Grimm Factor Music: Read This Post About How You Can Make Money With Your Music

This is a basic primer to much of the new music industry's business model as well as what you need to do to copyright and publish your music the right way. This is by no means an exhaustive knowledge base. Its designed to give you as an artist, musician, songwriter, or composer, as basic foundation that you should build upon. SEEK KNOWLEDGE AND USE WHAT YOU LEARN!!

Here is some info about copyrighting and publishing your music and getting paid for it.

COPYRIGHTS

You should copyright your material, all of your material. By law, once you write a song on paper or create a music recording or composition (like a beat or background type music), then you own the intellectual property rights to that song. Yet you must register your material with the US Copyright Office or else you won't legally be able to defend your rights in a court of law if someone infringes on your rights. Registration online is $35

You must copyright your lyrics separately from your finished song. Let the producer copyright their own beats. If you make your own music and lyrics then you can save money by copyrighting your music and finished song together as a sound recording. The great thing is you can copyright a complete volume of works at one time so if you got 50 songs you can copyright them all at once. And you can do it online which is faster now than doing it by mail. By mail it takes 26 months for your song to be copyrighted. Online it takes 6 months.

Under copyright laws your music is covered by 6 legal rights:

Reproduction
Derivatives
Public Display
Public Performance
Distribution
Digital Transmission

These rights protect your songs, allow you to make money, and controls how others use them. Follow this link to a book about copyrights. The book is very easy to read and was written by TuneCore. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU READ IT!! Its like only 20pgs or something.

You are not required by law to register your material, but you can't defend or enforce your rights without registration.

PUBLISHING

Now technically, publishing is just you making your music available to the public. When you put your music on myspace or reverbnation, you've published your material. Realistically, publishing your music requires that you get paid for your song's public performance. In order to get that payment you either need to track down every outlet across the planet that plays your music publicly and make them pay you (which is virtually impossible for one person to do on their own), or you can sign up with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO) and have them do it for you.

See it's like this, a PRO is there to work on behalf of songwriters, artists, and composers. Their job is to help issue licenses for your music. Due to those licenses you get paid an incremental amount of money based on standard rates set up by the government as it pertains to intellectual property laws. The PROs go out and collect that money and distributes it to the songwriters, artists, and composers who own the rights to the music being licensed. These monies are called Royalties.

You have to register with one of the main 3 PROs - ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC - then catalog your songs so that they can track them across the country (and some of the world). Cataloging your music is just you adding the name and details of your song/lyrics/music/composition to your PROs database so that they have a reference to what works they should be collecting money for. Once you get your copyright number from the copyright office for the material you've registered, you can add that number to any of the copyrighted works you've cataloged with your PRO so they have a point of reference to know that, yes, this is your work and you should get paid for it.

You can sign up with a PRO as either a songwriter/composer, or as a publisher...or both. Most songwriters/composers are encouraged to sign up as a songwriter/composer first, then as a publisher after they've published a few songs. It doesn't matter so long as you sign up.

Note: Signing up as a publisher allows you to catalog and publish other songwriter's or composer's material. Then you get paid for their work being played publicly and so do they.

This is essentially you publishing your work. It can get deeper than that depending on if you're covering a song, sampling a song, or publishing someone else's work.

Now here's where the old music industry fucked most musicians over. They would never tell them about copyrights or publishing or would force them to hand over all rights to their material for an advancement and a percentage of the royalties. Now that might not sound bad but lets say you've had an incredible career, once you retire, you can never get ownership back of your music. The labels would continue to get paid off your work while you get a small check. You'd never see the money from future sales of your music. They can sell your music in the catalog to the highest bidder and you wouldn't have a say in it. If they own your publishing, then you can forget getting any money from your music as a songwriter.

There are so many ways the record labels will fuck you if you chase a deal. Nowadays because of the internet you don't need a record label or record deal to make money from your music. Shit you'll make more money doing it on your own than signing with a major label. You'll have more creative control and freedom as well.

Let's get into the many ways you can make money from your music without the record labels and for virtually LITTLE TO NO MONEY TO INVEST!!

