Making Money with Music by Randy Chertkow

Author:Randy Chertkow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

REGISTERING YOUR MUSIC TO ENSURE YOU CAN MAKE ROYALTIES

UNDERSTANDING WHY YOU NEED TO REGISTER YOUR MUSIC

Most musicians don’t register to collect their royalties for two reasons: they either don’t know how or they don’t want to take the time. But if you’re going to treat music as a business, you should register to get royalty income as soon as you can because, except for one royalty organization that holds it for just a few years (SoundExchange), there are no retroactive payments waiting for you once you get around to it. The longer you wait, the more you’re missing out. Fortunately, this can be simplified down to a basic checklist. Plus, once the prep steps are done, you can register your music in large batches all at once.

Keep in mind that you only need to register each song once and then it will pay you royalties for your entire life. Besides, if you’re going to go through all the trouble to get your music heard, played, streamed, and bought by fans, you should collect all the royalties it generates. If any of your songs make it big, the checks will automatically come to you.

There’s one more benefit to following this checklist: once you’ve grown your royalty income streams, you’ll be able to raise more money by convincing publishers, labels, and even the public to give you advances based on the future income streams. This can open up new ways to fund your music business, tour, or next project. We talk about how to do this in chapter 13, “Advanced Income Techniques,” but all of this starts by following the recipes in the next two sections for all your music.

Lastly, know that the world of royalty collection is changing. As Jon Bahr, VP of music publishing and rights management at CD Baby, says, “The royalty landscape is developing and growing rapidly as streaming becomes prevalent, so there will be new opportunities for musicians to earn money in the future.” This means the amount of money you can make from royalties will grow over time, but it also means the services and organizations that collect your royalties will merge, change, and hopefully simplify. But until the day where you only need to register with one collection agency, follow the prep steps and checklist below to ensure you’re paid all the royalties you’re owed worldwide.

THE TWELVE PREP STEPS BEFORE YOU REGISTER YOUR COMPOSITIONS AND SOUND RECORDINGS

Before you can register your compositions and sound recordings, you need to sign up with multiple organizations so you can get paid. You need to register with many different organizations because of the complicated nature of copyright. Some of these organizations will cost money to join, but considering your music can generate revenue for you for your entire life (and then some), it’s worth it. We’re assuming you’re doing all of this for yourself, so we’ll assume you’re responsible for all twelve of these prep steps, but if you are represented by a publisher or label, some of them might be done by whoever is representing you.

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