Publishing for Indie Artists

Publishing for Indie Artists.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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!

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.

Understand all the points before signing a deal. Be careful about licensing, royalties, registration and creative matters. Getting a licence is a tedious task. Let the publisher do it.

A publisher’s job is not easy either. They have to try different places to advertise your work and they spend a lot of time in contacting music supervisors, advertising agencies etc. If you find a good publisher, his creativity can bring financial gains and new opportunities which can change your life.

Finally, the publisher collects the amount of your music royalties, both performance and mechanical, for you from all sources. As I have written in my blog The Evolution of Indie Music, independent music or Indie music has been known as music produced by an individual, a group or a commercial record label independently, where the recording and publishing is done by the individual, the group or the brand at a smaller and less commercially complicated level. Historically, Indie music used to be defined as something that was not published by the big four players in music publishing, namely Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI. However, growing and being noticed without the support of a label, in times when there was no internet, was difficult and therefore, most Indie bands of those days went unnoticed. With time, this has also changed and today even indie artists require publishers for their music.

Please leave your comments and I will add them in my future blogs.