If you self-published your music, you will have all the freedom to manage your own business. How you manage your business is a critical factor to your long term success. Business management is a broad/complex topic and even have a complete college degree offered by universities. But you do not need to obtain a business management degree just to manage your own music publishing business effectively. Below are some business management tips that can help you succeed in the “long term” (I intentionally put this in quote because there is no short cut/short term way to succeed in this business). Be patient, it can take up to 10 years for an independent business to fully mature and stabilize even if you are working 10 hours a day on it.
1.) Formulate Strategies, Know the expectations and TEST it.
Every business has its own strategy to succeed. In big corporations like Apple, Google and Microsoft; the strategies starts from the top management like the CEO. In self-music publishing business you are the sole owner which would be responsible for formulating the business strategies. Like most entrepreneurs, you would most likely fail the first time you implement some strategies, don’t be upset it is normal. But as time goes by, you would know the music publishing industry very well and could come up with pretty solid business strategies. Over the years, you would be implementing a LOT of strategies and would settle for the most effective one that could stabilize your business.
You should have some form of business strategy to succeed. Below are some examples of business strategy in music publishing common for independent publisher and some expectations:
STRATEGY1: Offering your music for free to the public only for non-commercial use and asking them to “like” your page in Facebook and other social network sites.
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A lot of buzz exists for the term “music copyright free”. While you can register your works for a fee in your government copyright office; you might asked: Is there such thing where you can secure copyright evidence for free? The answer is yes. It is possible in theory to make your music copyrighted for free. If you are a beginner in music copyright, you need to know the following:
1.) Copyright is a right to copy. The creator of a work has the right to copy and exploit it commercially. To make an object copyrightable it should satisfy the following:
a.) Original
b.) Not an idea but can be tangible and can be seen.
2.) The copyright date according to the law starts the moment an idea is transform into physical evidence. For example, say you are humming music or songs in your head. The music is not still created according to the copyright law because it does not satisfy the conditions above which is tangible and can be seen. The music is still an “idea” which is not copyrightable.
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One of the best income sources of a songwriter is through music publishing deals. In this deal, a music publisher will be signing your songs to be included in their catalog and you will be paid with money in exchange for this. Formally this money that you will be receiving will be called “royalties” and there are three common income sources:
a.) Advance royalties – this is the royalties paid by the music publisher to you in exchange of accepting and signing the music publishing agreement. After receiving the advance royalties, the music publisher will officially include your songs in their catalog. The music publisher will then represent your songs in all licensing deals that go along with it.
b.) Public performance royalties – these royalties will be paid by the performance organizations such as ASCAP, BMI and SESAC to the music publisher and the songwriter. You will earn a portion of this income depending on the agreement (mostly 50%). Take note that you will only received performance royalties if your songs was licensed by companies that will publicly broadcast your music. Examples of these are television companies, radio stations, web casting, film, etc.
c.) Synchronization royalties – these royalties will be paid by the film and TV production companies for the use of music in their projects.
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