Music Libraries for Indie Artists

Music Libraries for Indie Artists.

The use of a piece of an existing sound recording or composition for another sound recording or composition is called Sampling. You may read my blog Music Sampling for Indie Artists, to learn more about music sampling. Permission from the copyright holders, called ‘clearing’ of that sample is required in order to legally use a copyrighted sample. If an indie artist is using another artist’s music for his work, they can avoid having to clear samples by using the full composition rather than a piece, for your recording.

Here are a few methods to make money from sampling.

Traditional Sampling

When a copyright owner gets compensated for others taking a piece of their composition or master to use in their works, it is called traditional sampling. This is a good way to monetize your existing repertoire. An artist’s work qualifies for this kind of sampling only if it has become famous; because only then do other artists and bands want to use it. Hence, for an artist to pursue it actively is hard. Logically, you should invest time in the tracks and compositions that are most to be are most famous or classic, to be sampled.

Even if it is only to know how to delegate copyrighting your music to someone else, grasp the basics of principles of copyrighting your music. A musician’s most important asset is copyright. It can help you get exposure, turn around your career and make you money, if you understand its concept. I have written about this in detail in my blog Alternative Income for Indie Artists. Anyone who wants to reproduce or distribute your song, will need to get permission from you, the musical copyright owner. Every composer, lyricist or performing artist is a creator. A creator of art of one form or another. When you record a song or write lyrics, your work automatically becomes copyrighted. Copyright is a form of intellectual property. The one who creates, becomes the copyright owner. This right is automatically split equally if there are multiple creators; though owners are free to deviate from this equal share through mutual agreement. Copyright ownership rights are meant to give control over who can perform publicly, reproduce, create derivatives of and distribute work.

Originally, I had set out to write about all possible income streams that indie musicians and artists could look at as alternative means to generate revenue, but this subject turned out to be vast, so I decided to write a few posts only on copyrighting music. Here, I am laying out the essential concepts of publishing and music copyright.

Stock Music

Music that has been created with the purpose of usage in other media, such as radio, video, television, or even in other people’s compositions, after licensing, is called stock music. There are certain fundamental differences between traditional sync and stock music.

• Stock music artist or publisher focusses on creating large catalogues of this music rather than individually crafted custom music pieces as in custom sync.
• A client or whoever is in need of stock music is expected to browse through music libraries to find what is suitable to their requirement, unlike custom sync deals which are bagged by the publisher’s constant efforts to cater to the client’s needs.

Different forms of stock music are construction and sample packs for music production, sound effects wherever required, music piece, loops, jingles etc.

As mentioned earlier, stock music is available in large catalogues in online music libraries and also on apps and websites specialize in one or all kinds of stock music. All of these platforms typically license music for a flat fee, or via a blanket license through subscription. This entitles you to use all their music free of public performance royalties.

At the start of this article I had discussed, this was intended to be a part of a larger article about all possible income streams for musicians. I will follow up with a new article about alternative income streams soon, where we discuss the many other ways to make money from your musical talents.

This article is only about copyrighting your music and generating income from it. Do dive deeper into other subjects through the links that I have provided in this article.

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