MyContent.com Content Owner: Detailed User Guide

8/14/2019 MyContent.com Content Owner: Detailed User Guide

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Content Owner QuickStart GUIDE


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Contents

Contents.......................................................................................................................................................... 21. Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 32. Signing Up On mycontent.com................................................................................................................ 33. Building Your Storefront........................................................................................................................... 44. How To Upload & Organize Your Content ............................................................................................... 55. How To Sell & Distribute Your Content.................................................................................................... 66. Digital Rights Management...................................................................................................................... 87. How To Get Paid For Your Content......................................................................................................... 98. Technical Support.................................................................................................................................. 11Appendix I: Best Media Formats, General Media Guidelines & Transcoded Media Formats ....................... 12

General Guidelines For Media..................................................................................................................................................... 13Appendix II: Recommended Image and Thumbnail Formats........................................................................ 16Appendix III: Distribution Models................................................................................................................... 17


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1. IntroductionWelcome to the comprehensive mycontent.com quick start guide. In this document, youll learnhow to sign up for a pro account, build a profile and upload your media. Plus, youll learn how to

manage and price your media. Finally, well walk you through how royalties are paid out so youknow when to expect your money. You can also find how-to videos at mycontent.com/supportpro

2. Signing Up On mycontent.comThe first step in selling your media is to sign-up onwww.mycontent.com. Here are the initial steps:

1. Go to http://www.mycontent.com2. Click on the tab My Account or Sign-up button3. Click on the tab marked Sign Up

Weve put the following list together to make the sign-upprocess quick and easy. This list can be used to track all ofthe information and assets used to sign-up, configure profile,upload and manage media, and start selling.

Sign-up on mycontent.com Email Password Challenge Question Birthdate User Name Agree to terms of use & privacy policy Click Yes, I want to sell media on mycontent.com

Seller & Accounting Information

Choose a vanity URL Verified PayPal account email / user name.

Acct can be setup at paypal.com IRS W-9 income tax information

Tax Name Tax_ID Organization Type Business Address

Figure 1


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3. Building Your StorefrontNow that youve signed up, its time to build your personal storefront at mycontent.com/yourname.Based on your preferences, you can publicly display content for sale, tour dates, socialnetworking links and more. Take the time to fill this section out as completely as possible. In

Figure 2, you can see your account interface, in Figure 3, you can see what the public will see.

Heres a list of items youll need to build yourbio and storefront:

Bio Information Image or logo for profile preferably 225

x 300 Your Biographical information

Links to your other web pagessuch as Facebook, MySpace, oryour fan site

User Name, current location, andbiographical information

News, Tours, and Blog along witha selection of which will be theprimary teaser info on your storefront

Figure 2

The other two tabs in your account section are labeled CONTACT and PRIVACY.

Heres the information for each section:

Contact Info Account Name/email, Password, for login,

vanity url Address and contact information Billing Information If you will also

purchase media for yourself through thisaccount

Payment and tax information - So we cansend you a royalty check

Privacy Settings What information do you want to keep

private and which do you want to sharewith your fans

Who you would like to receive emails fromand when you would like to receive them

Figure 3

You can update this information and your privacy settings at any time by clicking on the MYACCOUNT or LOG IN tab from the home page.


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4. How To Upload & Organize Your ContentUploading content on mycontent.com is easy through the web interface, as shown in the Figure 4.Weve created a list of the information youll need to easily upload and organize your media. In thefuture, you can access this section by clicking the MY ACCCOUNT tab in the top menu bar. From

there, select MEDIA LIBRARY and then UPLOAD NEW MEDIA to see the pop-up window.

