Periodically, I sit on recording engineering, music production, and songwriting panels. It’s inevitable; I get asked this question, “How do you make money in the music business right now?” The answer is not a simple one. I recommend diversifying one’s talents to maintain a viable worthiness to potential clients. Meaning, one should learn how to record, mix, edit, master, produce, sing, play an instrument, operate lights, DJ, become an assistant, or manage. However, to the artist, I suggest learn how to write songs, register the songs with Copyright.gov, and maintain ownership of their copyrights.
Publishing=Pipeline Income. Basically there are four different areas of income from publishing: print, synchronization, mechanical, and performance.
Initially, publishing belongs to the copyright owner such as the songwriter. However, there are circumstances where the songwriter may assign that copyright to a third party such as a publisher, manager, or producer.
Often times song writers will work for bands to help them with lyrics and music to play, but here again, the writer of the song is the owner of it and gets the copyrights to it, and thus the publishing money. One thing to recognize is that copyrights are not the same as sound recordings. Someone can record a song and sell it to another band or company and then that particular company owns that recording, but they would not own the song. The original writer will always maintain the copyright for that particular song. The reason for this is the publishing money is connected to the copyright, so the owner will be the only one making money off of the song itself (Music-Law.com).
Once a songwriter understands the intricate details of copyrights, then he will be able to exploit, position, display, sell, distribute, and perform his song properly. Additionally, if someone wants to remake or sample from a particular copyrighted composition, the new derivative must be cleared and a fee must be paid in order to obtain the rights to perform, play, or sell the new version. There is an alternative to this called Creative Commons, whereby, the copyright holder grants a free license, but attribution must be given to the creator.
Another popular making money angle is sync licensing or synchronization. Sync licensing is a fee paid to the copyright holder to sync a musical composition to film, television, video games, theatrical performances, or musical videos. Once a person gets paid a sync fee, they have just received publishing income.
Performances and mechanicals are two other ways of deriving publishing income. Every time a song is played on the radio, television, and certain non-interactive Internet radio stations, the copyright holder receives publishing income.
Finally, there is one more type of publishing income called print licenses. Some compositions get printed and sold on sheet music. Publishing income is derived from this as well. Basically, there are many ways of generating income for a song. However, if an independent artist/songwriter intend on getting their song heard on a major broadcast level, he may have to sign to a major label of publisher. There are plenty of exceptions to the rule with the advent of Internet technology. Nowadays, there are more independent channels to assist with successful placements.
Ricco Lumpkins aka Vet Boi™
