Music Business Tips: Introduction To Music Publishing

Music publishing is the way to make your continuos income revenue in the music industry. PERIOD. Of course there's other creative ways but since we're on the topic of music publishing, we're going to talk about why music publishing is one of the most effective ways to make money in the music business. First of all, the explanation will come from George Howard which is a teacher at the Berklee Music . He was my teacher at the Music Industry Entrepreneurship class and learned a lot from him. He's a major figure in the educational system of the music and he's also a musician and producer which founded his own independent label called Slow River Records. I actually have his blog listed in the bottom left of this page under "Friends Of Sleep City Crisis". Music Publishing can be confusing to a lot of people, but I really didn't get much of a confusion on it. I'm actually learning my stuff in Music Publishing 101 as we speak. So far I've learned as many of us will learn that Music Publishing will make you a ass load of money if you're songs are selling good of course.

I want to pretty much just share one vital piece of information I learn very quickly in my learnings of the first week of this class and that's the writer/publisher relationship and it's different agreements.

The Full-Publishing Agreement

The income is collected by a publisher for a particular song and it's split equally between writer and publisher.

Example:

For every dollar received, 50 cents is deemed the “writer’s share,” and 50 cents is the “publisher's share.” It is very unusual for the publisher to ever keep more than half of the income collected.

Full-publishing agreements is usually the most common agreement of the three and they are most appropriate for writers who are not well established, or who generate relatively small amounts of income.

The Co-Publishing Agreement

The writer gets to receive half of the entire income as the “writer’s share,” but the writer also receives half of the “publisher’s share.”

Example:

For every dollar the publisher receives, the writer receives 50 cents (writer’s share) and another 25 cents (co-publisher’s share). The publisher keeps the remaining 25 cents, as the other half of the “publisher’s share.”

Co-publishing agreements are becoming the industry's most standard now and most experienced writers will be fighting to keep at least some of the publisher’s share of the money.

The Administration Agreement

In an administration agreement, the writer does not grant the copyrights to the publisher. Instead, the writer continues to own the copyrights, and simply employs the publisher to administer the licenses and collect the money. In exchange, the publisher receives an administration fee, usually around 10 percent of the income collected.

Example:

For every dollar of income, the writer gets 90 cents, and the publisher keeps 10 cents.

Administration deals are usually done only with extremely successful writers. Keeping only 10 or 15 percent of the income is not a worthwhile venture for most publishers.


I think I can appreciate for the rest of my life knowing just that piece of information. Now below I will have George Howard talk to you about the introduction of Music Publishing. This video was taken from The Artist House Music site and you will find a lot of information other than Music Publishing and other stuff related. Also please visit George Howard's Blog.

Music Business Tips: How To Copyright A Song In 3 Easy Steps

I wanted to get into the topic of the music business in this issue. I was going around to find a youtube video that would assist me on this and I found the perfect video to attach to this entry. Considering the fact that the music business these days is a lot easier to break into I have to say a lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about copyrighting your music. In the music business as well as any business you want to make sure you're protecting your stuff well. Although thanks to the Creative Commons we have many different alterations of copyrights these days, some of us still want to know how it is that we copyright our music. I want to start off by saying to everyone to forget about the "Poor Man's Copyright" if you feel your songs are worth the amount of money it is to copyright your music I would like to advise to put what you think is worth into your music. Copyrighting your music is essential these days in the music business in order to receive the other benefits which include publishing sales. Below I have posted a video which will clearly explain to you how to copyright your music.

How to Copyright a Song in 3 Easy Steps
by LittleWingMarketing

Music Production Tips: Logic Pro 8

I posted below the Music Production Tip Videos from YouTube for Reason which used to be my primary music production software and music composition software. However, after going through many phases afterwards, my primary and number music production and music composition software is now Logic Pro 8. It's sucha easy software to make music and so for those of you that don't own a Mac, it's unfortunate to inform you that you will be having Logic Pro 8 on your PC. Logic Pro 8 is only for Apple and if you've used Garageband at any point of your life just think of it as a Garageband on massive amounts of steroids. So just for some of you that are new to Logic Pro 8 or want to see some awesome tutorials, I have posted them below some of them including the link to the YouTube Playlist for this series.