Before you get started, we should tell you about the media formats we support. We understandthere are many format options when digitizing your audio and video content. As a result, wevebuilt our platform to accept a wide variety of media formats. Here is a list of formats we currentlysupport on mycontent.com:

MPEG Audio .mp3, .m4a, .AAC

MPEG Video: .m1v, .mp2v, .mpeg, .mpg, .mpv2, .mp4, .m4v, .3gp, .3g2, .DV

QuickTime: .qt, .mov

Windows Media: .wma, .wmv, .wm, .asf, .avi

Any source media file protected by a DRM such as apple iTunes FairPlay, Windows Media DRM,or any other DRM prior to upload will not be uploaded successfully and should be avoided

For best possible results, please see recommended file formats in Appendix I.

Now youre ready to upload media to your store. Select the media you want to upload from yourcomputer or server and click on Upload New Media as seen in Figure 4. To upload multipleitems simultaneously, click the Start Another Upload button.

Once your media is uploaded,

add the following information tocategorize it:

Media Information Artist Name Title Description Keywords used in media

searches Genre(s) used to

categorize your media* Custom Thumbnail

upload, see Appendix IIfor recommended sizes

Figure 4

*Select genres that will result in you media being included in category specific home pagesplanned for future releases such as mycontent.com/sports or mycontent.com/fashion.

Now, that youve uploaded your media, lets get ready to sell it!


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5. How To Sell & Distribute Your ContentOnce youve uploaded your content, you can choose how you sell it, how much you sell it for, andif there is an expiration date. For example, a single media file can be sold individually as adownload for $5.99, can be rented for 24 hours for $0.99, can be included in a Virtual CD with

other audio and video tracks for $15.99, and included as part of a subscription channel for aperiod of time for $9.99 a month. Or, you can always choose not to charge for your content.

DISTRIBUTION

Figure 5 shows your product management dashboard, which you can edit at any time. Theprimary methods for distributing your media are:

Bundled Sale: you create

a bundle of content, such

as: two songs, one video

Individual Sale: you sell each

unit individuallySubscription: users can

subscribe monthly to your

channel

Rentals: You can choose to

rent your content for 24 hours

or up to 30 days*

*For rentals, you can set anexpiration date from the interface.

For a more detailed overview of each distribution model, see Appendix III.

Figure 6 is your product dashboard for creating bundles of any content you want. For instance,you can bundle a video and a song to give your fans the ultimate experience.

Figure 6


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PRICING

Remember its your content, your rules. Youre in complete control of pricing and the way youmerchandize your content. We take care of the backend logistics, such as: payment processing,content distribution and insuring we have enough servers to handle your content. There are a

comprehensive set of ecommerce and licensing options that you can choose from.

Figure 7 is a snapshot of the screen for renting or selling your content while Figure 8 shows thescreen for pricing bundles or packages.

Figure 7 Figure 8

The choice in pricing is any amount between $0.69 and $300.00. The lower limit is based uponthe fees for credit card transactions and operations costs. The upper limit is set to avoid some ofthe issues with over-pricing abuses that have occurred on other digital media sites resulting incharge-backs and returns.

Remember, you can change the price and distribution model at any time.


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6. Digital Rights Management

A full discussion on Digital Rights Management (DRM) is outside the scope of this Quick Start Guide, butthere are several aspects that all artists should understand at launch. There are two primary attributes to

securing media that should be considered:1) Authentication Identifies the person trying to access the content through cryptographic credentials,

and does not allow access if they do not have the rights.

2) Encryption Cryptographic technique to encrypt media content so that it can not be copied if acomputer is able to download or capture the content

mycontent.com utilizes several levels of authentication making it impossible to access content a user is notlicensed to access. This includes both authenticated requests to the Content Management System (CMS)and to the Content Deliver Network (CDN) where the media files reside. These cryptographic methodsmake each url unique and make it impossible for someone to share the url to the media file with a friend,post it on a website, or change the expiration time of the media access url.

Additionally, rental and subscription media is only available via streaming making it more difficult to capture

the entire media file since our player never places it on the computers disk. There are some hackers toolsin existence on the Internet that enable one to capture streamed video.

