Music licensing is a very lucrative business with no shortage of placement opportunities. As an independent music creator, you have the ability capitalize, but you have to be organized, flexible, patient, and willing to cater to the market’s needs. This is a different ball game when compared to creating music for an artist. Here’s some tips to help you better prepare yourself for licensing. Read more.
The holiday season, especially the golden month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, is the most lucrative time of the year for retail sales. As an independent musician, it can be a time for you to move a ton of product – professionally manufactured CDs, merch, and more. There are many ways to take advantage of this time of the year, and our new guide answers questions about how to prepare your order and make your new release something special for the holidays.
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Before scheduling your album release, plan for the steps that lie between songwriting and CD manufacturing. This DIY album release checklist will help. Read more.
CD Baby has launched CD Baby Pro, a new service for independent music artists that helps collect the songwriting and music royalties you’ve earned worldwide. Even if you’ve registered your works with a PRO, it’s virtually impossible to collect all the publishing royalties owed to you every time one of your songs is purchased, streamed, or played in a public setting. CD Baby Pro solves this problem and makes it easy for you to get paid what you’ve earned. Read more.
When striving to understand how the music licensing business operates, one key fact is that the music licensing marketplace determines value on a daily basis. What this means is that to make any money licensing your music, your songs must have value in the eyes of the marketplace. The following qualities will help determine a piece of music’s relative licensing value. Read more.
To develop an adequate understanding of the path to earning money with your original music, four essential areas make up the key foundational knowledge, and we’ll explore them in three posts. In this first post, we’ll look at the different copyrights and the basic blueprint for how revenue is generated by licensing your music. Part two will address creating value and earning income through licensed music. In part three, we’ll explore the diversity of buyers for original music, and the all-important connections you will need to develop to begin to make money from your original music. Read more.
“Don’t infringe on copyrights!” If your forte is creating beat-driven masterpieces that use other people’s work as source material, how do you ply your craft and share your art without getting in trouble? Let’s dive into the murky waters of legality and copyright ownership. Read more.
Music publishing has its lore and legends. The story of Michael Jackson coming to own the rights to The Beatles’ catalog is high on the list. It started when Jackson contributed to McCartney’s Pipes Of Pan album, when McCartney opened Jackson’s eyes to the notion of song copyrights as an investment. Read more.
If you are an aspiring songwriter, the promise of earning a steady stream of music royalties from the use of your songs is just that – a promise. Assuming that you’ve written songs that have the potential to attract an audience, and likewise a potential user of your songs (a licensee), understanding the numerous avenues available to license your original song is the next step on the road to earning money from your compositions. Read more.
Any time you reproduce and distribute a recording of a composition you did not write – and that is not in the public domain – you need a mechanical license. Mechanical licenses are issued by the owner or controller of the composition, typically publishers, acting on behalf of songwriters or composers. Basically, this is a royalty payment to the songwriter (or more correctly, the copyright owner) for allowing you the use of the composition. Read more…
What does copyright law say about your rights when an original idea is formed between two or more people? Here’s how some co-writers divide percentage shares in a song. Read the post.
So you’ve written a new song. It may have the potential to be a hit, but one thing is certain: it makes sense to properly protect your song if you hope to profit from its recording and public performance. How do music copyrights work? What is required to have ownership of your song’s copyright? Why should you register it with the Library of Congress? What are some of the common music licenses that generate income for songwriters? Read more
Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs … and what’s wrong with that? If you’re planning to use a previously written composition in your efforts, though, you may want to ask: “What constitutes a public domain composition?” Read More.
Cameron Mizell, freelance guitarist, producer, and consultant in Brooklyn, has written a four part series about self-releasing an album. Filled with helpful information and resources on everything from your production schedule to digital distribution to copyrights and cover songs, it is a must-read. Read more…
No musician can afford to miss out on a potential source of income. So if you’re a songwriter, and not a member of a Performance Rights Organizations (PRO) like ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, or SOCAN (Canada), you could be leaving money on the table. It’s not difficult to join one of these organizations, and as an independent, there are ways to enroll that allow you to maximize your royalties and double what you might think you’re eligible for. Read More.