Playlist Logic Pro 8 Lesson

by The SFLogicNinja

Music Production Tips: Reason's YouTube Playlist Tutorial

I used to use this in the past like all the time. I moved to using other things. However, there's a lot of people out there that really still love to use Reason and do a great job using Reason for composing electronic music and for music production. I warn a lot of those as my personal opinion not to use Reason as your only sole music production software. There a lot of limitations and if whatever reason you just like to use Reason anyways make sure you're also using a accompanying software that will allow you to rewire to Reason.

As today's subject I thought I'd get into the music production stuff to share with you all. For those of you that love using Reason, then this is the post for you. Below I will post a few samples of tips provided by this playlist I found on YouTube. So please enjoy this music production tip for Reason.

Playlist : Music Production : Reason

Monstrum Sepsis - A Great Instrumental Electronic Music Project

Monstrum Sepsis is a great musical project that I've been enjoying for the past 6 years now. I bought pretty much all the alpha versions of their albums and own two of their shirts. Since we've been on the topic of instrumental music and all, I decided to post this video and mention Monstrum Sepsis as well. Monstrum Sepsis is in the genre of intelligent industrial or ambient industrial. It started off with both members Rob Wentz and Paul and they met as animation majors in school and together they did a combination of music and animations. (HINT: remember the prior blog about Marketing Instrumental Music). Now it's just Rob Wentz in the project and he plays shows with his visuals and everything and has had a lot of his tracks remixed by major remixers that have done work for other artists from Industrial Music's mega label Metropolis. Below I posted from Monstrum Sepsis's YouTube Channel a visual test Rob Wentz did along with one of their tracks from their album Deep Sea Creatures
Check It out and also c heck out their latest album Artifacts

Marketing Instrumental Music - The Visual Show by TalkMusicBiz.com

TalkMusicBiz.com is an amazing website that contains music career tips for indie artists & labels. It's hosted by a great guy and a great musician that calls himself Geebz. I've been watching his videos and they are all very informative. I highly suggest you indie artists and labels out there to pay attention to this guy and watch his videos.

Today, I wanted to go ahead and post a video containing something related to what I mentioned in the last entry and that's Marketing Instrumental Music. Below I posted the video in order for you guys to watch, but be sure to click on his actual YouTube channel and the page itself that contains this because it has links to examples of what he's talking about in this video. It might take awhile to stream, but with patience as a virtue you will reap a very rewarding lesson in marketing your instrumental music.

Sleep City Crisis's First Album: "The Akashic Records Vol. 1"

Not many people might know but I recently just finished pre-production on my first album. I got inspired by Nine Inch NailsGhosts I - IV.It's a electronic instrumental album. I was skeptical about doing something like this before, but I quickly changed my mind due to the fact that many other artists have done similar stuff like this (Example M83'sDigital Shades, Vol. 1)It gives a sense of freedom to do what you want as a musician. You can always pull that card to give your fans a different taste of you normally do, with a disclaimer of course. You always want to inform your fans of what you're about to release. Not everyone likes instrumental music especially if you're a fan that's used to the songs released by the artist that has great lyrics and all.

I decided to start this basically because of the mood I was in to just composing music without words. It became an awesome experience because it's also easy to release instrumental music on your own as well. So I took the time to complete this hour long instrumental album which has a lot of ambient type music work which I love. Some of the stuff sounds pretty harsh as well. I put up a few of the new tracks on the Sleep City Crisis Music MySpace just so you get an idea of what the album contains. Regardless there is still a lot of work to be done like post-production, but at least the real essence of the creative side is done.

Remember, I'm going to be needing people that do graphic designs and know how to do computer art in order to form the website and all. You will be credited upon the album's release. I need a electronic .pdf file art package as well to release with the album which will def. give you room to have your art exposed and perhaps build an amazing portfolio.

So keep your eyes peeled!