Today, virtually all music sold on the internet and most video is delivered without any DRM encryption,including services from Amazon, iTunes, Hulu.com and most other Internet music sites. As a result, ifsomeone can download the file they could share it with a friend or post it to another site such as YouTube.This lack of encryption does not significantly impact music sales today from companies like Amazon.com oriTunes. The reason DRM is no longer used is that anyone who purchases a CD can also easily rip it andshare it with friends. So why invest a lot of expense in download service to implement security that does notexist in the CD or DVD market?

At launch mycontent.com will not be encrypting any of the media. This means that if someone purchases adownload or captures a stream from mycontent.com and saves it to disk they may be able to play it on anycomputer or share it with a friend.

There are plenty of tools that can be found on the Internet to rip DVDs in spite of the security native to theDVD. Most DRM systems have been broken fairly quickly after implementation, which is the primaryreason why the market has generally been moving away from using encryption.

However, we are exploring best options for encryption and plan to have a mature reliable encryptiontechnology implemented soon after our launch for high value downloadable content

In addition to our authentication safeguards, we will utilize the following to make sure people do not uploadand sell content they do not own or have the rights to, including

Agreeing to a license that requires them to have all the rights necessary to upload that content.

Verification that they have a valid bank account and federal tax id as discussed above so they canbe identified should issues occur.

Website users ability to easily report copyright violations.

Holding payments for 30-45 days in case mycontent.com discovers in the interim that someone hassold content they do not own.


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7. How To Get Paid For Your Content

Now that youve uploaded, priced and sold your content, how do you get paid? This section will

walk you through royalty calculation, royalty statements and getting paid in a timely manner.

Youre in control of the pricing and distribution model while mycontent.com handles thecomplexities of collecting the money, providing royalty statements and delivering efficientelectronic transfer of funds. We have developed customized technology to reduce the cost of thefinancial systems and distribution so that you optimize the rewards of your creative work. Thecontent owner is responsible for all publishing fees if any.

Royalty Calculation

The standard royalty calculation is a 65%/35% split between the content owner andmycontent.com, after transaction fees have been removed.

The 35% to mycontent.com includes all of the storage, streaming, processing, and operationscosts as part of the services for this royalty revenue sharing arrangement. The revenue sharingmodel is the same for every method of distribution, including a monthly subscription payment, adownload purchase, or rentals.

Transaction FeesEach transaction is charged a fee of $0.05 and 5% of the purchaseEach monthly payment processing is charged 2% with a maximum of $1

Simple Royalty example

In 1 month Artist A sells 1000 downloads at $2 per download for $2000 gross revenueTransaction fees = 1000 * $0.05 + 5%*$2000 = $150Payment processing fees = $1Total Fees = $151

Royalty to content owner = 65%*(Revenue-Fees) = $1201.85Share to mycontent.com = 35%*(Revenue-Fees) = $647.15

Payment ProcessingIn order to pay you in the most efficient and cost effective manner mycontent.com has partneredwith PayPal using their Mass Payment service to transfer earnings directly to your account. As aresult, to become a seller, you must have a verified PayPal account. For details on how to setupa verified PayPal account click here.

When you sign-up on www.mycontent.com you will need to provide the email address associatedwith your verified PayPal account. PayPal allows us to pay you at very low cost and with rapid andfrequent royalty payments, but it also helps us prevent fraud.

Income Tax and sign-up form.

Our goal is to be a professional and legal distribution channel for your media. As a result, we mustreport royalty income to the IRS for any artists receiving greater than $10 in any year. At the endof the year, well deliver a 1099/1042 form to you and the US Internal Revenue Service asrequired by law. To do that, we must collect some information, including company name, addressand tax_id information.


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You can also sign-up as an individual by providing you personal tax-id (SSN). This information isprotected by the best physical and electronic security available and is encrypted at all time duringtransmission and storage.

