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Registrations Before Releasing Music

So that's registrations wanting to you registered the song composition at the u s copyright office which is copyright dot gov and register this sound recording at the copyright office again you want to do it within three months of publication and in order to do it and if it's the exact same copyright owner you have a much easier time doing this from foreign p a which is a performing arts registration that's the one you do for the composition or s r which is the sound recording you khun do one other or both and you'll have to go up there to decide that one key thing is that registration in the copyright owners if you're wondering who the copyright owner is or how you should track that we cover this in the indian man survival guide I wish we could go into it but we can't talk about split sheets and a lot of things like that we have resource is at indy guy dot com for this kind of thing slash music and the guy dot com slash music if you're interested and in the book in the your rights cha...

pter we actually have this covered you really need to track who owns what though before you go in the recording studio that's a so much as I can say about it that is to say we're determined ahead of time who wants the sound recording and who owns what percentage of each p a each song composition, yes, copyrighting our demos that we hand up for free or should we be copyrighting only the music that we want to sell? So that way, so I get what you're saying. The question is about registering the copyright your demos air copyrighted, so keep that in mind. So that's good it's just whether you want to registered and look this cost money to register. So, uh, we haven't registered everything. No, no, I have the songs it z not, and we certainly haven't registered demo s o you know, we've only we've picked and chosen which one's uh, that we wanted tio register, we tell it, and we have used in some aspects of this lease a money saving techniques like where everything lines, where the owners are the same, then we can save some money that way, but it can, it can add up, they can add up, and so we tend to let the world tell us when we need to spend money on some that's actually, one way for this making money with music thing, we're going to talk about some things that cost money. As we said at the beginning, we're going to tell you a lot of ways that air free those you should just d'oh their time. But if you make it into a checklist there's a lot of things you could just spend one whole weekend set it aside register register registrations sign up for this website that one that one that one do this all that stuff you're going to be able to do it soon as it comes to actually spending money you want to see if the world's going to do it now if you if you're not like us and crazy and trying to do three hundred sixty five songs in a year and he released just like one album a year this register it that's not much it's like thirty five bucks right now I think so forty if they change it so it's hard to keep track of it there's not that much money no no ok, so one of the key things which isn't on the slide I realized is that you can register songs is actually kind of is as a compilation now whether it now this is a key thing you might think that what I'm trying to say right here is that you're registering songs is a compilation that it has to be an album the government doesn't care if you release it is an album it's just a group of songs so if you're going to release twenty singles you can actually I don't know what the limit is on this site but you can just make it into a compilation and then released them separately and they're all copyrighted sorry, there you've registered the copyright usually careful about that once you do that you're in good shape so it depends on what you're trying to dio so that was one into we've now registered with the copyright office now we're going to start making royalties off the copyrights that you own it is literally something that oh that's the way the boys put it right so it's something that you can assign to somebody else like you own it now on u k me money and it's your property or you can pass it on to your children or whatever you want it's actually something that part of your state you could put in your will you put in your well you can bequeath your music to your grandchildren and that great and the copyright lasts an awful long time. We don't really have a lot of those details on here because they didn't want to cover it but it's seventy five years it's it's a lot of money it's a while is so you your entire life's man plus like another seventy, seventy five years and so that means your great great great grandchildren and they're flying cars will still on the song that song that you wrote last night while you were drunk hey it's, how the copyright law wars where are we going to do so let's say it was a song that's going to make you some money off of radio and tv stations and all that kind of stuff you could distribute royalties to the copyright owners um and they're based on surveys basically now when you look at this it's based on basically when each of these copyrighted works are performed again and trying to solve this very publicly it z I'm trying to say this very carefully because there's a lawyer sitting next to yes well this's fighting always kills the party yes there's three composition composition base this is the foreign p a composition based performance rights organizations so when it comes down to that there's asked can't be um I and c sac c sac is a little distinct from the other two and that you can't just join it you actually have to be invited to it that's how that works ascap and being my you can join I think it's fifty dollars for each of them if you want to do it you just joined once it's a lifetime membership fee and you're all set considering that that's the case uh oh yeah there's a couple others that we should probably mention if you're in canada it's called so can and if any of you make worship music then there's another one we have it listed the advance a problem and I never can remember its name I don't know what you know I don't know okay, so none of us but I remember you can never remember you could I know that I could never remember it is that every country has their own performance rights organization, right? So if you're also in the world we have them listed in the d I y music manual if you're in europe or anything like that there's just different ones all over the place the ones in the us you really only have to join one of these but the key thing here is that you have to register twice with these guys so royalties air split between two rolls the songwriter and the publisher what the heck do I mean by that? Well, the publisher is somebody who basically promotes the songs use in licensing opportunities so you're not only trying to get licensing you're trying to get it played as often as possible to generate the royalties each time your song is played on the radio, for example, you're supposed to get like nine point one cents every time it's played you wanted to have that happen an awful lot to have it actually add up to something you need to do that a lot to get caught up remember I mentioned there were surveys that they dio you