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The Musician's Guide to Publishing & Performing Rights

teacher avatar J. Anthony Allen, Music Producer, Composer, PhD, Professor

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Intro

      2:23

    • 2.

      What We Are Covering Here

      3:31

    • 3.

      Tools

      0:59

    • 4.

      Disclaimer

      1:49

    • 5.

      Publishing: Not Just for Books!

      4:05

    • 6.

      Musicians As Publishers

      5:38

    • 7.

      Co-Publishers

      2:42

    • 8.

      Cashing In on Publishing

      2:49

    • 9.

      The History of the PRO

      4:14

    • 10.

      What They Do

      2:58

    • 11.

      What is Public

      4:47

    • 12.

      How the PRO Gets Paid

      2:48

    • 13.

      How the PRO Knows About You

      3:23

    • 14.

      ASCAP or BMI or SESAC

      4:39

    • 15.

      How You Get Paid

      3:02

    • 16.

      The Publisher's Cut

      4:14

    • 17.

      Inside the ASCAP Website

      4:58

    • 18.

      Back to Death Cab for Cutie

      3:27

    • 19.

      The Player Piano

      2:53

    • 20.

      The Publisher and Mechanical Licenses

      3:04

    • 21.

      Two Methods for Obtaining a License

      3:06

    • 22.

      The Harry For Agency

      5:33

    • 23.

      Rates

      2:28

    • 24.

      For the Writer

      1:49

    • 25.

      Silent Movies

      4:39

    • 26.

      How to Get a Sync License

      3:05

    • 27.

      Dramatic Rights

      2:42

    • 28.

      All The Rights!

      3:31

    • 29.

      Setting up an LLC

      2:50

    • 30.

      Administer Licenses

      2:45

    • 31.

      Promote The Song

      2:43

    • 32.

      Licensing Opportunities

      3:22

    • 33.

      What Comes Next?

      1:09

    • 34.

      Bonus Lecture

      0:36

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About This Class

Welcome to the "Musician's Guide" Series!

This series is pulled directly from the courses I've created for my university position in Music Business. All of these courses are designed for the everyday musician - amateur or professional - who has little or no knowledge on the topic, but wants to master it.

This class is all about Publishing and Performing Rights. This is to say: This class is about getting paid for your music.

100% Answer Rate! Every single question posted to this class is answered within 24 hours by the instructor.

It is ideal for anyone who writes music. Especially:

  • Creators: If you are making music, you need to understand publishing. You are literally giving away money by not setting up publishing correctly.

  • Musicians: Performing Rights Organizations pay the creators of music for their "public performance". That means anytime something you've written is played (played live, or even a recording is played in a coffee shop), you get paid.

  • Producers: If you are producing music, you need to understand publishing!

In this class, we start with defining "music publishing" - it is a big topic (and has nothing to do with publishing books...). Then I'll walk you through how to set yourself up as a publisher so you can take advantage of the performing rights organizations that pay the publisher half of your earnings. I'll walk you through every step of the process and explain the logic behind every concept.

The goal of this class is for you to start getting the money that you are owed for your music.


Software:
This course is NOT specific to any DAW program.

Genre:
Publishing has no genre - so all are welcome here.

Topics Covered: 

  • Publishing

  • Co-Publishers

  • Cashing In on Publishing

  • Performing Rights Organizations

  • Getting Paid from the PRO

  • The Publisher's Cut

  • ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC

  • Mechanical Licenses

  • The Harry Fox Agency

  • Synchronization Licenses

  • Dramatic Licenses

  • Publisher Agreements

  • Publisher Responsibilities

  • And much, much more!

If you are ready to start making money from your music, and making sure it is protected, this class will start you on that journey. Get started today.

Dr. Allen is a university music professor and is a top-rated instructor - with nearly 100 courses and over 200,000 students.

In 2017 Star Tribune Business featured him as a "Mover and a Shaker," and he is recognized by the Grammy Foundation for his music education classes. 

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

J. Anthony Allen

Music Producer, Composer, PhD, Professor

Teacher

Dr. J. Anthony Allen is a distinguished composer, producer, educator, and innovator whose multifaceted career spans various musical disciplines. Born in Michigan and based in Minneapolis, Dr. Allen has composed orchestral works, produced acclaimed dance music, and through his entrepreneurship projects, he has educated over a million students worldwide in music theory and electronic music production.