Royalty ReportingAfter we have processed the money from the transactions we will provide you with severalreports. A report will be available from the Media Library area of the website that will summarizedyour royalty earnings for the current month that will be current within hours. This report can beaccessed ad hoc to track your sales progress. Previous month closing statements will also beavailable for several prior months from this section of the website.

Additionally, at the beginning of every month you will receive a royalty statement via email. Thisstatement will summarize previous balances, debits, credits and upcoming payments including abreakdown by product. An example of this statement is shown below in 5, the exact format andinformation is subject to change before the first statement distribution.

Figure 5: Example Monthly Royalty Statement


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Payment ScheduleOnce a month you will receive the period closing royalty statement through the email you providedfor your PayPal account. This statement includes activity from the previous month, the balancefrom the previous statement and any payments you received. You will receive an email 30-45

days from the end of the month. This email will contain a link and instructions for you to easilytransfer the money from mycontent.com to your PayPal account. From there you can do an ACHtransfer to any bank account you may have. A minimum payment of $25 will be made. If lessthan $25 is accrued in the month, it will be held until the balance exceeds $25 after which it will bepaid in full. Any failures to accept payments will be accrued and resubmitted during the nextcycle.

8. Technical Support

For technical support, please contact your mycontent.com account manager or at:[email protected]


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Appendix I: Best Media Formats, General Media Guidelines &Transcoded Media Formats

You have a wide variety of format options for your content. We recommend four for video and onefor audio for best results in preview, streaming and download. However, you can use any of theformats listed in the quick start guide.

The recommended source media formats to use depend on whether the source video is in 16x9or 4x3 format and whether the source video is high quality or just typical quality.

If the source media is in other supported formats or sizes we will be able to ingest and transcodeit, but if sized differently or at lower quality, it may be letter-boxed and may have degraded quality.The other supported container formats may result in similar high quality media if similar standardsettings have been used when creating and editing the media.

High Quality 16x9Container/codec .mp4/h.264Aspect Ratio 16x9Size 1280x720Audio AAC 256 kbps+

stereoAvg or CBR video bit

rate4 mbps+

Frame Rate 29.97 fps

High Quality 4x3Container/codec .mp4/h.264Aspect Ratio 4x3Size 960x720Audio AAC 256 kbps+


rate3 mbps+

Frame Rate 29.97 fps

Typical Quality 16x9

Container/codec .mp4/h.264Aspect Ratio 16x9Size 640x360Audio AAC 128 kbps+


rate

750 kbps+

Frame Rate 24 or 29.97 fps

Typical Quality 4x3

Container/codec .mp4/h.264Aspect Ratio 4x3Size 480x360Audio AAC 256 kbps+


rate600 kbps+

Frame Rate 24 or 29.97 fps

AudioContainer MP3 or AACAvg or CBR bit rate 256 kbps+Sampling Rate 44.1 or 48 kHz


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General Guidelines For Media

If the source video does not meet the high quality bit rate requirements, transcoding it to ahigher bit rate before uploading to mycontent.com will not result in higher quality.

Transcoding videos many times before uploading may degrade quality.

The higher the video bitrate, the larger the file will be. As a result, it will take longer toupload and transcode the video

o Upload times are generally determined by the speed and quality of your internetconnection. For example, a shared hotel wifi network will take much longer toupload.

o Mycontent.com does not recommend uploading full HD video directly from cameraor at very high MPEG-2 HD rates such as 10-18 mbps+ because will betranscoded to lower rates appropriate for web delivery. For a fast upload and

highest quality output - first reduce the video closer to 100% of the bit ratesrecommended above. (Ex: 4-5 mpbs for highest quality download)

The web interface upload is limited to 2 GB based on current web browser technology.Files greater than 2 GB may be uploaded through FTP, please [email protected] for details. Typically a DVD is in MPEG-2 format, convertingto MPEG-4 per our recommendations before uploading will generally result in 30% of thesize of MPEG-2 for the same quality which should fit most videos into the size limit andimprove upload speeds.

