Distribution circular 1/26 - New reporting formats

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

20/1/26 

Greetings artists and producers,

firstly, best wishes for 2026!

We are slowly getting rolling (from under large amounts of snow this year).   Here are the main themes for this circular.

1 - New Accounting format for digital distribution. 

I mentioned that we have a new format and parameters for the accounting data provided by our partners. This has kicked in now and we have to adapt this to our own system which is far less complicated. We will be sending out screenshots of the stats from the new system and want to set up meetings to talk about this system.

The software allows us to call up much more detailed info - although with some time lag. 

Sample data of undisclosed releases. Click on pic to zoom in.

 

All data supplied on request is done without prejudice and subject to confidentiality. 

We will continue to run individual accounts showing any advances paid and recouped.

2 - Buyout and takeovers.

Our physical distribution partners have been subject to huge changes as the whole physical business has altered. We continue to run our warehouse in Hamburg but are drastically reducing stock holding and will more and more have deliveries go directly to our fulfilment partners.

This will sadly mean that we have charges for future stock holding and also to destroy stock. These charges can be quoted in advance on request.

 3 - Pre-release tips.

It is a useful moment to remind partners needing digital services of what we require for a new digital release.  Review this please > https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/

4 . Old distribution circulars can be reviewed in the archive on this same page - go to the top right lists.

Patrick Lee-Thorp

 

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                                                           LTE Distribution. 

    Hamburg

    Deutschland

 

    Email - LTEmusicbusiness@gmail.com

    Translate here > https://translate.google.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tips and thoughts circular - LTE Distribution - 4/25

 Greetings fellow music professionals,

as always there are challenges in this biz. Some bigger than others. This time I wanna mention some of the small ones that deserve thought and even action. Apologies if the circular it is a little longer than usual.

 1 - Email addresses, are more important than you might think. Firstly we almost exclusively communicate with you via email. This includes sales reports and payment arrangements. Please see that we are up to date on your current email address. If you change address - please advise us - we may sometimes have to get the new address verified.

Unfortunately we encountered a scam of sorts where unauthorised former members advised us of a new group email address and requested distribution details. Because of this we will no longer disclose reports to group email addresses. We ask that a named person/s be authorised to receive reports, etc. on behalf of an ensemble. This will be the last communication to group addresses.

Where members of an ensemble contracted individually with us we email details to the names of the contracting parties. Please share this information with your colleagues and ask them to advise us of their email addresses if they do not hear from us directly, and they consider that they are due coms from us.

2 - Publishing revenue, is under pressure and no longer has the strong dynamic of the last few years. This was confirmed for on demand music distribution in a report from the German collection society GEMA published earlier this year. It is not yet "in a minus trend" but it is projected to show a reduction in revenue in reports towards the end of 2025, possibly as a result of deeper catalogue getting less streams.

Figures for 2024 distributions at GEMA

 

What to do if you are a label? Well take care that your marketing spend, if linked to future publishing revenue, is not too ambitious. And composers please see to it that your documentation is up to date and lodged with us if we are doing your publishing.  

In addition, composers - see my comments in the last circular. We get long lists of titles that earned revenue from societies asking for claims on undocumented works. This has recently led to misuse uncovered at SAMRO in South Africa. It has also led to two of our composers getting a big payday!

3 - Reports. As said before sales reports and sales stats are available on request. If you have not heard from us with a report, if needed please request the latest reports by email. It can happen that on titles with minimal action, that reports are not sent out below a certain turnover. 

We have recently sent stats to producers for the first half of 2025, where revenue thresholds are below our minimum to produce a current sales report. Your figures are saved and will appear on reports in future.

The figures are never-the-less there so you don't have to wait until the sum of your dues goes over the minimum payment revenue cut off, to get figures. Please ask for interim stats.

Changes in group line-ups on different albums has on occasion resulted in some ex-members being forgotten by us. We apologies if you are one of these artists, and we ask you to send a reminder.

4 - Physical fulfilment changes, will be introduced in the coming months to account for the reduction in demand for some physical formats. Details will be advised when all is up and running in 2026.

It remains only for me to wish you the best wishes for the last quarter of 2025 and happy holidays at the year end.

Patrick Lee-Thorp

 

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    LTE Distribution. 

    Hamburg

    Deutschland

 

    Email - LTEmusicbusiness@gmail.com

    Translate here > https://translate.google.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Distribution circular - 3/25 - Funds

 

Greetings music makers and marketers,

There are a few comments I wish to make that I hope make both of our lives easier. This time a money matters circular. As usual I will try and keep it brief.

1 - More streams less money - positive and not so nice. Streaming users for our repertoire appear to be using ad supported services more than subscription services resulting in lower earnings for us all. On the positive side we as specialist distributors are getting a broader catalogue usage. I think it means music fans are not just looking for the "hits" but are digging deeper into the catalogue works of artists.

