Hi everyone. Thought I'd pop in and answer any questions.
I hope I'm not breaking forum etiquette by doing so and I'll try to avoid blatant self-promotion and stick to the facts.
My name is Andy Wilson and Songscribbler is my site. It started in earnest in January and has grown at a moderate, but steady, pace since then. The idea is that songscribblers take their best recordings of their best songs and post them to the site where they are displayed to the general download audience. To become a songscribbler costs £20 for the first year. £15 subsequent years. 1st year membership includes up to 5 song uploads up to 8 meg MP3. Additional song uploads are £1.
You select the 1 minute slice you would like previewed by potential buyers during the upload process (it's easy!)
If anyone buys a download of your song, 50p per download, I deduct credit card or premium rate charges, then VAT and divide the remainder 80/20 in the songwriter's favour. Payents are made via worldpay. You can draw down on your account any amount anytime as long as it's above (I think) £5. Bottom line is it works out to about £0.31 real money to you per download.
Did you get that???? (takes a breath)
I get no rights to your music save for the right to sell it on my site. There's a clause in the contract that gives me a little bit of revenue if the song gets a publishing deal within the renewable annual period. But if you just don't renew, I have no rights.
Streaming at present is real player only but this is being changed in the next few weeks to something a bit more versatile and acceptable.
Promotion to the download audience hasn't really started yet as I want to be quite sure the visitor has plenty of choice when I invite them in. When that time comes I have some reasonably exciting ideas to get things going. Join up and you'll learn more in the newsletter.
What else? ah yes
"Do they have a nest egg to get them through the initial organization and set-up?"
This bit is largely already spent. And it wasn't cheap either given the security and so on. The site was built by a professional IT Services company based on a written spec from me. Some people don't like the look but it's tough as nails I assure you.
"Do they have their own recording equipment-studio, or will this be subcontracted? Or is the musician-subscriber expected to furnish a cd?"
To be quite honest I'll take it any way I can get it while the site builds. Ideally you will upload tracks yourself as MP3, together with lyrics and notes. We have a nice intuitive interface to help with this that you won't see if you're not a member. But if you want to join but can't do that for whatever reason, I'll take a CD no problem and just do the work myself. I've already said I want to get the site populated asap to start work on the download audience. We have no recording facilities but intend to affiliate with existing studios in the future, maybe. But that's way in the future.
We've had some buying activity on the site already and a few grinning songwriters, but until I invite the downloaders in, that parts still a bit of an unknown.
I think I've said enough, although I have lots more to say. Feel free to post further questions.
There are some great songs on the site. I'm constantly amazed by how much really good stuff never makes money. I hope that my site makes commerce more accesible to the majority of songwriters. That's the plan.