Each account on mycontent.com has a storage quota to control costs that initially defaultsto 2.5 GB. The quota is based on the size of the file you upload and does not include the

output formats that we will create. .

mycontent.com does not want storage or bandwidth restrictions to limit your ability to growyour business or easily manage your media library. We plan on increasing quotas perrequest for pro accounts. Requests for free storage quota increases should be sent to yourcontent acquisition contact or through the support features on the website.

The tables below include a summary of each of the audio and video formats that will becreated for the ingested source file. Not all output formats will be created for each inputformat. The following simplified rules will determine which output formats are created forsellers based on the source format.

1. If source video aspect ratio is non-standard and closer to 4/3 use 4/3 profile(s), if its closer 16x9use 16x9 profiles. Mycontent.com will letter box to fit output formats as needed. Exact 16x9 or4x3aspect ratios will result in best output files

2. If source video bit rate is < 1.5 mbps, only create preview, standard quality download andstandard quality streaming profiles

3. If 3mbps > source video bit rate >= 1.5 mbps, only create preview, standard quality downloadand both standard quality and high quality streaming profiles

4. If source video bit rate is >= 3 mbps, create preview, both standard quality and high qualitydownload and both standard quality and high quality streaming profiles


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Transcoded Output Media formats

Profile Description High Quality Streaming Video 16x9

Desired finished file type mp4 rtmp streaming to Flash playerDesired video codec H.264

Desired video bit rate VBR avg 2 mbpsDesired video dimensions 1280 x 720 (16x9)Desired Frames per second same as source or 29.97Desired Audio codec AACDesired Audio bitrate 128 kbps VBRDesired Audio sampling rate same as source or 48 kHz

Profile Description High Quality Streaming Video 4x3

Desired finished file type mp4 rtmp streaming to Flash playerDesired video codec H.264Desired video bit rate VBR avg 1.5 mbpsDesired video dimensions 960 x 720 (4x3)Desired Frames per second same as source or 29.97Desired Audio codec AACDesired Audio bitrate 128 kbps VBRDesired Audio sampling rate same as source or 48 kHz

Profile Description Standard Quality Streaming Video 16x9

Desired finished file type mp4 rtmp streaming to Flash playerDesired video codec H.264Desired video bit rate VBR avg 600 kbpsDesired video dimensions 640 x 360 (16x9)Desired Frames per second same as source or 29.97Desired Audio codec AACDesired Audio bitrate 128 kbps VBRDesired Audio sampling rate same as source or 48 kHz

Profile Description Standard Quality Streaming Video 4x3

Desired finished file type mp4 rtmp streaming to Flash playerDesired video codec H.264Desired video bit rate VBR avg 500 kbpsDesired video dimensions 480 x 360 (4x3)Desired Frames per second same as source or 29.97Desired Audio codec AACDesired Audio bitrate 128 kbps VBRDesired Audio sampling rate same as source or 48 kHz

Profile Description High Quality Download Video 16x9

Desired finished file type MP4 containerDesired video codec H.264Desired video bit rate VBR avg 4 mbpsDesired video dimensions 1280 x 720 (16x9)Desired Frames per second same as source or 29.97Desired Audio codec AACDesired Audio bitrate 256 kbps VBRDesired Audio sampling rate same as source or 48 kHz

Profile Description High Quality Download Video 4x3

Desired finished file type MP4 containerDesired video codec H.264Desired video bit rate VBR avg 3 mbpsDesired video dimensions 960 x 720 (4x3)Desired Frames per second same as source or 29.97Desired Audio codec AACDesired Audio bitrate 256 kbps VBRDesired Audio sampling rate same as source or 48 kHz


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Profile Description Standard Quality Download Video 16x9

Desired finished file type MP4 package (same file for streaming)Desired video codec H.264Desired video bit rate VBR avg 600 kbpsDesired video dimensions 640 x 360 (16x9)Desired Frames per second same as source or 29.97

