Peter Wells: TuneCore After The Brain Drain – A Year Later, Artist Have No Voice



UPDATE 2 – An op-ed by Peter Wells, the co-founder of TuneCore and more recently Audiam.

What happens to a music company when the money men take

over, when the songs are reduced to “widgets,” when the heart and spirit have

been cut out? The company focuses solely on revenue at any expense, and they

forfeit the opportunity to make the world a better place for artists. The

artist is silenced.

July 20, 2012, was a black day at TuneCore. They’d already

laid me off, one of the three founders, two months before, a baffling move no

one was able to explain except, “this comes from the Board of Directors.” There

were more surprises to come, and on that hot July day, they let TuneCore

Founder, CEO and President Jeff price go—or fired him without cause, or laid

him off or who knows what. They appear to keep changing the story; the Board

wasn’t clear and still isn’t. With no interim CEO and no search plan for a replacement, they took action without

even understanding their own position. It was to become a pattern that, in my

opinion, works to the detriment of the artists, employees and shareholders of

TuneCore.

In those days, the Board was four people: Fred Bourgoise,

Marty Albertson (CEO of gear retailing giant Guitar Center who is now in a

battle with its own employees over being able to earn enough money to live

since Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital acquired it,

Gill Cogan, (of Opus Venture, the venture capitalist “partner”), and Founder

and then CEO/President Jeff Price. Soon after terminating Jeff and removing me,

TuneCore’s new management appeared to immediately shift away from helping artists

and creating new opportunities for them, instead focusing on harassing and

threatening the original founders, advisors and employees.

It’s the sort of thing you’d see in over-the-top Hollywood movies that could

never be real.

The new TuneCore closed down the artist newsletter that for

years ran articles written by music business insiders and professionals, educating

the artist on copyright, how money flows, how to market and promote and exposing

industry pitfalls. They shut down an email news list called TuneCouncil that

discussed and explored the industry and engaged in thoughtful, useful

conversation with subscribers. Now only did they create no new TuneCore Survival

Manuals (a set of free booklets that focused purely on educating the artist on

new topics), they stopped producing or handing out the old ones at events. So

too went the videos

and podcasts. Multi-hour educational videos vanished from

YouTube. TuneCore stopped speaking publicly on panels and stopped writing

articles of any educational substance for their blog. Nothing was put up to

fill the vacuum. The artist was set adrift.

The pattern was just getting started. TuneCore recently

announced deals where it gives away its customers’ music and metadata to third

party companies, allows those companies to sell and make money off that data

and gets none of the money back for the artists and then—adding insult to

injury—charges the artists to give their information to these third parties.

Worse still, through its recently revised publishing agreement, TuneCore now

forces artists to be exclusive on regards to master and synchronization

licensing into TV shows, films etc, not allowing them to solicit help to get

their own music placed into TV shows and films. If an artist scores a placement

themselves, even if TuneCore had nothing to do with it, TuneCore requires the

artist pay them the money they earned

and let TuneCore take a percentage, or so it seems. That’s “exclusivity” for you.

TuneCore went mute. It lost its voice, either because it

didn’t know what to say or it choose to no longer educate its customers. Management

is only creative when it comes to fabricating attacks on those that created,

founded, advised and originally funded the company. Then again, what can we

expect, when Cogan installs the former CEO of an auto repair company (Art Shaw

of RepairPal http://repairpal.com/team) to sit on the Board of directors of

TuneCore—something that made little sense to me until I learned this person

appears to be an acquaintance of Cogan’s. Was this the right choice for the

company? A year later, there’s no hint of vision.

The new TuneCore refuses to hold its annual shareholder

meetings (despite written requests and Delaware law), appeared to ridicule

other non-founder shareholders and created fictitious accusations against Jeff,

Gary and me. I don’t like when bullies threaten my friends, so I wrote the

Board and the TuneCore shareholders about the baseless attack against Jeff. Cogan

and the board responded with more threats, inventing allegations against Jeff

and me. And then shortly after my letter to the board they just happened to fire

Gary Burke, the third co-founder of TuneCore and my husband. They made up

absurd lies, such as the infamous “Bed & Breakfast” fiasco, where they

suggested Jeff fabricated a $522 accommodation invoice when he was in Los

Angeles on TuneCore business with other TuneCore employees. (He didn’t, we shoved the proof under their noses, they backed down.) All this

vitriol, all this legal posturing, and all this time and money spent on scare

tactics—how does that help artists?

TuneCore began to lose more employees. Jeff, Gary and I were

gone, and over the next twelve months at least another six key people that I am

aware of (some who had been there for over five years in marketing, artist

support and the tech team) were either fired, downsized, let go or quit. That’s

nine people all gone. All that knowledge, all these good people, all that brain

drain.

Brain drain has sunk companies before. You survive by

redoubling your focus on the customer, by providing them what they need even

before they know they need it. That was Jeff’s great strength, and I’ve watched

as those programs were dismantled over the last year, one by one. Jeff wanted

to do direct licensing with publishers, as it would place far more power and

money into songwriters’ hands. From what I can see, that initiative died.

TuneCore still reaches out to their artists, now more than ever, but not with

information, education or assistance, only cries of “SALE SALE SALE!” and

constant tinkering with the deal terms.

Because that’s how money men think. Music is just a product,

right? It’s just an asset collected from client A and moved to vendor B. It’s

not like music has hundreds of years of complex, often backwards legal quirks

and business practices that artists need to know about. TuneCore has become a

numbers game, and, in my opinion as co-founder of the company, this last year

has shown almost no growth or innovation designed to help artists. Where are

all the new ideas, the new markets, the new territories, the new value? The

music industry doesn’t sit still. It changes daily. Work in the present and build

for the future: that’s how you survive and grow and remain valuable.

It’s sad. I loved the company we built, I loved its

commitment to disrupting the music world on behalf of the independent artist, making

it better for them. Gary and I still own a sizable chunk of TuneCore. It’s been

suggested to us that we stifle our opinions and feelings about TuneCore, lest

we make it worth less money to us. I can’t do that. I can’t endorse and support

a company that I believe is doing wrong, no matter what my stake in it.

Something’s not right at TuneCore. In my opinion, the existing board and

venture capital group are hostile towards TuneCore shareholders, employees and

customers. Where it’s not adversarial, it’s something almost worse: adrift in

its own space, running without any vision, unable or unwilling to invest in

artists or educate them to help themselves. They’re tinkering with price points

instead of innovating. And the artist gets no voice, nothing to be heard above

the constant emails advertising TuneCore’s latest “hurry up!” special.

Had we all remained with TuneCore this last year, where

would they be now? They’d be on the cutting edge, rather than the spamming side .

They’d be harnessing the power of new social media rather than cutting artists

off from vital information. They’d be reworking the digital music industry,

bringing new business models into place that account for the new ways fans use

music, instead of hoping the next email flier sucks in a few extra dollars.

To the artists who trusted Jeff and Gary and me early on,

when TuneCore was all about you: hang in there. Maybe TuneCore’s new management

will stop threatening old employees with lawsuits and turn its attention back

to you. I certainly hope so. It could be a beautiful thing again, in the right

hands.

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