2 - US dollars - the volatility of the US currency (and perhaps the USA) means we will in future be obliged to  account only in US Dollars and convert to regional currencies upon payment to you. We get paid in USD and last year we suffered some exchange rate losses. As the streaming game gets tougher we are obliged to cut some risks. This will mean licensees are at the same risk of fluctuations as we are as distributors.

3 - Banks - we have had at least one case of a licensee bank swallowing a payment even though it would appear that the account concerned that we paid had been closed. Clearly we are not privy to the relationship you might have with your bank but we regard a payment made to an account you advise us of, as due fulfilment of our obligations in this area. Short story, please keep us up to date on your bank details. The best is to show these on your invoices.

 4 - Tax - our usage statements exclude any local consumption taxes (e.g. VAT, GST, HST, etc.). If applicable, please show any tax due by us on your tax invoice, together with the relevant Tax Number.  

 5 -  Collection Society - I am a little worried about composers who are without registration with a collection society. By far the biggest revenue shares for writers comes from performance and mechanical licenses. We do not collect these on your behalf. In fact we more often have to pay these unless we have a special arrangement where performer and composer are the same person. SO please register with a society even if you have a couple of songs. They will let you know what the membership requirements are. Otherwise licenses dues to you go into the dreaded "black box" and after five years or so may be paid out to third parties ..... or eaten up in admin costs!

Best wishes,

Patrick Lee-Thorp

 

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    LTE Distribution. 

    Hamburg

    Deutschland

 

    Email - LTEmusicbusiness@gmail.com

    Translate here > https://translate.google.com/

 

 

Changes and updates - Circular 2/25

Greetings artist, producers, licensees and creators,

a couple of points for your attention.

1 - The annual distribution reports are going out to you at the moment, or have already gone out. If for some reason you don't get a report please get in touch at - ltemusicbusiness@gmail.com . There are interim reports sent out as well, usually at the half year mark, but all licensees should see the annual reports. If your song/production falls below a revenue threshold you might only get a screenshot showing the total revenue concerned. We nevertheless capture the data.

2 - In a circular sent out towards the end of last year I mentioned Youtube performance rights.  For clarification we do try and collect these on your behalf if we license your music and the collections are included in the combined usage reports. While on the question of Youtube please feel free to post your own videos with your music. If you get a message from Google that you are using licensed music just click "agree" and any usage you make will not be blocked.

3 -  If you pass your catalogue on to a third party or something happens to you please advise anyone who might take care of your rights and interests to reach out to us.  We have a system of verifying claims on material licensed or in distribution with LTE.

4 - I have been pleased to re-issue several albums that have either not been available digitally before or where rights given to other distributors have expired and the release has disappeared from the streaming platforms. At a time when fans have lost your songs from their playlists, or no longer have a record player, it is often welcome to see the old material becoming available to add to playlists again.

5 - There may be some format changes in our reporting and usage reports which will come about because of software changes. The basic data will not change but things may look a little different.

6 - Like many music biz firms we are using more freelance help notably on the marketing side. I am however glad to report that the longest serving members of the LTE team are still with us. Thank you Annagret Mason and Michael Stern.

Best wishes,

Patrick Lee-Thorp

 PS. I expect to be at Jazzahead in Bremen if any of you will be there.

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    LTE Distribution. 

    Hamburg

    Deutschland

 

    Email - LTEmusicbusiness@gmail.com

    Translate here > https://translate.google.com/

 

 

 

Cloning, AI rip offs and rights control - Circular 1/25

Dear partners,

This time I wanna make some comments and give you a general heads up about some problems that could derail the music business if we don't get a handle on them. Some say we won't get this under control. I think we should try by an attitude change though!

Piracy has been with us since vinyl hit the scene, perhaps even before. It took off in the 1960s when Philips introduced the music cassettes and they became popular because of the ease of duplication. Then it had a new life when recordable CDs were introduced. Philips were involved again. The third wave began somewhere around 2012 when streaming took hold.

With AI things have got much cleverer and much harder to control. Fake artists, fake songs and fake albums, fake accounting links and diverted stream revenue, are some new problems facing us now.

 Just Google it and you will see dozens of links.

In this NYT story (directly above) from September 2024 the "producer/artist" it is said could scoop up $1,2 million a year. Unscrupulous labels issue fake AI generated albums by known artists clocking up thousands of streams from fans before the band wakes up to it. 

There are a couple of acts in our catalogue, amongst them Robin Auld, Mike Perry, Tony Cox, whose artist names are common to more than one act. Sometimes unavoidable, but when naming your act (band) take care that you protect your name if you can. The same goes for your label name. One of my labels, Mountain Records is common to at least three companies, all separately legitimately registered but in Japan, the UK and SA around the same time, before the days of the internet!

As distributors and publishers we are pretty careful but can't always control every recording passed to us. We look out on the main platforms for misuse like duplication of listings and false publishing metadata. When we see a rights scam we can pretty quickly set the wheels in motion to object, however we have had counter challenges that freeze our own listings. 

