The Bastille Project

The Bastille Project is a web 2.0 service offered on the internet. We offer free of charge, to people living anywhere on our planet, willing to create and manage their own label, all the tools required to do it. We already explained we will support many different business models and each label manager will have to choose one of them during the label creation procedure.

Of course, we will soon publish the “terms of use” on our main website. Within these boundaries, each label manager will have to freely define and publish their own “terms of use”.

Artists willing to collaborate with any of these labels will compare the different labels’ offers and then will be able to register free of charge with the label chosen freely.

After registration, the artist will have access to a control panel allowing to update the information and multimedia files that will be showcased on the artist’s public page. You’ll have a blog to write about you, a place for your videos, another for your songs in mp3 format, a place where you’ll announce where and when your next show will be.

If you record more songs or have new video clips, publish them. There is no limit…

Some label will use a business model that will eventually allow you to record some more songs or even publish a CD. These new songs will also be added to your personal showcase as mp3 files.

All your work will be freely accessible from your own personal artist showcase. But it will be free only for non commercial usage. That means that if anybody tries to make money from your work, he owes you a part of it! This is a common point of all the business models we will support: everything is free as long as it is for a non commercial usage!

The Terms of use of our web site will apply to all label managers and all artists.

The Terms of use document, will address the commercial use, the publishing rights management and the copyright management. The copyright can be subdivided into three distinct categories covering the uses of the artists works. They are known as performance rights, mechanical rights and graphic rights.

We worked hard in order to provide a better deal than what is currently offered by the music industry. Of course the profit sharing methodology depends on the business model used by your chosen label. All detailed information will be published and always available on our main website soon.

The basic principles are as follows:

• All artists must own all rights regarding all artistic materials they publish.
• The artist bears all responsibilities regarding any claim or legal action of any kind regarding these artistic materials.
• The label and our company will have no responsibilities and no liabilities regarding the material published by the artists.
• Immediately after publication on the website, the artist enter de facto and immediately in a publishing contract with our company regarding the commercial exploitation of all rights and derived rights related to all published materials.
• If an artist, after publication of any material, withdraws it from the website, the publishing contract continues to exist without any change.
• When, due to any commercial exploitation of any artistic material under management, any rights or derived rights generate any revenues, they will be paid directly to our company and then shared between all interested parties. The “split” will depend on the business model used by the label where the artist is showcased.
• The artist grant a free global unlimited license for all material published by our company on the internet.
• By uploading any material on our website, the artist, using its moral right, agree definitely that without any limitation the label, our company and our partners have the right to use its artistic work without any limitation.

Based on this contract, we will be able to help you focus on your artistic career while we do our best to help you get a financial reward for your hard work.

For example, we will manage the relationship with MCPS-PRS alliance. Quarterly this UK based agency will pay the performing rights it collected on behalf of the artists we represent.

Within days all the accounting will be done and audited by an external and well known accounting company. The label’s and artist’s internal account will be credited and the audit published on our website.

Then, each of you will be able to use your internal account balance the way you want.

The Bastille project is moving on fast. We work hard to have our innovative web service up and running as quickly as possible. This will be a global service because it will be multilingual by design. We commit to support more languages in the near future and we already plan to support Indi and Mandarin (both versions).

As this is a complex project, we will open a public beta “by invitation only” in the coming weeks to visitors willing to open a record label based on our free web service. Of course the labels themselves will be publicly accessible to artists and visitors.

Everybody knows that the music industry is in crisis and they seem unable to adapt as quickly as required their business model and processes. The majors seem unable to embrace internet technologies in new and innovative ways. Be assured that they work hard in order to transform their existing organization but it is very difficult to do it when you have existing contracts, shareholders, managers and employees. It is even harder to survive in a world where small innovative companies (like us) empowered by internet technologies reinvent your own business quicker than you ever imagined.

We began to work on this project last autumn. We assessed the music industry processes and business models and then defined ours. We are currently implementing them using internet based technologies. The team behind the Bastille Project, has lot of experience in these business fields.

We are going to open a first website in the coming days. On this site you’ll find all the informations you require before to open your own personal record label.

The people interested in creating their label will be allowed to register their interest online. On the basis of “first come, first served” and within weeks, we will validate these registration requests and email invitations to access the “beta main site”. Artists, businessmen, music lovers, sound engineers or recording studios willing to manage their own label will be welcome. Artists willing to “only” collaborate with a label will have to wait until the first labels offer their services.

Your record label is your own business. As such, depending on the country you are living, there are taxes, laws and regulatory requirements that you’ll need to address and manage. It is always best that you consult your lawyer, tax adviser and/or accountant. Our service offering is a complete free web service that will provide the online tools required to manage the processes and business models required to operate on the internet your own record label… But it is only what it is : an innovative web 2.0 service…