Distribution:

When you've completed your music and have a master recording that's copyrighted and cataloged with your PRO, you can begin the process of licensing that music for the masses. You can think of licensing as selling your music without giving up ownership. Even song sales from outlets like iTunes and Amazon are just licensed music. Its an individual license given to every person who buys your song from those outlets. The price for that license is whatever price you set for the song.

You need a company like TuneCore, CDBaby, or Disc Makers to get your song into these outlets and store shelves. TuneCore only distributes to digit stores while CDBaby distributes to both. Disc Makers offers distribution through CDBaby. I believe you get special incentives for using CDBaby through Disc Makers.

I used TuneCore to get my music into the digital stores because of their pricing structure. They want no royalties, and no cut of your music sales. They charge $9.99 for a single and $45 for an album. This is a per year rate. I didn’t care for CDBaby’s pricing or structure and Disc Makers was out of the question due to pricing alone!

There are more of these companies around. They’re called aggregators. It’s up to you to find out who the rest of them are.

Radio Play:

Radio has been the main platform for launching new music and discovering new artists for decades. A song on the radio can become a smash hit overnight. As long as your music is cataloged with a PRO then you can get royalties for your plays. Most radio stations have what they call a “Blanket License”…it’s a general license given to many establishments by a PRO to cover a multitude of artists and material without these places having to pay for a single license for each and every song a musician puts out.

The problem with broadcast radio is that the MAJOR LABELS control these stations, so it’s very hard for a new artist to get their music played on these stations without either going through a label or handing over a pay for play fee to the radio station.

Online Radio:

Internet radio has changed the landscape of music. Hell the internet in general has changed the way people discover new music, videos, and brands. The internet is ushering in a new music industry. One in which ANYBODY can become a success without a record deal and little to no money at all. Albeit, you do have to market and promote yourself. Online Radio has become a strong voice for independent musicians.

Even the major labels could not stay away from online radio. What’s great is that there are so many internet stations available that the labels can’t own a stake in them all. Which means it is 100x easier for a musician to get their song to a wide range of listeners all over the world.

The government passed a law that extends the copyright protections under intellectual property laws to include digital forms of media. Its called the Digital Millennium Copyrights Act (DMCA). Simply put, the DMCA is the reason why companies like iTunes and Pandora radio are allowed to distribute and stream music. The DMCA also enables the musician to get paid for their streams and online sales of music.

The government gave SoundExchange the right to collect monies from all digital forms of entertainment to distribute to copyright owners and recording artists. Usually you are only allowed to join one PRO to represent you but that’s because of performance regulations. SoundExchange only deals with digital stream and sales like that from online radio, iTunes, and streaming sites like Pandora, Last.FM, or Spotify, so they don’t qualify as a performance rights organization for songwriters. This is why you are allowed to join SoundExchange in addition to ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC, because those big three do not track all digital sites and service and never track internet radio spins.

Digital Streaming services include Satellite Radio, Internet Radio, On Demand and Digital Cable services like Comcast Music Choice, and services like Spotify, Turntable.FM, Pandora, Last.FM, Myspace Radio, and more! There are literally THOUSANDS of online stations you can get your music to.

I EXTREMELY SUGGEST YOU SIGN UP WITH SOUNDEXCHANGE IF YOUR MUSIC IS BEING PLAYED ACROSS DIGITAL OR INTERNET SITES AND SERVICES!! THEY WILL PAY YOU ALL OF THE MONIES YOU ARE OWED FROM PREVIOUS AND FUTURE STREAMS!!

Just remember you must either be the copyright owner of the master sound recording OR the performing artist/backup singer on that sound recording.

Part of what I do as a publisher is get the songs in my catalog played across these digital and internet stations and channels. This is not something that's my specialty but its a way for musicians in my catalog to get paid.

Concerts and Tours:

One of the most effective way an artist can make money is by performing. If you are already performing you can attest to how much money you can be paid for your performances. What most artists don’t know is that if you wrote a song and perform it, your PRO will track that performance as well and issue you royalties for it. Your music has to be cataloged or else it wont work. Not only will you get a check from the venue but you’ll also get a check from your PRO!! (soundexchange not included)

Music Placement through Licensing:

Once your songs are published and copyrighted, you can also sell a license for your music to other media outlets and organizations for money. These include Television, Movies, Commercial, Video Games, Retail Outlets, Jukeboxes, and more. Just like a radio spins, these media outlets are subject to paying royalties for playing your music. On top of that, these licenses can be negotiated for a license fee. Usually there is a person called a music supervisor that’s hired to find and license music for their project.

