I know many of you have had experience in this area so I wanted to check in for you advice on which Publishing company to select. I know there is CDBaby and Tunecore as the two most branded but there are also others. I did put in an application with BMI as well, compared to ASCAP, and still waiting on their response.
As I get more serious about developing lyrics and music I figured I would start out right. So far the advice on the internet seems to be:
1. Copyright your material (I did that for the song Love You More)
2. Sign up with one of the PROs (BMI, ASCAP)
3. Pick a publishing company (Tunecore, CDBaby, others)
4. Sign up with soundexchange.com
Let me know your thoughts and if I am forgetting anything. I will most likely never be the vocalist if that makes any difference.
Bob
1. Nope. I don't copyright my tunes. **
2. Yep. Pick one and sign up as a writer.
3. Are you self publishing? **
4. I recon you can if you want.
** depends on what you want to accomplish. On copyright and publishing (1&3) Lets define this word publishing a bit as it applies to music. It is the act of making your music available commercially, in it's most basic sense. A publishing company is in the business of listening to your music, signing it or accepting it into their catalog if they think it meets their minimum requirements for quality and usability, and connecting with their clients in the business and plugging your music to them for their projects. They also handle the paperwork including registering that song with your PRO, in your account.
You can do it yourself....as in self-publishing, and then you are the one doing the footwork and paying the costs. You have to put the music out there, get it into the hands of the end users and consumers, and foot the marketing costs to do so. You also have to pay the copyright fees on every song you plug in this manner.
The other option, and the one I use, is: I don't copyright anything. I have a number of publishers and music libraries that I work with. I write the music, and send it to them. They put it in their catalogs and handle the publishing end and deal with the copyright. If you sign a song to a publisher under what is called an "exclusive" contract, the publisher is going to copyright the song in their name anyway. You essentially sign it away to them. They take a percentage... normally 50% for providing their services including plugging it to artists and other commercial music users.... (film & TV) I have gotten BMI royalty checks from using this method.
Reason I don't copyright my songs:
No one is out there wanting to steal my songs. As hard as it is to simply get someone to listen to a song, nope.... it's not something that keeps me awake at night. Also... if a publisher likes the song, they will want a contract from you and they will end up registering it in their publishing company's name anyway. If you have registered it already, it's more work for them to transfer that into their account. In film and TV, unless the song is a featured song in a TV show or movie verses just being a fill for a few seconds, none of that music gets copyrighted by anyone other than the copyright on the TV show or film. Listen to a TV show and count the musical fills. Anything from 3 seconds to 20 seconds... there are dozens of them in any given show. They are not copyrighted and the writers don't get their names in the credits. BUT... we do get a quarterly check from BMI ( in my case). No one has ever stolen my 8 second fills. Any time you upload a file to a computer server and even when you create a file, the file gets date stamped. So that is a non-official form of copyright establishing a date of creation.
Of course... this is only my personal point of view. I learned this from songwriters who do this for a living. Other folks have other thoughts and ways of doing things.
