How To Get Started In Music Publishing

Have you ever heard someone say I’m signed to BMI, ASCAP or SESAC so I’m set for publishing?

Registering with a performance rights organization (aka PRO) is an important step to collecting your publishing royalties, but there are three major types of additional publishing royalties that you are probably not collecting if your only step to collecting your publishing royalties has been affiliating with a PRO.

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The Nashville Number System: What Is It?

Guest post by Soundfly Mentor Andre Madatian. This article originally appeared on Soundfly’s Flypaper

If you ask almost any Broadway Street musician in downtown Nashville, they will tell you that the Nashville number system has gotten them through at least a song or two, if not an entire set, on a honky tonk stage at some point in their career. Some don’t even leave the house without their iPad filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of Nashville-style notated charts before heading to work or a weekend run of shows out of town. But there is something quite definitive and unique about the way Nashville creates their charts — almost like a universal language amongst all of the musicians in the local community.

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Did Led Zeppelin Steal Stairway To Heaven?

I don’t think that any respectful musician should be proud of violating the copyright of another one. With all the social networks that exist nowadays, if someone makes a plagiarism, the news will spread worldwide in a matter of minutes. It is far too embarrassing of a place to put yourself in.

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Everything You Need To Know About Getting Paid In The Music Industry

The music industry relies on royalties as a form of payment from licensed copyrighted songs and recordings. However, recording artists earn their royalties on the sale of their music while songwriters earn them mainly on public performances.

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What Music Supervisors Really Think About Indie Music

So, what do music supervisors really think about indie artists and/or labels? What are their thoughts when they get a submission from a startup label or local musician in their already cluttered inboxes? Do they see the message and automatically think, ‘oh wow, not another indie, don’t they know we’re a big deal?’ Do they shade indie artists and wish that they were never born? Well, check out this interview to help answer your questions to how to increase your chances of securing a use of your song in film or television.

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SoundExchange Explained

SoundExchange is an independent nonprofit organization that is dedicated to collect and distribute royalties resulting from digital performance rights of sound recordings. When it was created in 2000, this organization was a division of the RIAA but in 2003 it became an independent organization, currently representing the interests of more than 110,000 artists and copyright owners. As reported by SoundExchange, they have already successfully paid nearly $3 billion since they first started doing business.

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Beware Of The Controlled Compositions Clause

Under U.S. Copyright law, Congress has seen fit to legislate a minimum statutory mechanical royalty rate for songwriters and their publishers.  Based on an upward-sliding scale tied to a cost-of-living index, the minimum mechanical royalty rate is set by the Copyright Royalty Tribunal on a per song per record basis. The current rate in effective is $.091 per song.  However, most record companies use their substantial leverage over fledgling recording artists to cause them to enter into record contracts which purport to reduce this minimum rate pursuant to the “controlled composition” clause - and this provision might also be made to apply to producers and songwriters who do work for those artists.

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4 Things Your Music Publicist Should Never Say

This article originally appeared on the Sonicbids blog

There are things that a publicist, or someone purporting to be a PR professional, will say that are instant red flags. If these statements don’t sound quite right, that means they probably aren’t. So you better ask the person who said them to clarify. That, or reserve your right to be a bit suspect.

I’ve heard certain people who claim to be/who act like PR people say a handful of things that cause my eyebrow to raise a little. These sayings indicate that they don’t know what they are doing, that they aren’t legit, or that they might be a poser. Four of the most questionable statements I’ve heard in some variation or another are below, and are what to be on the lookout for.

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Score a License: What Music Supervisors are Looking For

There has been a great deal of buzz about music licensing in recent years, and with good reason! Compared to other revenue streams, licensing can have potentially big payouts for indie musicians. It’s also a pretty confusing aspect of the music industry. Just how exactly do songs get on those TV shows? The conductors behind those licenses are music supervisors.

What is a Music Supervisor?

Music supervisors oversee the music-related aspects of TV, films, and video games. They are in charge of interpreting the producer’s vision, finding the right track, and negotiating the contract with the artists. Of course, there are MILLIONS of songs out there, so finding the right one is no easy task. On top of that, licensing for use in visual mediums is a juggling act, with as many as eight separate deals depending on how many parties are involved (songwriter, recording artist, record label, publishing company, etc.) and how the song will be used.

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Self Publishing on YouTube

Everyone knows how important the YouTube platform is for indie musicians. It’s a great way to get your music out to fans, grow your fanbase, and provide your fans with great content from music videos to vlogs. There are plenty of musicians out there who have become successful mainly because of their YouTube channel, with Karmin and Pomplamoose being two of the most successful examples. They grew their audience by targeting young teens with covers of popular songs. Other musicians, like Alex Day, have based their career entirely on recorded music sales and a YouTube channel featuring music videos and hilarious vlogs.

However, there is another aspect of YouTube that is vastly underutilized by the musician community on the platform - publishing. You don’t need a publisher to get your music placed in YouTube videos. You just need to be proactive with social media and reach out to YouTubers you think would be interested in using your music with their creative content.

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Is Music Your Day Job or Your Nighttime Dream?

When I think about the professional musician, I like to break down opportunity into day job and night job.  The night job is the dream – rock and roll stardom, touring, selling records, award shows, bodyguards, fawning fans, public meltdowns, etc. 

Being more pragmatic as a person – I have spent much of my career on the day job part of this industry (and that’s not just you giving guitar lessons).

Music Publishing to me is the day job part of the business – regardless of your status as a performer.  Even the big folks love the mailbox money of publishing.  As an independent artist, I think it’s even more important.

Publishing, with all it’s complexities, still has the opportunity to create income streams for artists at all levels – especially if you are up for creating alternate types of content.  All music shown on television and the web around the world earns public performance income.

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How Understanding Publishing Can Help Independent Artists Make Money

I have read a ton of articles over the past few months about how important understanding publishing is to the independent artist, and it is. What confounds me is that even with all of this information, there is still confusion in the marketplace on how this works, especially when it comes to streaming services like YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud and others.

Lots of people in this business don’t understand it. Friends of mine at labels and management companies don’t understand it, independent artists don’t understand it and as more music consumption services come online, it is becoming more valuable to get the whole picture.

There is a great article here that gives a thorough overview of how publishing and other performance royalties work – so I don’t want to be repetitive, but I do want to take this opportunity to dive a little deeper into the way publishing works on YouTube – especially when it comes to cover songs.

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