Frequently Asked Questions
Got questions? We've got answers. Select a topic!
FAQ - General
What types of services does TAC offer? A LOT. Our goal is to become a one-stop shop for arists! Here's the current list: 1) Long-term Spotify marketing via services like ArtistPool and Advanced Marketing, and our shorter-term Spotify marketing via One-Off Promotions for additional marketing boosts, like Launch, Ad Studio, and direct IG/FB campaigns. 2) Custom YouTube Marketing Campaigns as either One-Offs or Year-long campaigns 3) TikTok ads via our One-Off campaigns 4) Radio Promotion 5) Artist Advances via Catalog Leasing 6) Music Distribution 7) 1 on 1 Artist Advising zoom session via our Anthem Advisor feature 6) Graphic Design services 7) Artist Education via our course Spotify Growth Machine 8) The Anthem Network - our free discord community for artists and creatives to connect and collaborate! And probably more coming soon ...
How can I be considered for your label? Just fill out our free contact form on the website or hit us up on IG! @theanthemcompany. NOTE: we are decently exclusive when choosing our label artists, so know that in advance!
What other artists have you worked with? Short answer: a lot. Head over to our IG page @theanthemco and do some scrolling, OR, check out our Testimonial Reviews on our homepage!
Can I work with you if I work with another marketing company? Yessiree! It can sometimes be trickier to track your progress with more “cooks in the kitchen”, but many of our artists do it, and it can be an effective strategy to get marketing pushes on multiple fronts. We'd love to join your marketing team!
Are there any discounts for agencies, managers, or labels? Yes! If you manage multiple artists, please contact us via email so we can jump on a zoom call and asess your situation and arrange discounted custom rates for your promotions! Note: There is usually a 10% off discount across ALL Marketing features for approved managers and labels. (Click A Guide To Our Marketing Services under Marketing Services to see every feature.)
FAQ - Spotify Promotion
How will you promote my music? We use our TAC network (music playlist curators and marketers) to promote your work on Spotify. We have relationships with tons of independent playlist curators, and we also run native ad campaigns to get initial traction and boost engagement. Our service combines these two different approaches simultaneously. 1- We run native ad campaigns across social media to drive traffic to Spotify. This way, we get your music exposure and guarantee REAL plays/streams by people who are genuinely interested. 2- We send your chosen song(s) to our playlist curator network so they can consider and promote your tracks. This method yields different results for every artist, but they love discovering new music and more-often-than-not choose to add new songs! With both strategies, you’ll certainly get REAL and TARGETED engagement. Even though results may vary based on different factors, you’ll surely notice the improvement. We don’t ever send bots or any type of fake engagement. Our services fully comply with Spotify’s terms of service.
Where should I start? You'll want to either start in our ArtistPool or Advanced Marketing via Anthem Silver, Gold, or Platinum! They're designed to consistently marketing your music across an entire year at a time, which has proven to maximize the algorithm potential. Once you join one of those services, you will then qualify to use our One-Off Playlisting and Ad Studio campaigns whenever you want additional Spotify promotiont to give your music a boost! This is great for new releases or songs that are starting to get traction!
Can I swap out my current song(s) in ArtistPool for my new release(s)? Absolutely! We highly encourage you to swap out your older songs for your new releases, via our Song Swap/Launch portal. Our audience is always hungry for fresh new music and we want to provide you with the easiest opportunity to market your future releases!
What if I join ArtistPool but then down the road I want to jump out? If at any point you want to end your yearly ArtistPool subscription marketing plan, just email or DM us and we'll get it taken care of! Easy peasy. Note: you will get to finish out any time left your marketing term, and then your marketing will conclude on the date you first began.
What genres do you market? Our main 4 genres are CCM/Worship/Christian Pop, Indie, Pop, and Country.
Is it really 100% safe? Absolutely! We only use organic methods to promote to real people, and we've never had an artist flagged for fake streams. Your campaign always has the possibility of performing better or worse, but we strive to do the best we can. But it is indeed an organic promotion. We cannot force people to like your track, but we can do our absolute best to ensure it gets seen and considered by the right people.
Can I see some results you've gotten for other artists? Yes! Go the 'Education' tab at the top of our website and select 'Case Studies'. There you'll be able to see our updated collection of marketing results we've achieved with other artists!
Where do you advertise my music? We advertise through social media like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Spotify using native ads. You’ve probably seen many native ads across the internet, especially on big news sites. It’s our proprietary system of programmatic native ads that achieves this cost-effective type of campaign, alongside with our network of independent playlist curators.
For how long does my promotion run? Our services typically go for as long as your campaign is scheduled or until cancellation. For ArtistPool it is 1 year, and for Advanced Marketing and the One-Off Promotoions it's custom to the campaign selection!
Do you use any type of bots? Heck-to-the NO. We don’t ever send bots or any type of fake engagement. All campaigns are based on a combination of native advertising and track distribution to playlist curators, according to the chosen campaign. Our services fully comply with Spotify’s terms of service. Still not convinced? Check out all our Artist Reviews on our Testimonials page!
Can I make money with this promotion? All our promotions are 100% royalty eligible, so you won’t face any problems in regards to collecting royalties. Please contact your music distributor to know more about how royalties work.
What if I want to cancel or change my plan? You can cancel or change your plan at anytime with no penalties or fees (unless you have a special custom contract for a set amount of time, which is usually more for larger budgets.) We’ll keep working on your campaign as long as you keep your subscription active. Simply contact us using this website or access your billing dashboard to make any changes. Even if you stop working with us, you may always get in touch for tips, feedback, and assistance to grow your channel popularity. We’re happy to help.
Is there an affiliate program for marketers? At this time, yes, we have an affiliate program in beta test, primarily for producers and managers!
FAQ - Artist Advances & Funding
Why should I lease my music? Many reasons. 1) Because our investors in your music will focus on growing the value of your music by finding more and more revenue streams for it, and after the intial advance is recouped, you make 70% of the higher revenue for the remainder of the 5 years. And then after 5 years you keep/own 100% again. Forever. Essentially, it's like they're leasing your Toyota and then returning you a G-Wagon. Not bad. 2) Your brand and platforms will naturally grow as a bi-product of our investors growing your revenue streams! This means more listeners and fans finding your music organically! 3) Because you need funding NOW and you don't want to have to sell your assets to make it happen. Don't sell your music. Lease it. 4) Here's a big one: because leasing your music allows you to self-fund your next project, you'll own 100% of that future project and have WAY more leverage to shop it around with labels. (FYI labels are always more interested in artists that own their masters). Meaning, this vastly increases your chances of getting signed. 5) Think about it like this: Would you rather have 100% of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup (sounds good right) OR 70% of an entire Dairy Queen Reese's Peanut Butter Cup icecream cake? One of these is a MUCH bigger portion. Gimme that cake. 6) It literally pays to have a team invested in you, because when you win, they win, and when they win, you win. It's mutually benefitical for everyone to keep growing the asset, which creates passive income for you.
What would I do with the money? A LOT. The short answer is to fund whatever it is that you want to do next! Some artists use the funds to buy a house or a rental property. Some use it to buy a new car or van or bus for touring. Many use it to fund their next project/album that they believe is going to be their most successful project yet!
How much can I make leasing my music? It's going to be different for every artist depending on their audience sizes and current numbers, but these lease agreements can range from anwhere from $15k for smaller artists to multi-million dollar deals for larger ones. And remember, you keep 70% after recoupment AND you still get to own the music masters at the end of the day! Think about that. Note: the more listeners you have that consistently come back to stream your music (we call these repeat listeners), the larger your advance will be. That means that within the Spotify For Artists "Source of Streams" section, you want the most data coming from "Listener's Own Playlists and Library" and "Algorithmic Playlists".
What type of music can I lease? Anything goes. Originals, covers, mashups/medleys (need to be cleared first), music with samples (need to be cleared first), and any type of genre.
How long is the lease agreement? Usually 5 years. This means that for 5 years, our investors will own your masters. BUT, the second your advance is recouped, you start making 70% of all the new income they generate for you, even if it hasn't been 5 years. And after 5 years, you will once again own your masters AND you keep your 100% cut of the revenue streams they've created for you. Win freakin' win.
How much of a cut does TAC take for managing the deal? The rate that TAC takes is on a sliding scale, where the larger the amount of money we can get you, the less % we actually make. We set it up this way so that you, the artist, benefit the most from leasing your music! The rates are as follows: 10% of Artist Advance where the Artist Advance is up to $100,000 8% of Artist Advance where the Artist advance is between $100,000 and $250,000 5% of Artist Advance where the Artist advance is over $250,000
Why does TAC take a cut of the profit? Just like how managers, labels, booking agents, and even attorneys take a % of the profit from deals and opportunities they create (we call this found income), we also take a % to cover our time that we invest in setting up and managing these lease agreements, plus the time it's taken us to create relationships with our network of trustworthy investors and quality artists! But again, you, the artist, will always get the lion's share profit and the greatest financial benefit out of these deals than anyone else involved.
What's the process look like? There's 10 steps: 1) You fill out the free Artist Advance form and then we'll schedule a free zoom call with you! 2) We jump on our free zoom call to see if this is a good fit and to collect your 'Statements', which is just a summary of the last 3-6 months of your income your music has generated, and to get a screenshot of your Source of Streams within your Spotify For Artists account. You can upload these via the free Anthem Advance form. 3) At this point we take all this information, we'll give it to our investors, and then we'll come back to you with their offer. 4) Now you'll have as much time as you neeed to consider the offer, or even consider asking for a counter offer, and we can even connect you with their team to talk through any further questions you might have. 5) Once you've agreed to an amount, our investors will send out a draft of what the contract will look like, and you will again have as much time as you need to consider the offer and ask any questions that may come up. 6) Then they will need to collect all your metadata (which is how your songs' streaming and purchasing numbers are tracked across all the digital platforms -- we're talking things like ISRC codes), and your music master splits (aka who owns what % of the songs). 7) Next, they will populate the agreement with all the metatdata they collected, and if everything looks good, you sign and lock in the deal! 8) Then they will need you to send them your music masters so that they can re-upload the songs through their distribution platform. This usually takes 2-4 weeks. 9) Once the songs are released through their distrbution and all the metadata has transferred over from the original uploads, you will be required to remove your songs from your original distribution service. 10) Once your music is removed and now it is only uploaded via their distribution, you will receive your agreed upon payment within 30 days. And just like that, you've got the funding for your next big thing!
What methods of catalog promotion / connections do you have to increase the value by 20-40%? We don’t do traditional promotion (music PR or advertising) as we do not see direct correlation. We’re incentivized to increase pure income of catalogue and have to do it in a way we can do for all artists, so we concentrate on the following: - meta data optimization (collect any missing income) - best in case collection and monetization against Facebook, instagram, YouTube, tiktok) - monetization against twitch - micro licensing to brands for social media - biggest pitches for traditional sync - Spotify discovery mode And we hope more features to come!
What do the deals look like? The deals look like this: Term: 5 years (100% of rights return to you after the term) Advance: $xxx,xxx USD (estimation, with a recent statement we can give an exact offer/quote for free) Split: 70/30 royalty in your favor, once advance is recouped, for the remainder of the 5 years Options: None. We only license the catalogue and you are free to continue to release new music on your own. Physical rights: None, you keep all physical rights (so you can keep selling CD’s and Vinyls and keep 100% of the profit)
FAQ - Distribution
Why can I get 10-15% higher earning rates on my music with your distribution? Because our direct relationships with DSPs via our platform partners allow us to negotiate better rates. Fun fact: labels and distributors are getting WAY higher rates per stream than Distrokid, Tunecore, CD Baby, etc.
Why does TAC keep 15-30% of my royalties? We manage all the uploading and backend work for the artists we distribute, we've secured the relationshps via our label to open up the opportunties for artists to make WAY more distributing through us, and all that managing and netowrking is a LOT of work for our team. Trust us, we pull our weight for that %!
How come my music is placed is so many more stores than through others? Because direct relationships with DSPs via our platform partners AND the technology within our distribution system simply opens up more opportunities that what companies like Distrokid, TuneCore, and CD Baby can do.
Why is Spotify's Discovery Mode important? Because it encourages Spotify to nonstop recommend your music to your ideal listeners via Radio and Algorithm playlists! Think marketing on steroids. This is something the major labels have used for YEARS, but now we are making available to our artists. Note: Spotify takes a 30% commission on all NEW radio-based algorithmic streams they generate for you, but when those listeners stick around, you get 100% every stream after the first one. To say this is a win win would be an understatement.
How long will my music take to transfer into your distribution? Usually about 2-3 weeks, assuming the metadata you provide us with is accurate!
