Image by Andy Buscemi
Sorry, you might well not be a muppet, but whether you are or not, this post will educate you on music publishing.
Might sound boring, but once you know what it is, you'll have a chance of making some money from your songs - not so boring now!
This is a great article by the guys at Sentric Music who offer a brilliant publishing service for all songwriters that won't stop you doing a 'big' publishing deal later in your career. They'll genuinely help you out and send you money.
They also know their stuff when it comes to explaining what music publishing is and how it works.
What is music publishing?
It’s essentially your songs.
That was easy eh?
It has nothing to do with your recordings. This must be remembered. As a music publisher I look after your songs. Songs that YOU’VE written. Just by writing the song you’ve created a copyright; a piece of intellectual property that can be exploited to generate income.
(on a side note; the word ‘exploited’ in this usage doesn’t carry the negative connotations you may think it has when you read it elsewhere. To ‘exploit’ in this sense is to simply extract the intrinsic value of something – and your music, no matter how brilliant or rubbish, has value)
You have to learn that music publishing and record labels are very different things. It is important that the people who look after your publishing rights and master recording rights have a good relationship, but I’ll come onto that later on.
I strongly recommend that you go and read the article here.
It is very much focused on the UK but other than the societies that collect the royalties (MCPS and PRS in the UK, Harry Fox and ASCAP / BMI in the US), it all applies to the US and anywhere else.
Understanding how your songs make you money is pretty basic to your career as a working musician, so you'd be daft to miss it.
Whilst writing this, I also turned up this very detailed and impressive article on Bemuso, which goes farther and covers the whole shebang. Read this one too!
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