Many people love to create music. But few have the guts to actually put their creations out there for the world to enjoy and celebrate. While back in the day the process of having your music published seemed intimidating, the process to do so now has never been easier—especially because you can publish your own music now and take your career into your own hand.
Recording industries are no longer able to be the sole dictators over music distribution. In fact, musicians can now take advantage of publishing their music and their own music distribution. This is a massive shift in the industry, as for nearly two decades prior only a few recording labels held the power to the big leagues.
But those days are quickly becoming in the past, with independent publishing thriving. You can distribute your own music without having to sell your soul to a record label and we are going to share all the tips and tricks on how to accomplish exactly that.
Plus, there are some pretty great self-publishing benefits that come along with taking music distribution into your own hands. Here is everything you need to know and all that you have to look forward to when you do publish your own music.
1. Know Your Rights
First, you want to study your rights as a self-publishing musician and understand how to ensure you receive the royalties you deserve. To do this, you will want to tee up with a performing rights organization that will help you manage the royalties when your songs are used at public venues like bars, restaurants, and shopping malls, or even when performed by someone else.
There are various performing rights organizations that you can become associated with. To pick the right one for you, do your research and study what really makes the most sense for you. The different organizations come with different pros and cons, along with different fees that you need to pay to be a member. But the fees are more than worthwhile to know you will get paid accordingly for the brilliant music that you have published.
2. Hire a Publishing Administrator
If you are a bit intimidated or overwhelmed by the publishing and music distribution process, then consider hiring a publishing administrator to help. For a small fee, you will get support in everything from publishing to marketing your music. Plus, you could even sign agreements that mean you pay the publishing administrator on a commission basis so you don’t have to really pay out of pocket.
Many publishing administrators can be hired online and allow you to easily share your music yourself on platforms like Spotify, Google Play, and Apple Music, as well as help you gather up your compensation for when your money is streamed and downloaded.
3. Make Your Music a Business
While many people who create music consider themselves artists, you should also give yourself the proper credit that you yourself are also a business too. If you plan on doing your own music distribution, you should make your music an official business entity so that you can easily handle all your fees, taxes, and transactions. It will also help you get to enjoy some tax breaks every year too. By registering your music as an LLC, you can legally do your music distribution and handle your accounting books in a professional and profitable way.
4. Copyright Your Music
This is one of the most important rules to remember when it comes to doing music distribution on your own. Make sure that you get your music copyrighted. This means that you have the legal right to own your own song. While it sounds a bit silly, this is a very important step that will ensure no one else can steal and become profitable off of your own hard work. The fees to get your music copyrighted are very small but make a whole world of difference in the long run.
5. Make Real Albums
While there are many benefits of doing your music distribution digitally through streaming platforms and social media channels, there are equally numerous perks to making physical copies of your music too and distributing your work that way. For example, vinyl albums are quickly coming back and gaining a lot of popularity, with many mainstream artists now releasing their own physical albums of their new work. So you should certainly look at doing this too. You will reach a whole new demographic that will instantly fall in love with your music.
Conclusion
These five steps will help make the handling of your own music distribution easier. From hiring support to copyrighting your work, the details matter when it comes to taking your business and musical career into your own hands. What will you do first?