want to do that well normally publishers and the old industry was the separate role and you would you, the songwriter would say, oh, good, I write songs I want to have you promote the songs, and they would actually assign that, but in today's music industry, you're the publisher to congratulations, so you're entitled to both royalties. And the key thing here is that you register each song twice once is a songwriter and once is the publisher, and this is, was it the grant? Yeah, grant, uh, throwing toasters, throwing toasters, all right, great story. So he knew about this, so we were we were interviewing him, and we're at I've read some restaurant or something. We're interviewing him, and he had music played on. I can't remember a tv or radio or something. One of his songs, uh, got played a lot, and, uh, he told the story of how he got a check from I think it was ascap yeah, get jackie opens it up. He looks at it one thousand one thousand dollars awesome thousand dollars check for his music being performed out there through radio or tv. Um but that was just the first part than the next day he gets another a letter from ask half and he opens enough is like it's a thousand dollars again, he knew to register as both the songwriter and the publisher the first check was for him as the song writer of the song the second check for a thousand dollars was the publisher of the song because of that, he actually made twice his money, and what we keep finding out is that a lot of musicians don't register. A lot of people think of themselves is just the songwriter, and they ignore the publisher part of it, but to ignore the publisher part of it is to actually leave money on the table. This is about making money with music don't do that, you just have to fill out the right forms are mine, so just, you know, you do both of those registrations through any one of those web site, correct those companies here's there's, some confusing details about it. I'm just gonna throw into your head it's again, I have to refer you to like more detailed re sources, but number one, you register twice with the organization as a songwriter and as a publisher isn't as a business entity, and then you register the song each song you do with each of those entities. Does that make sense? Like you register with ascap and say, I'm a songwriter and you registered that skip again, it's like I'm a publisher, and then each time you do it is just trying to say here's, another confusing thing let's see, I'm with ascap I have interview with asking let's say you're with bm I we can't register the same song with both and so if I we want to do this royalty thing right I'm supposed to get part of that check I really should register would be um I but the's companies only let you as a business entity register with one which means that if you are really really you know you get really big and really serious about this and some of you online might be really advanced if you are you literally have to create three different business legal entities different llc zor partnerships or separate something that the business recognizes and then you can use that they tend to register with all three because they don't know what songwriters they're going to work with and then you register each song depending on whoever wins the coin flip or whatever when you're trying to figure this stuff out again I wish I could get into this more but does that make sense at least in a high level and hopefully have the resource is to be able look this up again we might as we talked about it's more of an intermediate course it's something after you get a little bit established but you can read about this you can do it you can set it up and go on I think the main point is that you can get two checks I think everybody understand that and actually one of the things that you'll find out is that ism or independent musician if depending on which you've got going on it's a little harder to get caught up in their surveys certainly the large labels have a lot more pole when it comes to getting money out of these organizations they have the connections they also are getting played far, far more often so you might be like who I got played on the radio and then you get that we'll check at the end of the quarter into the half of the year which is like sorry your songs were never picked up in any surveys which is this little a letter you get the idea you're like wait a minute I know I was played and if you are, some of the pros have programs again another money making tip here you wantto check out for example with ascap basket plus we took advantage of that, right? Yes. Um so again, like is an independent musician is not getting played ad nauseum on the radio uh like you like he said, you will know where you've been player he should know where you've been playing we knew with going back to our story of the licensing music and writing a theme song for the tv show um we knew we were played in twenty six million homes we had proof that it was played at the tv show was played in those homes and then what we but we got the letter from ask out that said sorry not caught up in any surveys so what do we do? We knew that they have this other catch off program with called abscam plus and it's you actually go to them, you write them with the proof and you fell out a form and you say you know, ok, we were played on such a such a date this is here's all of our proof for it and then then they review it and they have a process in which they review that and ok, it wasn't caught up in the surveys but it goes through this panel I think it's the panel that goes through and then they will issue a cheque based on you know they'll do their research on it as well. So it's a good is a good thing to be aware of these things have programs that in case you're not caught in these surveys that you should be aware of if you get played ok that's all we had on the composition pros remember I said this was hooked on the foreign p a the composition copyright when your sound recording is actually performed played in public you're also entitled to royalties now here's the funny thing with this you would think that both of them are getting played on commercial terrestrial radio, and they are they're both getting played, but back at the earliest days of radio, they made the determination congress did. Actually, that the only one who's going to get compensated in the united states for this are the songwriters, the actual people who own the sound recording don't get paid for play on terrestrial radio, so it only generates it on one in europe. They both are true, and so they really have actually a very different situation. It generates two royalties. So what are we talking about here? Most people are less familiar with it because terrestrial radio used to be the end and television and all that stuff used to be the game in town when it came to generating royalties for your music. It was the game in town and now it's not the only thing, because once these streaming services start to pop up on the internet, there was a lot of lobbying that went on. And finally, some laws passed that basically set certain rates for whenever songs were played on streaming services. Now, probably you're thinking right now, what's the streaming service compared to something else, it's not very clear. The easiest way