As artists/producers you should look out for sampling and lyric/melody copying. Our partners have pretty sophisticated music ID software that can flag abuse. Ironically this has blocked us in the past because of unknown sampling and melody duplication. If you sample please declare this when sending new productions to us.

You should also be careful with your rights contracting to avoid territorial and period duplications. If you pass rights on to us and previous rights holders are still entitled to use your works, and we get "heavy" with a platform, we can be banned from platforms for false claims.

I always tell composers not to let their works out on the internet in any way before the work is published. Unfortunately it is not always good enough for a new composition, to just notify your local copyright society in your territory.

Best wishes for 2025. May the dark side know that we are watching.

Sincerely,

Patrick Lee-Thorp

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LTE Distribution Circular 3/24 - data and reports

Greetings,

a couple of points to take note of please.

Royalty Letter - A month or two ago we sent out a circular about royalty payments and what we ask of you, to make both of our lives easier. If you did not see this please ask for a copy.

Activity Reports - From time to time we email out screenshots from our system indicating activity that we think is of interest you you. These are not royalty reports and the amounts shown on them are gross turnover figures not the share due to you the licensee. We do not require invoices for these.

New and older music - We are delighted to welcome acoustic guitar virtuoso Tony Cox and his entire catalogue, and Michael Blake's wonderful two volume African choir series, to our network.

Last known address - Communications from us now go exclusively to your last known email address. Should something happen to you and we can not reach you electronically you could consider giving us a physical/postal address specially if it has changed from that which you might have used in your last contract with us.

Release announcements - We don't feature all releases unless a press text is given to us for promotion at least 7 or more comfortably 10 days before release.

Our success can be our downfall -  We gained a few labels and lost a few this year. These are the wages of raising the recognition of an artist or label. In general: the law of the music jungle is that the indie labels get eaten by the major labels.  When the major labels get taken over by the big five music conglomerates, then if we are  lucky sometimes the indie labels migrate back to us. There is a moral here - keep the goodbyes civil!

Top Platforms -  As specialist repertoire distributors here is a list of the top ten platforms using our repertoire. Specific titles will vary a little. You can request data on your albums or songs by email to - leethorpentertainment@gmail.com . The revenue (not shown here)  is available sorted in the 7 options seen below.

 

Finally it only remains for us to wish you a merry Christmas if you celebrate this holiday.

Best wishes,

Patrick

 

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LTE Distribution. 

Postfach 762334

22070 Hamburg

Deutschland

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LTE Distribution Circular 2/24 , Vat and Taxes

Greetings to you,

Here are a few more (important) points to take note of regarding the distribution services being offered to you. These apply to labels and in some cases also to artists, but if they don't apply ignore them or ask me for clarification. The contents of these circulars are confidential in the sense that they are not to end up in public please. I send these to all distribution partners.

 1 - Performance Rights. A large percentage of the payments we send you includes revenue from performance rights. This is around 15% of the revenue we collect.  These collections will be over an above any direct arrangements you may have for your rights collection society, and only if there is a duplication on the collection system will you hear from us on this score.

 2 -  Payment Threshholds. We still await final news about the minimum threshold for streaming accounting however on internal accounting, we now have an arrangement in place to collect and save reports below 10 USD and will remit these once we have a value that justifies the bank charges. You can at anytime request details of usage, even if it is below the minimum threshold.

3 - Distribution. I have mentioned before in our circulars that our services are basically the distribution and representation of your tracks to the streaming platforms and online shops in the case of physical product. This includes the correct loading of music, metadata and the sales accounting that ensues.

4 - Marketing. This means that we do not do consumer marketing except by direct arrangement. If you just have a distribution deal then you have to create demand for your music. If your recordings are the subject on a recording contract with us or one of our associate firms and the release appears on one of our labels, then we do do marketing (or share the responsibility) for your music. What this actually means is subject to agreed marketing plans. However we are available to do campaign related marketing on a one off basis and you are welcome to talk to us about this.

5 - TAX Changes. We can and will not make contract changes simply by advice in these circulars. If we propose changes to our deals we will do so by a separate direct email and then if necessary draft a side letter for your signature. HOWEVER if this clause or similar wording as below is not in our deal with you we need to included it. Please review this draft and ask any questions you may have.

DRAFT -

h – The distributor will not deduct taxes that may be due by the OWNER on revenue distributor pays to him, in the case where the OWNER has not invoiced the distributor for amounts due to the OWNER. In the case of invoiced dues the OWNER shall show the VAT due as well as the registration number of the applicable vendor. The OWNER will hold the distributor free of obligations that my arise from tax authorities relating to payments made to OWNER. The OWNER will make their own arrangements for taxation with their respective tax authority.

Best wishes,

Patrick

 

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LTE Distribution. 

Postfach 762334

22070 Hamburg

Deutschland

Translate here > https://translate.google.com/