A brief overview of Croatian music release industry (Part 1)
Introduction
About a year and a half ago, I decided to deep dive into music creation and music release business. More specifically, I decided to do the creative/technical part of the job: writing and performing music and lyrics (well not performing the lyrics, this is where I “outsourced” the singing part to singers who do know how to sing actually), and doing the complete production part. I also decided to have all my songs fully officially released, which at the beginning I did not really know what it meant, but with time, I consequently become a discographer for my own music.
So, in this article I shall make an overview of Croatian business entities and societies (along with their respective databases and IT systems which must be filled with the data about the releases) which are involved in making your (digital) music “official”. Note that what shall be described does not include any details on how to create an artist (a singer, or a band) along with their public image, concerts and live shows, merchandise, or other features that are most visible and comprehensible to the wide music audience. Furthermore, the details on releasing music in physical formats (CD, LP…) along with their distribution and sales, as well as the corresponding royalties, are also not covered (today, they may not be necessary, in the beginning at least).
Just the “boring” part of the music business covering the release of a song in digital format.
Turning the song into a release, using “music aggregators”
I have no idea what it looked like to record and release your own music 10 or 20 years ago, let alone earlier times. Today, you can setup your home studio for as little as 2.000 EUR (incl. PC with monitor, sound card, mic, earphones, monitor loudspeakers and licensed software) and create music with enough quality that it can be recognised and played by radio stations (terrestrial and internet) and other online media (streaming services, portals…). Please note that production quality of music recorded in this way can never reach the quality of top singles, but can represent a good starting point in that direction.
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However, in order for your newly recorded song that is sitting in .wav and other formats on your hard drive to become an official single, there are 2 magic numbers that you must somehow obtain: Product ID (or more commonly referred to as UPC/EAN in various software systems – just a barcode actually) and ISRC (International Standard Recording Code – an identifier which identifies this particular music recording, and this one only). If you record 3 different versions of the same song, for example shorter radio version, longer album version and bass-intense club version, they need to get 3 different ISRCs, and UPC/EANs for that matter.
Today it is quite simple, straightforward, and relatively cheap to get those 2 numbers thanks to a big change in music industry brought by the development of streaming services. With the advent of Spotify, iTunes, Deezer and other streaming platforms, along with other online/social media such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and others, another type of service emerged: music aggregators. Those are the companies that, for a certain fixed or recurring fee, release your songs to those major (and minor) online music platforms (those big players do not communicate with small artists directly). Along with your song being released to most music platforms, your song gets UPC/EAN and ISRC codes.
Note that there are, as far as I know, local labels and record companies in Croatia who will provide such a service as well.
Protecting the authors’ copyright
In Croatia, there is a single entity (PRO – Performance Rights Organization) that protects the music/composition and the lyrics copyrights for the author(s) of the musical work, called HDS ZAMP . HDS-ZAMP ensures that the recognized authors of a specific song or an album receive their royalties whenever their pieces of work are somehow “used”: played on the radio or TV, a CD or LP is sold, streamed, played live in a concert, or played in a shopping mall… Note that this covers only the authorship copyrights, it does not have anything to do with performer or master recording copyrights.