, and wait for the lorryloads of cash to come rolling in. Except that this is the internet, and the chances are that your ultra-hot chooon is being passed around like a joint at a party and turning up on every sharing portal in the known universe. If only there was a way to pay a small fee and have your creations protected and have notices served on those foolish enough to mess with your work… oh wait — that’s what AudioLock is for.
Traxsource wants you to sell more, and has partnered with AudioLock to offer a 20% discount when you sell your music through their music portal. Let’s read the words:
Traxsource partners with AudioLock in an industry first
Traxsource has partnered with the leading music specific anti-piracy service AudioLock to help boost sales for labels using their platform. The innovative deal, the first of its kind, allows anyone who sells their releases on Traxsource to get an exclusive 20% off AudioLock’s anti-piracy services simply by ticking a box within their newly integrated systems. Traxsource is the first digital download store to offer such a facility to its users.
Traxsource’s co-founder Brian Tappert stated “Traxsource was launched in response to music piracy and after speaking to labels and trying systems for ourselves it is clear that AudioLock is the most effective solution available. We wanted to highlight to labels that everyone is affected by piracy and that they can do something about it. We are confident that labels will see a marked difference in expected revenues and chart positions.”
Ben Rush, AudioLock CEO noted “Half of our staff enjoy DJing so we have been well aware of Traxsource as a download store for many years. We’re delighted they have seen the potential benefit for labels to work with us and we are very excited to be able to extend our reach to help protect yet more labels with this partnership.”
The deal provides labels with discounted access to the specialist music anti-piracy company, which is ranked as the leader on the Google Transparency Report for the width of sites (Specified Domains) from which it clears infringing links from Google’s search engine. No other music specific anti-piracy service removes infringing material from as many Specified Domains as AudioLock according to Google’s statistics. With almost a single click it also makes it quick and simple for a label to start protecting a whole release.
WHAT IS AUDIOLOCK?
In a nutshell, AudioLock is personal security for your music. Should you choose to use them for your current tracks or back catalogue, they’ll do the following on your behalf:
High Priority Protection, just £5 per track
- Scans continuously 24/7
- Scans websites, forums, blogs, file search sites, torrent search sites, social media sites and search engines
- New feature also scans YouTube and SoundCloud allowing for easy removal of content from these sites
- Removes files from file lockers (also known as cyber lockers)
- Removes infringing site links from Google and Bing
- Removes torrent links from torrent search engines
- Fast takedowns (within a few minutes) for the majority of file lockers
- Downloads and fingerprints each file to match it against your content
- DMCA notices automatically sent
- Realtime stats showing the state of each link
Back Catalogue Protection, just £1 per track
- Exactly the same as above except the scanning is much slower, only checking once per fortnight.
That’s pretty rigorous if you ask me. It’s like having black ops teams keeping an eye on your stuff and dealing harshly with people who don’t show suitable respect. Here’s a video showing how it all works:
Clearly AudioLock is comprehensive and as such is getting the backing of some heavy hitters in the music industry. Obviously nothing is going to 100% effective, and people will always find ways to avoid measures such as AudioLock. But casual sharers will be more inclined to buy if they can’t find what they’re after via the usual avenues. And those who use your music for mixtapes and videos without permission will be less inclined to do so if they’re getting DCMA notices too.
The pricing is considerably better than I expected, and doing it on a per track basis for just £5 a month seems like an absolute bargain. The question is if people not sharing your music has an impact on overall exposure and sales. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword to be honest.
OVER TO YOU
Do you make music? If so, are you up for paying to keep your music in the online outlets and not in torrents? Or do you believe that you’ll be OK with the income that you derive and that the bigger picture of sharing is exposure which in turn equals more sales?
As a DJ and consumer of music, do you laugh in the face of pointless security measures knowing that whatever you want is always available in some dark corner? Or do you vehemently believe that artists should get paid for their music?