Desired Audio codec AACDesired Audio bitrate 128 kbps VBRDesired Audio sampling rate same as source or 48 kHz

Profile Description Standard Quality Download Video 4x3

Desired finished file type MP4 package (same file as for streaming)Desired video codec H.264Desired video bit rate VBR avg 500 kbpsDesired video dimensions 480 x 360 (4x3)Desired Frames per second same as source or 29.97Desired Audio codec AACDesired Audio bitrate 128 kbps VBRDesired Audio sampling rate same as source or 48 kHz

Profile Description Standard Quality Streaming AudioDesired finished file type .mp3Desired Audio codec MPEG Layer-3Desired Audio bitrate 128 kbps VBRDesired Audio sampling rate same as source or 44.1 kHz

Profile Description High Quality Download Audio

Desired finished file type .mp3Desired Audio codec MPEG Layer-3Desired Audio bitrate 256 kbps VBRDesired Audio sampling rate same as source or 48 kHz


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Appendix II: Recommended Image and Thumbnail Formats

You have several opportunities to upload images, including media thumbnails and profile imagegraphics. For the most professional looking storefront and profile, any thumbnail or profile images

should meet the aspect ratio and size recommendations below. For most video formats we willautomatically create a thumbnail of the correct size.

Category Aspect Ratio Minimum size

Video, Music, Package, Subscription Thumbnail 4x3 400x300Profile Image 3x4 225x300

Recommended Image formats

If the image does not meet the recommended aspect ratio we will use best efforts to size itcorrectly for the web page. In many areas of the site, uploading of a 16x9 media thumbnail willresult in gray letter box bars since the display area for thumbnails is sized 4x3 in most cases.

Although we will resize as needed, images uploaded should be sized for the web at less than 250KB in size to increase upload speed and reduce our storage needs. For most supported videosource formats, we will automatically create a thumbnail of the appropriate size. For audio oranytime we cannot auto-create the image, a default image will be used.

Example showing when many different sized thumbnails are used


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Appendix III: Distribution Models

You can choose how to distribute your content through the following models. If you have any

questions or to learn more, please feel free to email us at [email protected].

Free Streaming: Allows content to be streamed for free to anyone visiting the site. As the siteevolves, advertising will be used to monetize free streaming

Monthly Subscription: Provides users with access to content you specify to be included in asubscription channel. You may add or remove the content in the subscription channel at anytime and the users will immediately be able to view the new content if they do not cancel theirmonthly automatically renewing subscription. Each month on the date they subscribed theywill be charged the monthly subscription fee. For a strong recurring revenue stream, keep thecontent fresh to encourage continued engagement and subscription.

Rental: Enables users to access the streaming content only during a specific time window.This feature will allow configuration of 24 hours through 30 days. After the rental expires theconsumer will no longer be able to access the media.

Sell and Download: Enables users to purchase the media for the specified price and downloadto own with no expiration. The consumer will be able download the media immediately andalso view and stream this content online as long as the content owner has not removed it fromthe system. Once the content owner has removed the media from the system, no more saleswill be accepted and the consumer will have 30 days to download before they must rely ontheir previously downloaded copy.

Packaged with Other Content [BUNDLE]: Uniquely enables packaging of multiple content

items of different media types into a single purchase transaction. For example, a liveperformance video with studio audio, or to create a virtual CD for $6.99. If you would like tochange the contents of a package, you can accomplish this by creating a new package. Bycreating a new package name, a consumer that has previously purchased the older packagewill not have any confusion that he does not have rights to the additional media in the newpackage. The consumer will also be certain not to lose rights to media he may have alreadypurchased in the original package that is not included in the new package. Once a Packagehas been created, you can delete it at any time. Packages can be either streaming ordownloadable.

MyContent.com Content Owner: Detailed User Guide

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