Making Your Own Music

Making Your Own Music

There is nothing more creative than making your own music. Anything from recording music, playing guitar, or simply writing your own songs. In today's world we have such an advantage in creating music and sharing with the rest of the world. Like anything else, serious musicians that want to create and distribute musical material can rip through your budget and be very expensive. In my years of being involved in music and several years in the music industry I have found that the biggest challenge for musicians is to create and produce a CD (album) independently. The first step is to know as a musician or band your niche. What type of style is your music? Are you trying to write and create a number one hit on the radio station or create music that lies deep in your soul and your write what you feel and enjoy writing, recording and sharing with the rest of the world?

Home Recording Software

Music Recording Software

My advice is when you get to that cross road about the recording process is to record material at home. Build your craft in song writing, learn and become advanced in the recording process. This will cost you literally nothing if done correctly. Obviously researching a software or types of recording equipment take knowledge of what will work and cater your specific needs as a recording artist. If you are not advanced at recording and I mean not a professional producer or recording engineer, I would recommend a recording software which for it's value is the best thing I have come across on the market under $50! Yes, that's all.  Dub Turbo, a software where you have all the capabilities as a major studio if used to it's full extent. Have a look and this will be the best investment you will make as a musician if you don't have the funds to record in a studio.This home recording software is incredible effective. Happy recording!

Learning Guitar-Making Your Own Music

Learning Guitar-Making Your Own Music

Learning Guitar

     When it comes to learning guitar, there is an alternative to simple guitar lessons and making your own music. For several years guitar lessons have been limited to two learning concepts. You could learn to play guitar on your own with frustration from spending countless hours or your second option is to spend hours and plenty of money taking private lessons from tutors. In this day and age of computer technology access to just about everything is apparent. Now you can learn to play guitar and master the instrument by instructional video and the best teaching program out on the market. Jamorama guitar lessons is the only way to go these days. It is considered the top instructional guitar lessons on the Internet, voted by consumers. It is a one minute download e book that you have directly on your computer, so you can learn effectively right from home. It has step by step instructions from beginning to end. Learn to play different styles and genres of music. This entire course is cheaper than just one hour of private lessons with a tutor. Less than $50! This is the best value you will ever find. You will also get bonuses, chord charts and play along videos. I highly recommend Jamorama guitar lessons. It takes less time to learn, it's fun, simple and inexpensive. Have fun!

Simple Guitar Lessons

* Arian Collin is a manager for bands and solo artists in the music industry.

Secondary Publishing Income

Printed Music

Here is a look at some other sources of income when making your own music. The majority of printed music revenues comes from sheet music. When making your own music, single songs in print is a nice way to earn income as a writer/musician. Collections of songs by a number of different artists and writers are called mixed folios. Another type is a matching folio, which has all songs of a particular album. Matching folios are usually printed with the album artwork on the cover and various posed candid shots of the artist inside.

Royalties

The royalties paid to a publisher for single song sheet music are 20% of the marked retail price. If the sheet music has a $3.95 retail price, so the publisher gets about 80 cents. Royalties on folios are 10% to 12.5% of the marked retail price. Most retail selling price is around $24.95. A personality folio is one that has the picture of the performing artist plastered all over it. For personal folios an additional royalty is 5% of the marked retail selling price. This royalty goes to the artist.

Term

Licenses for print music are for limited periods of time, usually three to five years. Because of this, you have to spell out what a printer can do with the stuff at the end of the term. Certainly they can't manufacture any more inventory, but can they continue to sell what they have?
     Normally these licenses give the printer a right to sell their existing inventory for a period of six to twelve months after the term expires. These rights are non-exclusive (meaning someone else can sell the same materials at the same time). At the end of the six to twelve months, they have to trash anything left over. For folios, the printers try not to have any time limit on their sell off rights.

Home Recording Software

If you want a great home recording software, I recommend this software to record right from home without a fancy studio. Check it out here. Recording software.

*Author, Arian Collin is a independent manager for bands and solo artists in the music industry.

Motion Picture Performance Monies

Motion Picture Performance Monies

Due to some fancy footwork by the film industry a number of years ago ASCAP and BMI are not permitted to collect public performance monies when making your own music and your songs are in motion pictures. There seems to be no logical reason for this. It is just political and historically not done. However, foreign territories have never bought into this nonsense, and motion picture performance monies are very significant. The fees are collected by local societies, then paid over to ASCAP and BMI.

     Foreign film performance monies are percentage of the box office receipts, which means they generate a good amount of green. How much? Well, the composer of a major smash film score can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign performance monies alone.

Which Society Is Best

This is hard to tell. The best gauge is to look at cross-registered songs, which means a song that is registered with both ASCAP and BMI. This happens when a song is owned by an ASCAP and BMI publisher. If a song is owned 50% with BMI and 50% with ASCAP, each publisher must match that of the writer. With cross-registered songs, ASCAP collects half of the song and remits to the ASCAP writer/publisher on the same song, each independent of the other so we get to see who pays more.

