New international service enables musicians to earn 70 percent royalties from downloads

  • Royalties are among the highest in the music industry
  • Bands and artists can join and upload their work – free of charge – at www.thelisteningzone.com
  • Site provides music lovers worldwide with exciting new material from artists across all genres

LONDON – 15th July 2009 – Rickshaw Productions Limited, an audiobook publishing house, has launched a major new international service on its website that enables musicians to earn 70 percent royalties from their downloaded recordings. For the first time, www.thelisteningzone.com (TLZ) provides independent musicians with an easy-to-use facility to upload and offer their works to new global audiences – the service is free of charge and non-exclusive. TLZ offers some of the highest royalties at a time when the music industry and artists are scrutinising digital downloads and how much artists should receive from them.
   
When artists upload their work on to the website, TLZ handles all aspects of sales and payments – from the customer to the musician. The recordings will be available for thousands of music lovers worldwide. The service is fully transparent, allowing musicians to login at any time to their personal products page to modify recording details, view sales reports and collect earnings from downloads.

Lindsay Fairgrieve, Publisher and Executive Producer of Rickshaw Productions, said: "It's our priority to expose independent musicians to a wide audience across the world, audiences that they otherwise may never reach. As an independent or new musician, it's often very difficult and daunting to find a way to deliver your music to market, so we've worked hard to ensure our service is user friendly and as effective as possible. And it's not just the musicians that benefit: the service brings to consumers new artists, new styles and new experiences from talented musicians who they won't find on mainstream download sites.

"At the same time, we want these artists to get the returns they deserve from their online sales. That's why we're giving them 70 percent royalties through our site. Anyone who has recorded their music can upload their albums or individual tracks, free of charge, directly on our website, and nominate their own downloading prices," Lindsay added.

PRS for music, a not-for-profit organisation, collected a record £117 million in the first three months of 2009 on behalf of its members.

Diverse genres currently available on the TLZ site offer a selection of music from more than 50 countries around the world and over 100 categories, including dance, blues, classic, indie pop, jazz, folk, reggae, and hip-hop.

About Rickshaw Productions Limited
Rickshaw Productions Limited, an audiobook publishing house, owns a unique downloading website www.thelisteningzone.com which features its own and other publishers' titles. Audiobook literature and original translations, short stories, fiction, non-fiction, comedy, self-help, lectures, interviews and many more categories are available for downloading, in addition to titles being read in English, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian and Spanish. The site also offers a range of music albums and individual tracks from international independent performers, both established and non-established, covering in excess of 100 genres and a choice of music from more than 50 countries.  

Additional information is available at www.thelisteningzone.com or contact:

Lindsay Fairgrieve
Executive Producer
Tel: 0780 355 3214
Email: rickprod@aol.com

Caroline Addy
ThePressOffice – PR for The Listening Zone
Tel: 01780 721433
Email: caddy@pressoffice.targetwire.com


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