I have just stumbled on this and find it really interesting, so I thought I would put my 2 cents in, so at least you can hear the details from this side before making your minds up.
I run a company called http://www.dittomusic.com; we distribute thousands of artists across over 700 stores . Uniquely we help them with chart registration by handling their Catco and PPL and releasing them through our network of labels. We worked with Koopa on the single “Blag Steal and Borrow”
We had known Koopa a while as they were a really hardworking, gigging band. They had played around 500 gigs over 5 years before releasing anything and built up a genuine fan base. I say this to artists on a daily basis. You can’t release music and expect people to buy it, you have to have a fanbase, which means gigging, blogging, MySpace, everything.
And you have to be relentless at it for a long time, which is what Koopa did.
They spent NO money on PR, we actually did the release for them for free as they didn’t have any money at all.
Quite Great got in touch with Koopa on the Monday that they had charted and offered to work for them for free, based on them receiving more work in the long run.
Our company acts as an umbrella company. We hold no rights to the music. We simply distribute through our record label, handle their Catco / PPL , making them chart eligible.
We had a great discussion about this with Andrew Dubber of New Music Strategies, he also came on our TV show, we resolved it in the end, the link is here.
newmusicstrategies.com/2007/02/27/the-real-story-of-koopa/This is a paraphrase
Being a record label is really a technicality that Catco need to register a song for release. It has to be attached to a PPL label member for the sake of airplay royalties.
You cannot register a song without using Catco and you cannot get a Catco login and the necessary codes to use without being a PPL label member.
It does seem that there is an oxymoron in saying the first unsigned band in the charts seeing as technically you have to be released through a label to chart.
In fact, Koopa have a non-exclusive distribution agreement with us, we do not hold any rights to their songs. They did not sign over the rights to their songs in return for releasing and commercial vantage.
So I feel that they were unsigned but I welcome any points raised to counter that argument.
In reality Koopa were a really hardworking unsigned band that were in the right place at the right time. The media saw a news story and didn’t research it. As far as they were concerned , this new unsigned band had sold downloads and got into the charts.
They had no idea that you had to be chart eligible, why you had to be, or how Koopa managed to be.
We helped them have another 2 top 40 singles and they eventually signed a record deal with Pied Piper records in the states, recording their debut album with Mark from Blink 182.
And on the back of that , our company had 7 top 40 singles, all with unsigned artists and our new model of distribution has had serious knock on effects to the whole industry, making it much easier for an independent artist to release music and putting them on a level playing field to signed artists.
I think any unsigned band that does something significant should be applauded and there is room for everyone in the music industry , so praise needs to go out to everyone who is working hard at their craft.
If check my blog you can see more details of Koopa release along with sales figures , how we helped them with bundling and pre release etc.
dittomusic.com/leedittoblog/ If anyone has any questions feel free to contact me direct on lee@dittomusic.com
Best
Lee