What's the process look like for transferring my music 1. You send us all your exact masters, song names, metadata (ISRC #'s and UPC #'s), and other metadata via our Music Uploaded link. 2. We take all that info and then reupload it your DSP profiles (Spotify/Apple Music, etc.). 3. Once it's uploaded and we confirm that the metadata synced (aka all your streams and playlists are still the same), you remove your uploads through your original distribution. 4. Boom. You’re rolling with TAC Distribution. NOTE: we encourage all artists to keep ALL their song assets backed up somewhere, like Dropbox, in the event that you eventually want to pull out after your contract is up. (These are all the assets you need to submit to start distributing with us.)
Will my music still stay on all the same playlists it's already on? YES! That's why we require the exact ISRC and UPC codes for your music, so that you keep all the exact same data after the transfer.
Can I do royalty splits for all my songs if I need to? Yup! We can split royalties up just how services like DistroKid do. Just tell us in the Music Uploader who to split the %'s with, include their email, and how much they get, and then they'll get an email to sign up for a free collaborator account to claim their %.
FAQ - Radio Promotion
How effective is your radio promotion? Short answer: VERY. We've partnered with the major labels (as in the BIG GUYS) to offer independent artists the EXACT SAME radio marketing opportunities that they use for their own artists. It's like getting the marketing power of a major label while maintaining the freedom of an independent artist.
How long are the campaigns? 3 months total for whatever tier you choose.
How do I sign up? FIRST, go to our Marketing Services at the top of our website and select Radio Promotion. Then fill out that form with all the info and submit it. This is where our approval process begins. You will not have to pay for your feature until you have been approved. Once approved, you'll be sent your custom invoice, and once that's paid, your campaign will begin within 5-7 days!
Will I be able to track my results? Heck yeah you will. You'll be given a 24/7 tracking link to monitor your results!
What are some of the Magazines and Blog Reviews? Here's some examples of where your song gets submited to: Love, TheMusic.reviews, Celebrity Zones, Entertainment Eyes, Indie Band Guru, Imari, MusicExistence, IndieShark, FamousandMade, Fame, IndiePulse Music, Vents, Razorfish, Is, Hollywood Digest, BandBlurbNeuFutur, Rasputins Reviews, Gashouse, Daily Dose,Daily Pop!, Indie Music Reviews, Valhalla Music Blog, Indie Mindy, Carlito’s Music Blog, PANGE, and more!
What are some examples of the networks and stations I'll be played on? We can get you played on FM stations and networks around the world and on charts. Including DRT(Digital Radio Tracker) charts with major artists. Below are some of the charts we work with: Billboard - All Genres US Top 20 – All Genres Euro Indie Music all genres World Indie Music Charts all genres Digital Radio Tracker National Airplay Charts – All Genres Record World all genres Cashbox all genres Roots Music Report all genres World Radio Charts – All Genres Music Row – Country Americana Charts – Americana American Independent Charts Bandwagon Radio Network The bulk of our stations are FM stations that report and are tracked by DRT, and maybe less than 10% will be internet based.
FAQ - One-Off Promotions (general)
What are One-Off Promotions? Think of our One-Off Promotions as our a la carte menu. They're marketing features that you can pick and choose to run at any point, as many times as you want, a la carte style. The Spotify One-Offs stretch beyond our immediate playlist network to include other powerful marketing features, and these campaigns are usually shorter bursts around a month long. Simply put, artists get the best results by combining our year-round marketing features with the one-off, quick burst marketing features.
FAQ - One-Off Spotify FB/IG Campaign
Why are these campaigns SO effective? Because we send these ads to your ideal fans and listeners based off which 'similar artists' you give us to target (3-5 total), and since they love music just like yours, they convert VERY easily into your new fans and listeners. And since these ads lead back directly to your Spotify song/album/profile link, artists see a huge conversion to save rates and listeners and increased streams. And THAT is what causes these campaigns to frequently make the campaign's song chart on Spotify.
How long does this campaign go for? 10-14 days, but songs tend to continue to perform really well after the ads stop running.
Do I need a music video for the song in order to run these ads? Ideally, you have a music video that you can take a short 15-30 sec clip from for the ad campaign, as these tend to perform best. But don't worry, because if you don't have a music video for the song, you can send us the cover art for the song, and we can still run it with that!
Does this really cause songs to chart on Spotify? Yes! Although we cannot guarantee it will happen for every artist or every song, it does very frequently happen. VERY frequently.