1.) Business savvy songwriters that plan to make money from the song copyrights through music publishing and licensing.

2.) At the same time, interested in creating records of those songs in the catalog through the use of home recording studio. In this case, since you are the one creating the recording versions of your own song, you also own the song recording copyrights.

But the road will be tough because of some complex issues and skills that the independent music producer/publisher will be dealing with to succeed. Below are the required sets of skills that the independent music publisher and producer needs to know:

1.) The songwriter needs to acquire strong knowledge in music publishing fundamentals. This includes the songwriter to be good at understanding the principle of copyrights, the type of rights to be exploited in a song (performance right, mechanical rights, printed rights, etc).

2.) Since the publisher is dealing with creative side of music. It is required that he/she knows technically the aspect of songwriting and has an ear of spotting great songs. One of the important factors of a music publisher is to be able to predict hit songs in advance or before it will be released commercially. If the publisher is good at this, he/she will be able to provide a substantial source of royalty income if several of the songs in the catalog become future hits.

3.) One of the most challenging sets of skills are the “administration”, “marketing” and “business” aspect of music publishing. The administration aspect is responsible for managing the catalog, keeping copyright records, licensing records and everything about documentation.

The marketing aspect of music publishing is the promotion of catalog to the targeted audiences. In this way, the music publisher may need to acquire new contacts for which she/he pitches the music. It is also possible the music publisher will set up an online music store which clients can listen and download music, such as www.musicforlicense.net.

The business aspect deals with managing the financial account of the music publishing business. In this case, the music publisher will be dealing with a variety of cost in doing business as well as assessing the profitability of his/her catalog or even budget on acquiring music recording equipments.

4.) Since at the same time, he/she produces the song in the catalog; it is required that she/he has strong working knowledge in music production. This includes the knowledge in the following areas:

a. Tracking using a recording software – how to record instruments using recording software in a personal computer.

b. Knowledge on recording equipments – it is required that the producer also knows how to operate a basic mixer, equalizer, sound card and connect studio monitors to the computer.

c. Mixing audio – once all tracks are well recorded using a multi-track recording software, it is important the he/she can mix the tracks to give its unique and professional sound.

d. Mastering – this is in preparation for CD production and compressing tracks to meet the broadcast quality sound standards.

So if you find it difficult to do it yourself, you can always hire someone to do it for you. With this be ready to spend some cash to invest in your projects. As you can see; the path of being an independent music publisher and a producer is not always very simple and easy to do.