    In the comparisons I've seen, ASCAP seems to do a bit better in general, but for some compositions, BMI beats them. Also, BMI changes its payment schedule periodically. Thus there are no hard and fast rules. 

Home Recording Software

     Here is the best value to record music at home effective and with a high quality of sound. Home recording software can be expensive, This one is under 40 bucks! Have a look here. Dub Turbo.

*Author Arian Collin is a independent manager for bands and solo artist. Mr. Collin is highly knowledgeable in music law.

Allocation of License

     So here are the societies sitting with those millions of dollars of license fees when making your own music. how do you know how much to pay each publisher and writer? First, the monies are used to pay the operating expenses of the society. Then, everything left over is divided among the participants (ASCAP and BMI are non-profit, so everything not used for expenses gets paid out; SESAC is privately owned and operated for profit, so they don't distribute all the money). The division is based only on radio airplay, television airplay and touring if you are an artist who performs his or her own compositions in live concerts, but you're not on the radio or TV, you can sometimes make special arrangements with BMI (but not ASCAP) to get paid. So, you ask, how do they know how much a song is played on the radio or on tv?

1. Radio
BMI requires its licensee radio stations to keep logs of all the musical compositions they play. This is done on a rotating basis, from station to station, and each station has to log for three days each year. BMI then projects from these logs to the whole country. As a check against the logs, BMI uses a services that digitally listens to certain stations. The digital magician matches the songs to a database and reports what it hears. ASCAP doesn't have stations keep logs. They use a digital monitoring service to scour hundreds of thousands of hours, then extrapolate for the rest of the country.

2. Television
TV stations are required to keep cue sheets, which are lists of every musical composition used, how long it was played, and how it was used (theme song, background, performed visually, etc.). The cue sheets are then filed with the societies and there are specific dollar amounts paid for each type of use. The amount also varies with the size of the broadcast area (local pays a lot less than network).

3. Touring
The societies now pay based on domestic live performances, but it's only for the top tow hundred grossing tours as reported in a magazine called Pollstar. They pay based on set lists-lists of the songs played by the band involved-which they get from either the venues or artist's management.

4. Muzak
Muzak, your source of fine music in elevators, grocery stores, and waiting rooms is also logged separately.

BMI pays bonuses for musical compositions that are performed heavily. and this can result in substantially increases in the amount of performance monies paid. ASCAP has no such concept, but its fees tend to be comparable anyway. Both societies pay quarterly and both societies pay about nine months to a year after the quarter in which monies are received.

When making your own music, it is crucial to join BMI or ASCAP!

Making Your Own Music-Performing Rights

Performing Rights Society
When making your own music, there are major performing rights societies in the United States. ASCAP standing for American Society of Composers, for authors and publishers. BMI standing for Broadcast Music Incorporated and SESAC. Of the three ASCAP and BMI are by far the largest, as SESAC has only about 1% of all performing rights. Virtually every foreign country has the equivalent for its own territory, most of which are government affiliated, such as SACEM for France, BUMA for Holland, PRS for the UK. The societies go to each publisher and say "Give us the right to license performing rights in all your songs." We'll then go to the people who want to use them like radio stations, nightclubs, etc. For each license we'll collect fees, divide them up, and send you your share of the cut. And this is exactly what happens. Publishers sign up with ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC, who then issues license to the users, collects the monies, and pays publishers. This is a vital component you need to know as an artist. Here is a great home recording software for it's value.

Making Your Own Music-Videos

Making Your Own Music-Videos

The first draft of almost every controlled composition clause requires you to license your songs for free in videos when making your own music. Here are two parts to video creating:

1. Promotional usage.
I don't think it's unreasonable to give the company a free promotional video license. When it's using the video to promote your records, it's not making any money.

2. Commercial usage.
When it comes to commercial usages, you should argue for some compensation. At present, the only meaningful commercial usage is home video distribution. For this, independent publishers usually get in the range of 8 cents to 15 cents per song. Also, there is almost always a 10,000 to 15,000 unit guarantee, meaning, for example if you got 12 cents per unit and a 10,000 unit guarantee, you would get a $1,200 advance. (12 cents times 10,000 units). In addition, they often get something called a fixing fee, which is non-recoupable payment for fixing songs in the video. These normally range from $250 to $500 per song.
    
     It's very difficult to get compensation for home video if you're not the artist, for the simple reason that companies don't like to do it. Remember, your video royalty as an artist includes publishing money, so in one sense you'd be taking it from yourself. However, publishing royalties are paid prior to recoupment, while video royalties aren't. So if you can get something here, it's worth the fight. However, it is tough to get.

     There are a number of websites that stream video on demand. MSN, Yahoo, AOL and others. The record companies take the position that your artist royalty includes any publishing monies like home video sales, so you don't get anything extra. Try to resist, but it's not easy. U.S. Congress added digital downloads to the compulsory mechanical license. This is called DPD(digital phonorecord delivery).
This provisions says that any contract made after June 22, 1995 can't reduce the mechanical rate you get on DPD's. In other words, even if your controlled composition clause requires you to give the company a 3/4 rate for songs on your CDs. you get a full rate on downloads. This is great for you.