I see that you say “it scans the internet”, my question is how ? Do they scan each music file and compare it to an original or is it the title ? Most “protection” i’ve seen only scans the title and that can be changed (I have to do when uploading old vinyl to youtube). I’m not a pirate, just curious.
Watching the video, it seems to be most effective at controlling file sharing sites. Given that you can also apply a fingerprint, I’m assuming that some sort of audio matching is done on Youtube and Soundcloud.
Then they only have to do something about torrents :) , not just piratebay either, over here we have access to well over 50 active torrent sites. The Spanish government have just cancelled all the bans saying they were ineffective (in other words they couldn’t be bothered with all the extra work). So piracy remains.
I’m not sure if blocking download sites helps that much. In my experience, if I can’t find it I don’t bother buying it (mainly cause if I was going to pirate a song, it probably wasn’t great anyway). However, people who don’t care about audio quality can still get your stuff off youtube, so not sure how effective Audiolock is at actually boosting sales.
I used to be pretty big into music sharing and quickly found that Stones Throw Records were REALLY on top of taking stuff down. As a result, I often bought their music, and didn’t share it. It wouldn’t surprise me if they used this service.
I think it depends on what your demand is. If you’re like me and are struggling to get people to even listen to your tracks, then people pirating your stuff is great, but when you transcend that and are trying to jump up to a professional musician, where you’re still “Indie” or “Underground” but very, very well known in these circles, I think something like this could be very helpful.
I think for a lot of less nerdy people, not having easy access to pirated things really makes them more likely to buy media. Some people just don’t want to fuss about with torrents or what have you.
and for what it’s worth, I buy all of my music now and it’s so worth it :)
Lol, controlling piracy. They just won’t give up, wont they?
OK, let’s assume AudioLock works effectively. Then What? Is the current state of the music business allowing artists to thrive (apart from the established ones)?
That’s a much bigger can of worms beyond the scope of AudioLock. In the current climate, the aim is stop sharing through the normal channels.
I often but tracks after hearing them in mix tapes, so if audiolock is removing the mixtapes then this could, as you said, be a double edged sword and actually lose producers money. I whole heartedly agree that something needs to be done about piracy but if a track is in a mixtape then it’s no good someone trying to rip it as it won’t be a stand alone track.
what are they going to do about the artists who get 50K plays on spotify and make .50 cents for those plays. This seems like a much bigger issue than a few pirated copies of a track.
So nothing’s actually locked at all then, really?
Your tracks are not protected, they’re just hunted down and removed once they’re out in the wild. So any that were downloaded before the software found the location are still out there, and nothing prevents them being played.
Any that are being distributed offline from person to person escape the “lock”.
I also find it amusing that you’re expected to upload all your music to their site, then they charge you for it. Cash cow!
the most they’ll be able to do is request something get taken down… half the torrent sites will ignore the request. there are plenty of countries where they flat out DGAF about copyright. This will not be able to stop anything…
The way I see it DJs are introducing the music to the masses.
If it wasn’t for DJ Jelly Bean Benitez playing Madonna at a club, She would have never been discovered.
The Music Industry should be giving the music to professional DJs and not charging for it.
key word Professional DJ’s …
I got tons of emails with new music ever week from Capital records ,Sony, Interscope ect ect.
I know I must have spent at least 50,000 on vinyl records in the 70’s and 80’s.
I paid my dues.
I used to live in country where piracy was (and still is) normal way of “buying” stuff online, movie industry is also losing profit here. I personally didn’t have money or way to buy music so I was one of “them”. Now I live in the states and I have money to buy music. I would feel like a shit if I would download illegally track from the artist I love to listen and respect in some way. I feel obligated to my brain to buy their music when I love it. I don’t understand someone who likes music but only when it’s free (illegal). And, all those internet stealers have their jobs and if someone would try to steal from them or their salary they would pull out guns for sure. But, somehow it’s ok for them to steal from others online. On the other hand, people in poor countries don’t have money to buy foreign music and they like it. There you go. It’s a shoplifting if you ask me, and soon it will be regulated more but small artists will not make more profit, only large names and that is ok.