Question 1

How much money can you make licensing music?

Alison Stolpa · Accepted Answer

How much money you can make licensing your music depends on how well-known you or your song are. Most indie artists make a few hundred to a few thousand dollars on a licensed track. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the famously expensive-to-license Beatles tracks.
According to The Telegraph,1 the Beatles track “Tomorrow Never Knows” was licensed for play in an episode of the TV show Mad Men for $250,000, a figure they state is “$150,000 higher than the usual outer limit for licensing.” Even more incredibly, Danny Boyle’s film Yesterday is alleged to have paid $10 million to license the Beatles tracks used within the picture!

Question 2

How can I publish my own music?

Alison Stolpa · Accepted Answer

Here’s the process for publishing your music:

Create an original work.
Decide on the songwriting split: who wrote which parts/percentage of each song?
Copyright the song
Register with a performing rights organization (PRO) like BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC

For a more in-depth look at music publishing, check out this blog.

Question 3

Is music automatically copyrighted?

Alison Stolpa · Accepted Answer

Not necessarily. When you record or write out the music for song, it starts the copyrighting process. However, that doesn’t mean it has copyright protection, which is what most people mean when they discuss music copyrights. To receive legal recognition of your work as a Songwriter and, most importantly, legal protection of your work, you MUST register a copyright with the US Copyright Office.

Question 4

How do I License my Music for TV and film?

Tom Stein · Accepted Answer

The first step is to educate yourself as much as you can about what’s involved with Publishing and Licensing music, by reading blogs such as this one, consulting some of the great books on the subject, or perhaps even attending a college course on Music Industry, Music Publishing, and Music Licensing.
There are a lot of good educational materials available, and arming yourself with some specialized knowledge of the subject will be crucial to your success. In other words, do your homework before taking concrete steps, so you won’t make avoidable mistakes.
Some of the steps you will need to take are as follows. (These steps do not need to be taken in the exact order as presented here.)

Have your music professionally recorded
Have your music copyrighted
Register with a Performance Rights Organization (PRO)
Self-Publish your music or sign with a Music Publisher
Get your tracks ready in different formats, including instrumental stems
Embed metadata in all tracks
Research Music Libraries and Music Supervisors to pitch to
Catalogue your songs with descriptions and keywords so they will be discoverable in Music Libraries, and allow you to track payments and placements
Build your professional network, online image and reputation

Question 5

What does a Music Publisher do?

Tom Stein · Accepted Answer

Music Publishers are companies or individuals who have two basic tasks, to generate income from music through commercial placement, and to get the artist paid for the use of their works. This involves navigating the complex legal landscape of licensing and transferring copyrights, marketing and distributing music to artists, films, TV, and other mixed media sources, monitoring the use, and tracking the payments, or royalties paid.
Music Publishers seek out new talent to sign at various levels, taking on the responsibility of making sure their music is properly registered with performing arts rights organizations such as ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC, protected by copyright, and also handling promotion, and most administrative tasks. They might be heavily involved in the creative process, or they may just manage the licensing paperwork for Songwriters and Composers.

Question 6

What’s the difference between Publishing and Licensing?

Tom Stein · Accepted Answer

Music Publishing refers to the management and administration of agreements and methods for transferring the rights to musical works (a.k.a. tracks) for commercial use, in other words, to earn money. A musician can publish their work themselves, but it’s a lot of work and fairly complicated to handle for an individual.
Publishing companies will sign an artist to a Publishing deal which spells out the terms of how their music is placed into films, TV, or other media, how the agreements work, and how much of the revenue (money) they will take as their fee or commission when work is licensed for commercial use.
Publishers will often actively market music from their clients for placement, since this is how they earn their money.
Licensing refers to the specific contract and terms of how a track is used commercially, for how long, and where it can be used. Therefore, Licensing is much more specific and refers only to a certain use or placement of a song as defined by the agreement, called a contract or a license. Payments to the copyright owner are called Royalties, and sometimes referred to as “Rights” which means the same thing as payments.
To summarize, Publishing is the management of the agreements, placements, and payments for a song, while Licensing is the actual agreement allowing for the placement of an individual work. Publishing and Licensing deals allow musicians, composers, and artists to earn passive income from their music.

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