you can tell is, can you hit replay it's, not a streaming service? Can you hit rewind? Not a streaming service if it's the kind of thing where it's radio it's like wow, that was a great song and now I can't listen to it again let's I find it streaming service that means spotify not a streaming service pandora yes last fm yes streaming satellite radio as well so the thing is most of these are computer based companies and so they're able to track the royalties very clearly and very well so it comes out very simply you need to register with sound exchange now this time it's not so confusing there's only one in the united states soundexchange you only have to register once with the organization but royalties air split again this time between the people who own the sound recordings who remember in the past used to be the music labels and now it's probably you and the other is between the featured performers and the producer. So the thing about the way the music industry worked in the past you might find this interesting is that the only thing that really mattered the only thing that generated any significant royalties was the composition and sometimes in these really famous bands there was only one band member they would actually be listed is the composition owner and some of the biggest bit a wrist band splits happen because that one person got all the money and the others as a performer didn't get any royalties so this is one of the times where the actual performers are actually getting something and it's something that you can tell to all the people who are playing in your music. That said, a lot of you lot of the artists out there, you're probably singer songwriters or whatever it is that you say elektronik, something, songwriters, I'm a sex player songwriter personally, but I mean, whatever you are, you're everything you're doing all of this stuff and considering that you actually want to register is the featured performer yourself and the producer is this gets split, of course, between all of this stuff, so again, oh, and uh, let me let me just get back to the slide a second, you need to register twice that's what all that means. And again, this is the type of thing where people forget and they only register once don't make that mistake don't leave one check on the table now, here's the crazy thing if you've got music out there, they may have money for you already because they track song plays whether you've registered the song or not and that's because it's elektronik reporting it's not the same as the surveys were just looking for a song that they know has been registered, they know that you know that actually your song has been played considering that check out their searchable database place database these air clickable links which doesn't do you much good if you're watching I know sorry but the have to do is go to sound exchange and try it out now like you said, we register this twice but there's one other registration we're up to six now he said there'd be seven registrations you should dio the seventh one is something called an I s r c code the src code is like a digital fingerprint it tells you actually tells the reporting agencies this is what the song sounds like digital fingerprint and it picks it up and if you've got the src code it actually is more likely that sound exchange will find out when your song is being played on any streaming service so you can go to a u s I s r seed or ge and sign up as an organization which costs you money you there's a lot of organizations that will charge you to make them and very often you're either mastering house or your if you do see the duplication run they often include making an ice rc code as part of their services so there's multiple ways to do this and this is the kind of like detail we list in the indie band survival guide you can see like that broken down I wish I could spend time like all these things but looking at the time just got office material to get through I'm just going toe remind you when you do this once you've gotten through all of these seven that's your checklists you're going to actually be in the best position than to get all the royalties that you're owed when this music that you've worked so hard on has been put together. So before I leave these seven I wanted to leave a little bit of space to answer any questions both online and in the room what if you have a song that's been off for a while he didn't have iris I see called for it is it still possible to go out and let me answer that yes the nice thing is with src codes you could do it any time even if you've got music that's out there it's not a problem that they specify it go to u s I s r c that or they've got a nice fac section frequently asked questions part of their website I really recommend checking it out any other questions question here from hannah who says do you have to set up a company to be a publisher and if so how do you set it up as a business entity uh it's a very good jason yeah that's the part that we talked about in the first lesson that you do need it like a tax I d you do need to be a company it could be a sole proprietorship I believe well, that's, the key thing is the sole proprietorship is a lot of talking guy way of saying you can just do business under your own name. Congratulations. You've got a business, so no, you don't have to, but finished the five. Um what was my father? I think it was something about you, khun then register with the government and make a separate entity. Yeah, you could do all kinds of it. And, um yes, you have. You should do these things. Uh, the the the answer for this because we have so much material go through is we talk about in the book, you should talk to an accountant. If you're really serious about this stuff, then talk to an accountant and accountant will not steer you wrong. Uh, and, uh, or use your networks to find out who you might know, but they can actually walk you through your personal, uh, fax. Um, about setting up a company for yourself asked in regards the eighty three tags if there's three people involved a songwriter and two singers are are they all including music? Tio who are uploading music to these sites? Do they need three separate tags for each person? Yeah, that's a good question and you can't the tags don't stack like that you only have one artist tag one title, one album, and so the reason I mean, what the major industry does is they create a new artist name for that kind of thing. Now, keep in mind that the id three tags arm or to help your marketing and to connect your fans to music not as much to connect the royalties directly to your music. That's the src code, and then the irs or c code makes it more likely for the sound exchange organization to do it, and if they're separate featured performers and they register properly, everybody can get paid getting the fan funneling thie their fans threw them. You know, they would just want it to go to one place that represents their band. Yes, ok, one pace the river and this becomes a marketing thing. It is expensive to set up a new name each time, because that's, a new brand you're putting together, we'll be talking about brand tomorrow morning. We'll talk about that, but you generally would want to say that it's artists that's, already established with a guest performer, might be a good way to do it.