The only thing is, music supervisors do not generally deal with an artist or musician personally. It’s easier for them to go through a Publishing company (like GFM Publishing) or a Record Label since these entities are used to licensing music and can provide everything the music supervisor will need to use that song in their project.

For example: Sony Pictures wants your music to be the background of their club or hangout scene of a new movie that’s in post production. They will contact your publisher or record label to negotiate a fee for that song. Your publisher usually splits the fee 50/50 with you and then you get paid royalties depending on how your music is being used in that movie and whatever arrangements you have with your Publisher or Record Label.

On average, Licensing fees can be anything from $500 to $10,000…more or less depending on the song in question, or the budget of the production. There are tons of musicians making great money from this kind of licensing.

This is what I do with my company Grimm Factor Music. I find these music supervisors where ever they may be and target my catalog towards them. If your music is a part of that catalog, you have an opportunity to make money should your song get chosen. I don’t work with artists that don’t at least have their writer’s publishing, their music copyrighted, or who are under recording contracts with any size label that’s not their own.

Merchandising:

There’s no question that once you gain a fan, that fan wants to show to the world how much they are loyal to you and your brand. Merchandising is the best way to make that happen. Merchandising is simply the act of placing your brand’s identity on tangible objects like clothing, accessories, toys, games, digital devices, etc. As an artist in the new music industry, you have a chance to create an identity around your music and your personality. This identity is considered your brand. Once you develop yourself into a brand, then you should officially merchandise yourself.

A company like CafePress will give you the means to merchandise your brand for sale to your fans and other audiences. They offer a store that you can open for free and then you can add your logo or any other designs to their products for free, set a price above their normal market rate, then reap the difference in price as your cut. All you have to do is create a design and plaster it all over their products using their editing tools, arrange how your store will look, set your prices above theirs, then drive traffic to your store. No overhead, no money to pay (unless you want more features)..

There are plenty other opportunities for merchandising that I have access to. Yet most cost money. So if you’re interested let me know and I’ll tell you.

Websites and Blogging:

Too many artists, bands, and musicians overlook the power of the blog. Not only for the fact that a blog can help build a community around your brand but also because of the money making aspects that a blog can bring in.

The premise is too simple and affordable. You can set up a blog on http://blogger.com, join Google Adsense from inside your blog’s dashboard, place google adsense ads in your blog, create content, then drive traffic to that blog. You would get money anytime a visitor clicks on one of the ads in your blog. The amount of money is not set and all depends on what the advertiser has paid for their campaign. Let’s say you got .30 for every click on a certain advertisement on your page. After 10 clicks to that add, you’ve made $3.00. Get 100 clicks and that’s $30…now imagine if you drove thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of traffic to your blog and the majority of them were clicking on ads…how much would you be getting then? Mind you, this whole set up is FREE.

The main problem most artists, and people in general, have with a blog is keeping it fresh and up to date with new content. A blog is an ongoing endeavor that could lead to it becoming your official site. You can even monetize a full website of your own with Google Adsense if you choose. There are more companies out there that offer the same kind of program like Google Adsense.

You can even monetize your Youtube pages with Google Adsense because youtube is owned by Google. Consistently updating your youtube profile is considered Vlogging.

There are other ways you can make money with your music or brand identity. These are just the few easier ways to do it without having to pay much besides a copyright fee, a fee to join a PRO, and a fee for distributing your music to online music stores.

I hope this has helped you in ways no one else has. Remember, you are not just an artist, songwriter, band, or composer, you are a brand and as such you should run your brand as a business. Now you have no excuses not to get money with your music.

Grimm

(609) 445-4129

My blogs:

http://www.grimmfactormusic.co.cc

http://network29mixtapes.blogspot.com

http://network29.hubpages.com

http://musicbizprojects.donanza.com

My twitter accounts

@musicman2k5 (artist)

@GFM_Publishing (Publisher)

@GetMoneyArena (Job leads only)

@N29Marketplace (Covers all my sites and services)