I’m rarely impressed by a new service for musicians, but there are exceptions. Audiam looked like it was off to a great start initially in 2013 and appeared to be most of what the makers touted it to be. Time will tell if they can deliver on the initial promise of this service.
In addition to being a YouTube payment service that uses music signature recognition (and I have seen this work well in my own account), they have also allied with DistroKid for other music submissions. Jeff Price, former TuneCore founder, has been looking for opportunities to spread the news of his new venture (be sure to read the comments under that link).
Downsides to being an early entry into this market included no way to recover your passcode if you forgot it. Since December of 2013 they have an easy-to-use password reset mechanism in place.
It’s hard to tell if Audiam will really help musicians or succeed as a business at all at this point. CDBaby includes YouTube in their sync licensing, but you have to pay the album or single price for each submission. TuneCore charges a one-time-fee currently for “Music Publishing” that includes YouTube. Audiam only charges a percentage if you actually get paid from the advertising dollars for the video in which your music is used 100%. In other words, if there are a bunch of other composers’ works in the same video, it’s unlikely that you’ll get paid. Obviously, if there are multiple claims for the same composition, YouTube will put a hold on payments from the video. Be sure that you don’t already have another service representing your compositions when you submit them to Audiam. (See the comments where Peter Wells cleared up my misunderstanding about this.)
Please share in the comments if you’re using Audiam and especially if you’ve started to get payouts. Though I was initially impressed, I’m uncertain if Audiam will be a long-term success at this point.
Thanks for the write-up, Stan. I’m very pleased to say we squished that password bug some time ago, it’s all working fine now.
I think there’s some confusion:
This just isn’t true. In fact, even if multiple works are used in a single video and only of them is yours, you’ll still get your fair share. Happens all the time.
Payment’s improving too. We’ve been paying quarterly to start, but we’re going monthly very soon. YouTube accounts monthly, we account monthly, no delays.
I’m personally working on a new feature of our accounting section I’m really proud of, it’ll be ready soon. I hope you check back then, I think you’ll be amazed at the level of detail.
Thanks again. Audiam is growing enormously, it’s been a tremendous success so far and we’re just getting started. I want your next review of us to be 5/5!
–Peter
Peter Wells
co-founder, Audiam
peter@audiam.com
Thanks for your response, Peter. I know that Jeff and you have been working hard on this service. I definitely appreciate your intentions regarding helping composers in this way. Regarding your points:
No way to change password: I asked to be notified when this was “fixed”. Since I wasn’t notified, I thought it wasn’t fixed.
Multiple works: all of my compositions used in videos with multiple works were removed from my dashboard. When I asked why, I was told by your support team that it was probably because YouTube identified multiple works in the piece and indicated that there would be no individual payouts. The same note indicated that YouTube “does this all the time”.
Payments: Now that I can see “My Money” report, I can tell that the issue with my account is that the advertising has not produced enough to be payable.
I look forward to the next round, too. Thanks again.
Stan
You were correct, Peter. I misunderstood a comment from you when one of my composition claims was removed by YouTube. It’s likely that they could not identify me as the composer, so they removed my claim. I am the composer, so I’ll continue to work with you to get it re-added.
YouTube does pay when there are claims for multiple compositions in a single video. They do not pay when there are conflicting claims against the same composition.
Really appreciate your great support, Peter!
The fee is too high for the service they offer, i give support a 3 out of 10, they dont track all videos from youtube and the worldwide service gets you nothing.
Yes, James, I have to agree with you. Initially, their idea had potential, but I don’t think it has paid off well for musicians or Jeff Price (though I certainly can’t speak for him).
Thanks for dropping by!