Indie Music and Publishers.
Publishers are expensive, no doubt, but indie artists need them because they are the people who will find you experts in all fields of work. These experts help indie artists in making marketable music and improve their art. They have good knowledge about different fields of work in the industry and artists can learn a lot from them and absorb as their knowledge to be used in the future. You need to make good records if you want to become successful!
Publishers usually run a small business. They need to take a licence from the government and pay some fixed amount to the government, especially if it is a mechanical license. Excessive use of internet has made it easy for the internet users to download music online. They are always on the look-out for free downloads which is mostly not legal. Initially, you have simple choices to make in a deal with the publisher. There are various types of deals namely single song publishing, album, administrative deal, co-publishing deal etc., which publishers provide according to what suits the artist’s requirements. It also depends on what the artists have to offer. Like if the indie artist has a very good number ready to be published, he does not have to wait for the entire album to be completed for release. He can release a single song and can ask for a favourable deal for both the parties, from the publisher. Publishers face losses because of this, and to cover these losses they licence the songs of indie artists to balance the inflow of money by increasing sales. These publishers have terms and conditions, mostly unfavourable for the budding indie artist and they do not get a good deal in the starting of their career. If you want a solid deal from the publisher, you should wait for some time till you have earned some fame and your fan following is considerable. This will make the publishers comply with the terms and conditions that you put forward and that are beneficial for you.
With fierce competition, ever-growing number of music available online and online sales at an all-time low, it is becoming increasingly difficult for indie artists to depend only on money from online sales to sustain in the industry. You can read about this in detail in my blog Alternative Income for Indie Artists. It is highly recommended that you find a publishing agent to help you with ways to use musical works and generate revenue from them. Publishers not only register your works with the right associations, they also create commercial opportunities and administrate your royalty income. Getting a good publisher is beneficial for both writers and performing artists. Of course you don’t have to get a publisher and can manage your repertoire independently. However, the publishing landscape is intricate and highly technical. The amount of diligence required for publishing, makes it a time-consuming task.
The younger generation does not want to purchase music or pay for it. They are more than happy with the pirated copies and free music available online. In this situation, only the most successful artists are able to make ends meet through just record sales. In this article I am going to write about income from publishing. The payments you receive in exchange for letting people use your intellectual property are called Royalties which are the cornerstone of an indie musician’s income. In exchange of royalties, the Copyright holders can grant licenses to others for use of their music. There are regulations of fixed royalty rates for certain licenses that have to be explicitly given or those that are compulsory to be granted, as determined by law. In my future blogs, I’m going to outline different royalty streams which can be generated with your music, and tell you how the royalty income is collected by setting these up. It is because of all these complexities that I say a publisher is more capable of handling your work than you will ever be.
I am going to write more about this subject soon. Please share your experiences in the comments section and I will add them to my future posts.