Dr. Allen's musical influence is global, with compositions performed across Europe, North America, and Asia. His versatility is evident in works ranging from Minnesota Orchestra performances to Netflix soundtracks. Beyond creation, Dr. Allen is committed to revolutionizing music education for the 21st century. In 2011, he founded Slam Academy, an electronic music school aimed... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Intro: Hey everyone, welcome to the musicians guide to publishing and performing rights. So what are we talking about with publishing? And we talking about like writing books and staff? No, it has nothing to do with writing books. Publishing in the music world. It's how you make mine. So really what we're talking about here is the way somebody who can license your music from u to be used in other things, like a TV show or a commercial or a movie or video game. Any of that stuff, you have to have publishing setup in order to take advantage of those, otherwise, you're missing out on money. It's a weird term we use, but it is the correct term. Now one thing that goes hand in hand with this is something called Performing Rights. This is another way that we make money. In fact, one of the craziest things about performing rights is that so many musicians don't know how to set up themselves to make money from their performing right? There is literally money generated every time you play a song. I'm not making that up. If you don't set up the right things, you will never see that money. But if you do take a few minutes to set something up, that money will come to you. And then if you do one more step, it'll come to you doubled. But you have to know how to do it. And that's what we're going to cover in this class, publishing and performing rights. It's all about how to get paid for the music that you've already made. Okay. 2. What We Are Covering Here: All right, Let's start with talking about kind of a big overview of what we're taught, what we're going to be covering in this class. I'll say this again once we really get into the weeds. But the biggest thing that happens when we talk about this stuff, as we talk about publishing, and people think about books or in music, they think about sheet music. Get that out of your head. That's not what we're talking about here. That is part of it. That's a very small part. Publishing is really the term that we use to mean who is in charge of our copyright rights, who is in charge of the licensing our copyright? That's what we're really talking about here. So as you know, when we get a copyright, we have a whole bunch of rights that come with it, right? Copyright is not a single right. There are many rights that come along with it. So in the old days, we would assign a publisher to keep track of those rights and license those rights for us, okay? And the publisher would therefore keep a cut. In the modern world, a lot of us don't have publishers. Some people still do. But a lot of us don't have publishers to do that for us. So we do it ourselves. So it is more common than anything else in the world for an artist to set themselves up as a publisher. And there's one really, really good reason to do that. As you'll see later in the course, there's, there's a, there's a weird little legal thing that if basically if you don't set yourself up for a publisher, you're throwing half your money away. It's really bizarre, but that's just the way it works. So we'll get into that very quickly. So we're talking about publishing and we're also talking about performing rights because they're tied together. So the right to perform the things that you have created, okay? These are LinkedIn very tight ways and it's very easy, actually incredibly easy, to make money from performances of your works. And that means whether you're performing them, whether someone else's performing them, or whether they're just played in a coffee shop. If somebody plays a song of yours over the speakers in a, in a car mechanics office. You're entitled to some money for that. And there's really easy ways to cash in on that. You're probably already making money with your music if you've released anything. So we just need to get all of our ducks in a row and figure out how to capture that money. Because it's out there. And if you're not, if you don't go and get it just disappears. So that's what this class is all about. 3. Tools: Alright, what tools are you going to need to get through this class? Pretty easy. Take some notes, so have a text document open. Be ready to do that. You're also going to need is I need a browser. And I may direct you to well, I'm not going to insist that you do this, but I'm going to tell you how to register yourself as a publisher and create accounts on various performing rights organization websites. I don't believe those cost money anymore, so I don't think you'll need to do that. I don't think you'll need to pay any money to create those accounts. They used to cost money, but I don't think they do anymore. So I'll be walking you through how to do that. But really that's it for tools. So computer internet, which you already have because you're watching this and take some notes. 4. Disclaimer: Okay, just one more quick little disclaimer. Same thing that I put in the copyright class. We are going to be talking about the law and how it works and all of that stuff. Two important things about that. Number one, I'm not a lawyer. So if you are ever in a pinch, you should get a lawyer. If you have any real deep questions about anything, you should get a lawyer. You should ask a lawyer those questions if the lawyer contradicts what I say, do what your lawyer says. Second thing is that when it comes to any of the legal issues, and I'm specifically referring to how things are and what the laws are in the United States. Especially when it comes to performing rights. I think we'll talk about the different countries when we get to the performing rights section. And I believe the, well, actually don't know if the law around publishing rights is the same in different countries or not. So my perspective is specifically the United States perspective. I know I have a lot of international students here. So that doesn't mean this doesn't apply to you. That just means that you might have to do one little extra step of homework and figure out what the I'm changes are to your, in your country. For example, I might say that something gets us 30% of our revenue. Here. You might need to look it up and figure out how what what that percentage is in your country. But I'm not a lawyer and I'm talking about primarily United States. 