If you want to make money in the music business, an understanding of music publishing will be very helpful. Publishing is one of the areas of the music industry where you will actually be able to make money, so it is important that any aspiring musician or songwriter understand the process.

There are more areas affected by music publishing than you might realize. Besides your own CDs, there are TV shows, commercials, the radio, video games, and more places where music is used every day. If you hear a song, the band/songwriter is getting a royalty check. Different performers’ rights associations collect payments for their members. That means, if your song is played somewhere other than in your own live performance, you should be getting paid.

How much you will actually get paid varies, since royalties vary. Your local college’s radio station will not pay as much as a commercial radio station. Not to mention that your song may get played more at one location than another depending on how popular it is. It also takes time in most cases for you to actually see the money, so do not expect to get huge paychecks the week after a song comes out.

There is more than one place that you can start getting your music published. Before, musicians were limited to local acts and pitches to radio labels and programmers that might have only been looking for a specific sound or song type. If musicians could not get into this group, then they were often limited to trying to get a contract by the major music publishing companies — which could be an elusive task at best.

Luckily for musicians, the internet has changed the face of music publishing. There are online sites and services where musicians can apply for membership, and once accepted they can have the offers sent to their mailbox or email. The process is much simpler, and today’s musician just has to find the right listing for his or her songs and make sure they get channeled through the right requesting companies for review.

Other services may only have you mail them a CD and they will review it. If they like the song or your sound, they will let you know and then post samples to their licensing system. This will allow people who are interested in licensing you to try out your music and even purchase it through a download.

No matter what process you decide will work best for you, you will want to enlist the help of a lawyer. Have the lawyer review all contracts so that you understand exactly what you are agreeing to when you sign, and how much money you will be making in advancements and royalties.

At the same time you are trying to get your music published, it is also important to get it copyrighted. Again, you can download all the forms that you need online. Copyrighting your work will help protect you in the long run from being ripped off, so make sure you take care of this step early on.

By making sure you understand all of the steps of the music publishing process, you will know all the secrets of how to make money in the music business. The more informed you are, the better you can launch your career, and the more potential your music will have.

Brian Cook is a freelance writer whose articles on music and songwriting have appeared on many websites. You can find more of these at http://www.songwritersguide.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brian_Cook

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For more education on careers in the music industry, check out: www.Music-Career-Guide.com

Unless you have entered into a publishing agreement, thereby assigning your publishing rights to someone else (i.e. a publishing company), you own the publishing rights and the corresponding publishing income, to any song you have written or co-written. When you write a song by yourself, you own 100% of the writer’s share as well as 100% of the corresponding publisher’s share of any income that song may generate. If you have one collaborator, you each own 50% of the writer’s share and 50% of the publisher’s share. Therefore, if you have written a song and haven’t published it, you are a song publisher. Maintaining your publishing rights has two big advantages: You earn double the money and you have leverage in the event your song is recorded. Once you have a song to represent (either one of your own compositions or another writer’s song whose publishing rights have been assigned to you), it’s easy to become a publisher. All you need to do is:

Choose a name for your company

Decide which Performing Rights Organization to join

“Clear” the name you’ve selected by checking with your PRO

Print up some letterheads on your computer

But owning the publishing rights and successfully exploiting the song are two very different things. Before you decide to become your own publisher, you need to honestly assess whether you have the necessary time, personality and resources to properly exploit your song. If your time is limited due to the responsibilities of working as “day job”, then the work you do as your own publisher is taking valuable time away from your songwriting. To successfully publish your own songs, on an ongoing basis, you need to:

Investigate who is looking for songs

Develop business relationships

Make tape copies

Type cover letters, J-cards and labels

Mail or deliver your packages

Follow up those pitches with phone calls

Handle administrative functions (applying for copyright registration, registering your songs with your Performing Rights Organization, keeping track of royalties, etc.)

In addition to the time investment, publishing your own songs requires an outlay of money. Expenses incurred by song publishers include:

The purchasing of tape duplicating equipment (probably a cassette dubbing deck, a DAT machine, and a machine capable of generating CDs)

Equipment maintenance

Office supplies (mailing envelopes, mailing labels, letterheads, etc.)

Blank tape

Postage

Photocopying (lyric sheets and correspondences)

Long distance telephone charges

Demo production expenses

A computer and fax machine are also tremendously helpful, if not mandatory. While many of these expenses may be tax deductible, they still add up to a considerable amount. Perhaps the most important factor to consider when deciding whether to represent your own songs, is your personality type. Song publishing (like song writing), requires long-term persistence and the ability to withstand repeated disappointment and rejection–without losing faith in your songs. Successful publishers have the ability to discern which songs are best suited for particular artists. They also have the tenacity and the ability to forge the relationships necessary to get your songs considered by the professionals who call the shots.

Publishers need to have excellent communication skills, both over the phone and in meetings. If you’re shy or nervous about making cold calls and “selling” yourself, then self-publishing is probably not for you. Many songwriters publish their own material as a temporary measure, while looking for a publisher to represent their songs. During the period when I did that, I was frequently making tape copies and typing letters and lyric sheets after midnight. I didn’t have much success self-publishing, but that was due as much to the quality of the songs I was writing at that point in my career as anything else. Songwriters who love the business side of the music business and fit all of the criteria listed above, may enjoy great success publishing their own material. But those who are self-publishing because they can’t find a legitimate publisher to represent their material would put their time to better use by concentrating on honing their songwriting skills. Remember: 100% of nothing equals nothing.

Article Source: http://playgrind.com/blog/?p=43

For more education on careers in the music industry, check out: www.Music-Career-Guide.com

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