Music Publishing for Noobs

jack · Post by **jack** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 12:52 pm

i'm curious, does anyone here do their own music publishing, as in have set up a legal sort of business entity to handle the publishing of their songs? i'm curious as to what's involved in this, the best way to go about setting something like this up. it just seems like another thing for the DIY musician to deal with these days and it might be good to have a forum to discuss what works and doesn't work. any and all practical advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 3:19 pm

Why is it necessary/helpful to do this?
I'm wondering how it helps you.
One more thing to worry about! (besides the Bubonic Plague)
-bill

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 7:44 pm

If you expect royalties from performances of your songs, then it makes a great deal of sense to have a hand in the publishing side of the business. Performance royalties pay 50% to the "artist" and 50% to the publisher out of the box. Things can then get real screwy, but this is the cleanest scenario. So, if you owned the publishing company (which in this case would handle the administrative side of licensing/selling your works) then you get at least a portion of that publishing cut.

Here's a quick description, and links to the various international performing rights organizations:
http://www.iamusic.com/articles/performing-rights.php

Justin Goldberg's "Ultimate Survival Guide to the New Music Industry" has some good interviews and articles about this stuff, with a certain amount of irreverence mixed in. Very insightful, what I'd read so far.

Not sure I offered anything specific about setting up your own publishing house. Sorry.

*** if you don't respect/care about the structure of the traditional music business, then pay no heed to this arrangement, since you will likely do your own deals and only have claim to the artist's 50% share of the royalties. This is how it works in America, I don't know the specifics for other regions.

tonetripper · Post by **tonetripper** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 7:13 pm

I believe ASCAP and SOCAN have the same rules but I may be wrong in this. For that matter there may be minor differences in percentages all over the world but the coverage for performance rights of reproduced material is relatively the same in terms of content of these rights.

I think publishing is important if you expect to sell sheet music, get air play and sell your music to commercial entities. Help you get paid that's for sure, but a better publishing deal in favour of the artist is almost more important than getting a good distribution, publicity deal with a record label. At least if you do it on your own with a good publishing deal you'll prolly get paid (especially in concerns to airplay). Record companies usually take all their money out of your first 100000 if you are lucky to sell that many depending on all the shit they'll force feed you to need for your success. Watch the label people cuz they'll try to force their part into the publishing waters before they'll sign you or get it to be a part of the deal. Whereas they'll beat you cuz if you get successful then they get a piece of the pie that they really may have no stake in. Couple of friends of mine got beat in that clause when signing and are signed no longer due to the disgruntled feelings afterwards. Sucks when someone gets a piece of your pie when they did nothing for it. I know there are counter arguements and shit but I'm only answering the question. Music is the universal language that should be free according to me, but we all got to live in this dog eat dog world and if music is what rocks the boat between eating and not, I'll make damn sure I'm getting a bigger piece of my pie before the man does (except if we were in a desert and the man needed food before I did in order to survive)

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Publishing deals are important if you are serious about selling and airing your artistic property. Especially as an independent. Rule I know of is; get the publishing and then everything follows. Speaking from the hip ofcourse.

- Pablo

UnDesirable · Post by **UnDesirable** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 9:05 pm

http://www.music-law.com/

tonetripper · Post by **tonetripper** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 9:39 pm

UnDesirable wrote:http://www.music-law.com/

Very Cool. The only thing that gets a little grey area like is the mechanical rights. Obviously if you write/record with a producer, co-writer, or with a record label, this gets a little sticky according to the deal struck between any of these groups. In that the publishing aspect for the mechanical rights would probably be negotiated by lawyers for the artist, record label, and/or producer collectively according to artistic input.

The first right is hard to enforce for obvious reasons cuz there will be people covering it at local venues, creating cover bands (although if enough is made it'll be reinforced, for that matter most managers of cover bands will ask and pay the licence holder for the right to perform the property before creating the Kiss cover band) and shit like that, so don't expect too much from that aspect of the licence. The radio air-play is lovely and if your music gets played on college radio, even once, and you get written up as an artist (usually college radio doesn't write down every artist) who was played, you WILL receive a cheque (ofcourse if you have formally registered the copyright with a publisher or you do it on your own (local city hall you can formerly register any title with lyrics) - not recommended - too much work, stick to the art)

The licensing of the mechanical rights gets a little sketchy only due to the artist's involvement in the writing process and whether the producer has any artistic input into the project. Also, once the right has been given to one artist then any artist after is not allowed refusal of the right to mechanically reproduce the same piece but said artist must notify the copyright owner that the song is going to be mechanically reproduced. There are limits to this ofcourse, but all the info is in the Undesirable's link. So hang on to this right if you don't want everyone and their brother butchering your artistic property. It can also be a very good thing. See "Louie Louie". Once it's out it's out.

The sync one is interesting from a financial perspective. And the ability to get tons of dough when accompanying a movie. Cha-ching!!!! Video's kinda suck anyway, so don't expect too much from that. See "Thriller".

The print one is cool cuz if it goes into print into different languages in different countries for multiple instruments it can be a nice bonus to the mechanical licences.

Thanks Undesirable for refreshing my music business knowledge. Good to tackle that one. I didn't link search before I posted, but I didn't feel I was too far off.

- Pablo

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 2:21 pm

There's a great series put out by Lisa Rein on Copyright and Creative Commons. In the first episode she features Bad Attraction - EarJamm Mix by TheHipCola. Lisa has been very vocal and very informative in all this debate about rights and stuff in general.

Check it out

Me$$iah · Post by **Me$$iah** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:12 pm

Heh....

This isnt really music publishing, but is a realling intersting lecture.
Its from the Stanford Law place and is actually worth a watch, its about copyright law and is led by the creator of the creative commons license that we should all know about here

copyright

erm...thats all

Me$$iah

free Mickey

thehipcola · Post by **thehipcola** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 2:30 pm

roymond wrote:There's a great series put out by Lisa Rein on Copyright and Creative Commons. In the first episode she features Bad Attraction - EarJamm Mix by TheHipCola. Lisa has been very vocal and very informative in all this debate about rights and stuff in general.

Check it out

Hey that's way cool! Does that mean I'm famous?

roymond · Post by **roymond** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:09 pm

Didn't know where to post this, but a small but perhaps significant win by the Creative Commonscrowd happened today. Adam Curry sued a tabloid for using photos of his family he had posted on Flickr under CC, and won.