1. Request for distribution If you are interested in digital distribution of your catalogue through Zebralution, please send an e-mail to new.label@zebralution.com including the following information: Please refrain from sending sound files due to their large data volume! 2. Conclusion of the Agreement Provided we are convinced that we can distribute and market your repertoire effectively, we will send you a contractual offer within 14 days after receiving your request. For any comments or questions regarding our license agreement or any other legal issues, please contact sascha.lazimbat@zebralution.com. If you want to sign the agreement, please send an e-mail with the full name of the licensor (including the form of your company’s business organization), contact details for all contractual issues, and your full address to new.label@zebralution.com. We will then send you three copies of the agreement signed by us. Please return two signed and initialled copies to Zebralution GmbH, Pfuelstr. 5, 10997 Berlin, Germany. It is essential that you electronically transfer your master data at the same time. Please fill in the excel sheet we provide and send it to new.label@zebralution.com by e-mail. 3. Priority Releases first While digital distribution constitutes the fastest way for end customers to discover new music, the background processes nowadays are often still taking up a much longer time than in physical CD distribution, due to complex technical systems and the large number of service providers involved. Therefore, it might take up to six weeks before a title is available online in all shops. Your first step should thus be to provide us with the necessary materials for the digital distribution of your latest upcoming CD releases. As in CD distribution, most of the downloads in the digital world will take place within the first weeks after the release date. Important basic rule! For each release we require: If only one of these items is missing, we cannot process the release! Please send Please send all queries about the metadata excel sheet via e-mail to service@zebralution.com. Please don´t hesitate to contact us if you should wish to deliver products to us via ftp upload rather than sending CDs – also, if you´re located in the U.S., UK or France, we can provide a local post address to ship CDs to. 4. Preparation of the back catalogue As soon as you have provided us with the upcoming new releases, you should start going through your back catalogue and prepare it for digital distribution. Check if you have acquired the necessary rights for digital exploitation from the artists, producers and other licensors. If not, try to clear these rights retroactively. Our requirements in terms of materials as outlined in point 3 are obviously the same for back catalogue releases as for new ones. If you have a large back catalogue, start with your current bestselling releases on CD or vinyl. Since there is no such thing as a return policy in digital distribution and the initial technical setup costs are relatively low, by and by, you should take the opportunity to make your whole back catalogue digitally available. 5. Plan your new releases’ digital availability along with their physical distribution Incorporate digital distribution as an integral part into your CD release campaigns! Just like your physical distributor, we rely on your timely and active participation in order to distribute your catalogue effectively. You should provide us with the materials listed in point 3 (audio CD, artwork, metadata) 6 weeks before the release date, in order to guarantee that your new releases will be available online at the release date set. Most shops require less lead time, but some of the important platforms still need a long time to prepare and process the data. If mistakes are creeping in, we have to correct them manually in a very time-consuming way. For each new release, please provide us with marketing material as described in point 6! 6. Online Sales Marketing One of Zebralution’s major strong points is in online retail marketing. This means that not only do we make your release available online, but we also provide our shops with comprehensive information about the material delivered to them and use all possible means to achieve promotion for the releases through the shops, online (homepage features, genre specials, newsletters) as well as offline (TV spots, advertising etc.). We currently have local online retail marketing staff in the U.S., the UK, France and the German-speaking area who are in close contact with the retailers in those markets. It is therefore essential that our online sales marketing team receives information about the upcoming releases at an early stage. Please submit the easy-to-use new release form that we have developed to us for every new release, and also provide further press releases (best if available both in English and German), press photos, and all information we can employ when discussing a release with the shops (chart entries, media exposure, co-operations, tours, etc.). Please send these to bettina.wohlgefahrt@zebralution.com and make sure that Zebralution has already received all materials listed in point 3 before contacting our online sales marketing team. Nothing is more exasperating than having to call off a big online campaign, because a title is not available in due time. 7. Control of online availability The digital music market is still in its infancy: while looking fully automated and very simple from the outside, in reality, making content available online is a very complex process filled with many pitfalls. We are working on developing an automated system, with which we can check if all titles we have duly delivered to our shop retailers are actually online. You can, however, help us by checking the big international retailers (iTunes storefronts in the U.S., UK, Japan) plus some of the German market leaders’ pages such as Musicload, iTunes, AOL and others one week after the digital release date (some of the shops do not release on Fridays, but on other days of the week). If the titles are not online, please send a note (including the label, artist, title, ISRC, UPC/EAN as well as the names of the shops, in which the title is missing) by e-mail to service@zebralution.com. 8. Loss of Rights / Update of Rights The internet is an extremely easily accessible medium that anyone can use nowadays. Within just a few seconds and only a few clicks, it is possible to find a title in many online shops. It is, thus, of fundamental importance that there are no gaps in the rights chain from the artist, the label and the digital distribution company to the digital shop. If this is not the case, any musician or other owner of rights, who feels that he has not been considered properly, may issue cease-and-desist letters to T-Online or iTunes through his lawyers, not to mention claims for damages, which can reach extremely high levels, particularly in the United States. The shops seek immediate indeminification for such claims from Zebralution and we obviously need to turn to the label for reimbursement in such cases. Please observe the following: All callbacks should be sent by e-mail to service@zebralution.com, including information about the label, artist, title, ISRC, UPC/EAN. Please understand that due to German law provisions, we cannot offer legal advice in legal disputes. 9. Promotion by the label You can increase your catalogue sales, if you let your target group know that titles are available online! Link from the label or artist homepage to one or several of the shops we supply – best would be a so-called “deep link”, which refers to a title directly instead of linking to the start page. Please contact bettina.wohlgefahrt@zebralution.com for more in-depth information on how this could work for your releases. 10. Statements and Payment You will receive all statements and payment directly from our service provider Eva F. Bothe Music Administration within thirty days after the end of each quarter. Queries about the statements can be directly addressed to eva.bothe@music-administration.de; questions about invoicing and payment should be addressed to manuela.griese@zebralution.com. Any questions left? Please address all further queries to the following contacts, due to easier processing preferably by e-mail: