Sales/Charts

Imagine that around 500 new trance tracks are released each month. When combined with the other edm genres the total amount of new tracks can be over 5000! And these are all sold in the same shops. 80% of this stuff is useless, something that shouldn’t been released in the first place.

These days trance tracks do sell extremely poor. Average release sells just around hundred copies globally. Even good releases hardly go selling over few thousand copies. So just think about how well the bad releases sell!

Beatport is probably the best place to see how your track is doing globally. However Beatport does not have all releases, it also stopped accepting new labels some time ago. On their front page you can see the global top 100 chart. This chart combines the sales from all genres. The top 10 tracks are selling several thousand copies (up to 40 000 copies). For a trance track to get on the global top 100 is already quite an achievement. There's however own chart for trance tracks only. To get on the top 100 trance list, your track only has to sell a dozen copies in a week or so.

Other smaller stores, such as Audiojelly or Cdjshop, are quite useless. They sell ridiculously low amount of tracks. Top 10 spot is possible to achieve in very few sales. So don't make a fool out of yourself by go yelling "omg, I am number 99 on Audiojelly!". Because it's possible your track only sold one copy in a week.

Illegal downloads

It has dramatically changed the nature of music business, and it seems to be getting worse. Each decent release will be available to download illegally at some point. If your track is popular, illegal downloads can eat big part of the possible sales. There's really nothing anyone can do about it other than to accept it. But then again, how many producers have illegally downloaded their software?

Promotion briefly

This makes the difference whether your track sells a little or nothing.
However this should be the label's headache, not yours.

Examples:

Playlisted on ASOT: A sad truth is that ASOT is the only meaningful "trance" radio show out there. It can increase the sales dramatically if the track is featured on the show several times. However the “fact” that ASOT would have more than 6 million listeners weekly is absolute bullshit (this figure is probably made up by somebody like frostdude). It only has around 3000 listeners when it premieres on DI.FM and this is a station that owns exclusive rights to broadcast it first. So the odds of it getting 100 times more listeners on each other radio station are rather ridiculous. The real number of overall listeners weekly is more like 100 000.
Playlisted on other radio shows: Unless we are talking about BBC radio one, the most trance radio shows do not gain much listeners. There's literally thousands no-name DJs having their own radio show, being playlisted by them makes no difference.
Random forum spamming: Makes no difference.
Featured on compilations: CD compilations generate interest. Having your name on various compilations will make you known and heard.
Vinyl release: Vinyl release stands up in the middle of thousand mp3s.



Problem situations & how to solve them

When there's a problem you should always contact the label and let them know about it. And essentially try to solve it privately. Sometimes the problem cannot be solved between the label. In this situation getting a lawyer might be the only solution, however it's not very ideal to hire one for the sake of few hundred Euros. So the best way to avoid getting into a problem situation is to avoid dealing with labels that seem untrustworthy. Common sense helps a lot!

Example situations:

Unpaid royalties

A typical issue is that the label is not paying the royalties on time. This is a common problem especially with smaller labels. You should refer to your contract when the payments are due. If the parsons running the label are not paying them on time or even ignoring your emails, there’s a problem indeed. You should lose your cool once they are late for over a year.
You can try to pressure the label by saying you will hire a lawyer or taking it to public. If this doesn't help, then you just have to accept the fact that you are not getting paid and not to deal with that label anymore.

Track released without permission

A situation where the label has released your track without your agreement. An email where you agree to have the track released is already an agreement. However all professional labels will ask you to sign a proper contract. If you haven’t agreed to let the label release the track at any point this is a serious breach which should never happen. If you have already signed the track with another label you should contact them immediately and let them handle the situation. If you haven’t, the situation is trickier. A possible solution is to demand the parsons to remove the track immediately and request financial compensation. The compensation should be larger than the expected sales. Personally I would consult a lawyer; I just find such situation very unacceptable.

A bad contract

If you have signed a “bad” contract, meaning the terms are unfair, you are the only one to blame. The label can offer you anything, but nobody forces you to sign it! Only solution is to learn what a bad contract is and not to sign them.

Unreleased track

This is something that happens rarely. A situation where the label is refusing to release the track for a reason or another and is unwilling to reverse the contract. Unless the contract is stating anything about your ability to reverse it or the label having to release the track under certain period of time, they can do that. In this situation there's once again very little you can do. In an extreme situation you can go ahead and release the track without the labels permission. It can get you sued, but you do what you gotta do. I would suggest this in a situation where the label has mystically disappeared and not to be reached anymore.

Leaked track

This is something that may happen during demo submission for example. Some labels do handle demos very carelessly (even freely accessible ftp server). Only solution is to choose carefully who you send your demo.

Stolen track

Unfortunately there's people that can shamelessly take the credits of someone else’s work. The extreme situation is
where a person simply stamps his/her on the track and calls it his/her own work. The old trick of sending an email to yourself and not opening it does not work, it doesn't held up in court for example. Again be careful
who you send your track and if somebody does it after it has been signed, inform the label and let them handle the situation. But generally it is very difficult to prove who originally made the track.

Plagiarism

If you notice that someone has heavily, and rather obviously, ripped off your complex melodies, the only solution is to humiliate this producer in public by posting samples on forum or youtube. If just one or two notes are ripped, you shouldn’t get distressed, since it happens rather often and it’s mostly unintentional.

Lawsuit

If you have decided to screw with a large label by breaching the contract, you may end up facing a lawsuit. You may need to travel to the country the label is based end up paying heavy cash. A solution is not to breach the contracts you have signed. And if you do, at least make up a great excuse story.

"Going to public"

A situation where you have been screwed by a label or another producer and you decide to present your case in public. Some call this a childish thing to do, which it is, IF you have caused it yourself by doing something wrong. However when the other party has either stopped all communication or is otherwise refusing to solve the situation within reasonable measures you have every right to warn others!

Small producers do have very little protection if a label decides to screw them over. If the screwed person does nothing to it, another person is bound to get screwed later and this will go on as long as nobody does anything about it.

If a big artist gets screwed, s/he is most likely going to bring it up
on interviews at some point, possibly getting major attention to it (E.g.
Paul van dyk vs MFS, James Holden vs Silver Planet just to mention a few).

So if you get screwed and there’s nothing else you can do to solve it privately, you can bring it to the public to warn others. If your story is true there will be other people to back it up. But be sure to handle it rationally and that you at least know the basics of English language. Note that emails and contracts are always confidential and private material. You are not allowed to scan and post them in public!