How to anonymously release music in the UK

[Music Tech]

Hello first post here,

I was wondering how to anonymously release music from a UK base. I saw something about setting up an LLC but is that really required?

Anyone here releasing stuff anonymously any tips

Thanks

[Drew Stephenson]

How anonymous do you want to be? If it's just to not have your real name publicly facing then choose a pseudonym and use that for all your upload profiles.
If you want to remain anonymous from your distributors that might make things more difficult as you may struggle to get payouts to a bank account that doesn't match your formal name on the account.

[Music Tech]

Thanks Drew, that’s the main issue if you upload to say Spotify then your name appears publicly. I think there is a way but I can’t for the life of me remember it, something about registering a business or LLC or something

[Drew Stephenson]

The name that appears publicly is the one that you've chosen to use for your distributor surely? I don't think there's anything stopping you setting that all up under a pseudonym or a band name. If I search for my old band it doesn't show any individual names.
I mean you could register an LLC but it seems like an awfully hard way of doing things. Unless I'm really misunderstanding the question?

[ken long]

You could set up an LLC and then open a business account for payments but assuming you'll be appointing yourself director, your name will still show up on the companies house register. I think PPL membership costs a lot more as a company also but it's been a while.

[BigRedX]

I've had a look on Spotify and the only music of mine that includes my real name is where the band have chosen to include it in the biog that accompanies the tracks.

For a previous band - The Terrortones - we all had pseudonyms that we used all the time even for our PRS and PPL registrations. For that band the only people and organisations who know our real names are the PRS who can associate our real names for our initial registrations with our band pseudonyms. However I don't think that information is available to other members browsing the PRS database.

Since I handled the PPL registrations for our record label they also know my real name, but again I don't think that information is available to other members.

Our aggregator also knows my real name (but not the other band members) for purposes of signing up and making payments. Otherwise I think that's it.

At the time it worked very well for the purposes of disassociating the band from the organisations (management and record label) that were supposed to be representing us. Certainly very of the few people who dealt with our polite and well-spoken "manager" by phone or email ever realised that he was actually our outrageously exhibitionist singer.

Ultimately it is down to how anonymous you want to be. If you want to get paid that's going to be the easiest way for people to trace who you really are.

[RichardT]

You could set up an LLC and then open a business account for payments but assuming you'll be appointing yourself director, your name will still show up on the companies house register. I think PPL membership costs a lot more as a company also but it's been a while.

Setting up a company in the UK won’t help. All the significant company details, including names of officers, and registered addresses, are publicly available on the internet.

If you choose an artist name that is not your own, no-one on any streaming service will get to see your real name.

[ken long]

Setting up a company in the UK won’t help. All the significant company details, including names of officers, and registered addresses, are publicly available on the internet.

Isn't that what I said?

If you choose an artist name that is not your own, no-one on any streaming service will get to see your real name.

On Bandcamp, artists get paid via Paypal (or bank transfer?) Either way, you'll need to use your real name and that will be visible on the buyer's bill.

[RichardT]

Yes, Ken, I just wanted to re-inforce it.

[BigRedX]

I was able to set up The Terrortones PayPal so that it had the band name on it rather than my name. It involved a bit of back and forth between PayPal and my bank account but it was do-able - or at least it was 15 years ago when I set it up. For various reasons that PayPal has now become my default one, so when I need to use it for non-band related activities I always have to explain to people why they are getting or making a payment to "Dick Venom & The Terrortones".

[Music Tech]

Thanks for all of the responses this is really helpful, so when I set up say a CDBaby account it requires my name as songwriter/ rights holder/ publisher for my songs… this then appears on Spotify for example. Is there a way round that as I’m assuming if I change the name to the band name or artist name that might affect payments or accounting. Then I might be in the territory of having to trademark the artist name.

[amanise]

Before you do settle on a distributor - are you based in the UK? There are royalty collection issues with using out of territory distributors, which can be a pain later on.

[Drew Stephenson]

when I set up say a CDBaby account it requires my name as songwriter/ rights holder/ publisher for my songs… this then appears on Spotify for example. Is there a way round that as I’m assuming if I change the name to the band name or artist name that might affect payments or accounting.

You should be able to keep your payments and account identity completely separate to your performing identity. You could call your performing/writing identity Joe Blogs and the Lost Sheep, as long as the songs are linked by the ISRC to your account ID then it really shouldn't matter.

With my distributor I currently only have one artist registered, me. But I can, for a fee, register as many as I want. So I could create an alter ego, add them to the account as another artist, and anything registered through that artist would appear under the alter ego name.
However all the billing and royalty details would still go back to me.
I think the same would happen with PRS royalties, you should be able to keep the performer identity separate to the account identity.

[BigRedX]

Thanks for all of the responses this is really helpful, so when I set up say a CDBaby account it requires my name as songwriter/ rights holder/ publisher for my songs… this then appears on Spotify for example. Is there a way round that as I’m assuming if I change the name to the band name or artist name that might affect payments or accounting. Then I might be in the territory of having to trademark the artist name.

One of my bands has CDBaby as our aggregator. I just looked at the Spotify credits for a handful of our tracks and the songwriting credits, where they are given, are for our band pseudonyms. Everything else is credited to the band name and our record label. All the other music I have on Spotify only has the artist name and the record label in the credits.

I don't known about PROs in other countries but if you are based in the UK you can register your pseudonym with the PRS and use that for song writing purposes. As far as I can tell only you the PRS admin can associate your pseudonym with your real name. If your aggregator requires it you can assign everything else to your artist name.

While no anonymity is perfect that should be good enough for most artists.

[Music Tech]

Before you do settle on a distributor - are you based in the UK? There are royalty collection issues with using out of territory distributors, which can be a pain later on.

I think CDBaby is not UK based but they seem to be fine for UK artists

[Music Tech]

Thanks for all of the responses this is really helpful, so when I set up say a CDBaby account it requires my name as songwriter/ rights holder/ publisher for my songs… this then appears on Spotify for example. Is there a way round that as I’m assuming if I change the name to the band name or artist name that might affect payments or accounting. Then I might be in the territory of having to trademark the artist name.

One of my bands has CDBaby as our aggregator. I just looked at the Spotify credits for a handful of our tracks and the songwriting credits, where they are given, are for our band pseudonyms. Everything else is credited to the band name and our record label. All the other music I have on Spotify only has the artist name and the record label in the credits.

I don't known about PROs in other countries but if you are based in the UK you can register your pseudonym with the PRS and use that for song writing purposes. As far as I can tell only you the PRS admin can associate your pseudonym with your real name. If your aggregator requires it you can assign everything else to your artist name.

While no anonymity is perfect that should be good enough for most artists.

Thanks very much I must have done something wrong here I will log in and have a mess around

[amanise]

Before you do settle on a distributor - are you based in the UK? There are royalty collection issues with using out of territory distributors, which can be a pain later on.

I think CDBaby is not UK based but they seem to be fine for UK artists

Yes, I've used them myself and their distribution is very effective. They offer a PRO version of their basic product and charge a few bucks extra for it, and that is for you to have them collect royalties on your behalf. But. In order to do this, they have to get a connection code to PRS, and PRS will charge their subscription fee for hooking you up. PRS are very good about this in that they warn you that it will take quite a lot of streams to make your subs back. They even offer guidance that unless you're expecting a BIG release push that your money will not come back to you. Which I think is very open and honest.

What I did was back out at that stage, as I get very few streams of anything, but 5 odd years later I'm still getting the reminder emails from CD Baby that they still need a code from me to complete my order.