Indie Music Publishing.
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. 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.
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.
Depending on the deal you negotiate, a publisher typically takes a 30-50% cut of a writer’s royalties. The more successful you are, the is the publisher’s cut. In countries like The Netherlands, a publisher’s cut is fixed to a rate of 33.33%. Every artist would like to earn from his art, but it not easy to achieve that goal in today’s world because market if is full of pirated copies of CDs which are easily available in the market at a very low price. Earning from selling original records is becoming more difficult day by day.
To meet financial requirements, it is important for an indie artist or indie bands to look for an alternative source of income, instead of just depending on the revenue coming from selling music. If your aim in life is to produce good music and you think the rest can be managed by someone else, then it is always better to work with a publisher. An artist has to give the rights of publication of his songs to the publisher in order to let the publisher do his work and make sure that sales are happening and profits are flowing for himself and the artist.
It is highly recommended that you find a publishing agent to help you with ways to use musical works and generate revenue from them. Although you can always get online and publish your work. Or you may upload it on your website. If you do not have a website for your work or band yet, there are companies like Hyper Effects that can help you connect with your target audience efficiently. Hyper Effects is one stop for your website, marketing and cyber development requirements. It helps you to create a website to display your talent or sell your indie music or indie art. Their websites are easy to navigate.
Income from Publishing is the cornerstone of the income of indie artists and musicians. Essentially, the act of commercially leveraging music of songwriters and composers to get them paid for it is called Publishing. This can be done by the songwriter, the musician or be assigned to a publisher. If your aim in life is to produce good music and you think the rest can be managed by someone else, then it is always better to work with a publisher. You can read about this in detail in my blog Publishing for Indie Artists. An artist has to give the rights of publication of his songs to the publisher in order to let the publisher do his work and make sure that sales are happening and profits are flowing for himself and the artist.
To help you form an understanding of methods to exploit to different rights pertaining to music, let’s begin with the fundamentals of music copyright.
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.
I am going to write more about publishing in my next blog. Please share your experiences in the comments section and I will add them to my future posts.