5. Publishing: Not Just for Books!: So a lot of what we're talking about here when it comes to publishing has to do with rules and terms that were created in an earlier time. Okay? So when we talk about publishing or not talking about books, and we're not talking about She music. However, that is where the term came from. If you go back to, let's just say an earlier time, I don't want to guess a year. But if you go way back, the idea that music could exist without sheet music was pretty inconceivable, right? 1920s, 1930s. Even though, you know, recordings were possible then they weren't as ubiquitous as they are now. Recordings weren't really an option for that tangibility thing in order to copyright something, you had to put it on sheet music. So the idea that a piece of music could be copywritten without being sheet music. Just, it just wasn't possible. Now, once something was sheet music, somebody needed to be there to make sure that it could be licensed and monetized. Someone can make money from that sheet music in ways other than just selling the sheet music, right? There are other ways that we can make money off that to control the Sung, basically, that's what we need to do and that became the role of the publisher. The publisher said, okay, we will take the sheet music and will facilitate selling of the sheet music to someone who wants to buy the sheet music. Sure. That's one part of it. But we're also going to facilitate managing who uses the music, who licenses the music? Who's requesting licenses if we want to get to accept those or not, that all became the role of the publisher. Okay, Now, fast-forward, back to today. Most people that write music like you and I don't publish the sheet music, right? Don't make the sheet music available for someone to buy. It's okay. You don't have to do that. But there's still should be someone in charge of all the licensing of that music. And there is someone in charge of licensing of all that music, and we call that person the publisher. Okay? So that's the term we're talking about. Don't think about books, don't think about sheet music. There was a time when that's what that meant in the music world, but it's not true anymore. When we talk about publishing, we're talking about licensing and getting paid. The publisher is the person responsible for getting paid. So do you need a publisher? The answer to that is an unequivocal. An equivalent Cobol? Yeah. Unequivocal. That's the word I'm looking for. Yes. You need a publisher. How do you get a publisher? Is that like getting a record deal? It can be. There are big publishers out there. They mostly focused on classical music. Record labels themselves who can and sometimes do act as publishers, will see an example of that in a minute. But most artists, and I'm talking big-name artists and small artists, don't sign with a big publisher. They make their own publisher. More on that in a second. 6. Musicians As Publishers: Okay, So the best way to explain this is to look at it, how it actually works. So I grabbed a record, a physical record, I still buy these. This is a fairly recent album by the band Death Cab for QT A-band. I really like the right awesome songs, even though if you're not familiar with them, it sounds like they're a metal band, but they're not, they're great band, they're just really, really great songwriters. So inside this album, like most albums, there is a sheet. So this and this has lyrics. The lyrics and stuff on the back of it. There's a list of credits, credits for the album. And down here there's some real small print. And that small print is the majority of what we're going to deal with for the next little while. Okay? So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take a picture of that small print. And then I'm going to put it on the screen so that we can all see it nice and big, right? So that was blurry cutoff k. So here it is. Okay. So this is the part I'm concerned about every album we'll have this. If it doesn't have this, that just means you need to go find it online somewhere. But the thing that I'm concerned about is just this part right here. In fact, let's just crop that there. And we'll zoom in a little bit more even. Okay, so what do we see here? Songs by Benjamin Guilford. Okay, so what you need to know about death camp for QD is that the singer's name is Benjamin Gifford, period. Okay. So this tells me all the songs were written by just him. Just the singer. Just surprising to me, um, but that's cool. Okay, so the next thing that's here, Copyright 2018, BMG platinum songs. Now we know from the copyright section of this class that it doesn't have to be there, but it's nice. Sure. One thing that tells us is that if wherever, if we ever needed to know for some kind of library and purpose that this was this came out in 2018. That's what that tells us. Okay, so it's copyright by BMG platinum songs, that's the record label. Okay. But then there's a slash here, slash where I'm calling from music. So I can't get my box to go over there, but where I'm calling from music, parentheses BMI, k, That is the publisher. So this could be two things. This could either be that BMG platinum songs is the co publisher with where I'm calling from music BMI. Or it could be that BMG is the record label. And where I'm calling from music, BMI is the publisher. I think in this case it's Cole publishers. Think these are both publishers. And you can do that. We'll look at how that works in shortly. But what I'm really concerned about here is this where I'm calling from music BMI, because that's a weird name. Get rid of this BMI business for a minute. So where I'm calling from music, I would bet anything that what that is is the publishing company of Ben Gvd recovered, CVD, delivered. Let's go with cupboard. Really sure how it's pronounced. So that's his personal publishing company. They publish only the music of Ben giver. Nothing else. And there's probably nobody that actually works for where I'm calling from music. It's kind of in name only. Now in his case, he publishes a lot of songs. He works with a bunch of different people. Maybe there is someone that actually works there. There's maybe some good amount of music to be done, but it doesn't need to be anything more than a title. Okay? A lot of people would just write their name and then music at the end. So Benjamin, give heard music and then parentheses BMI. That's important. Or we're gonna get to that bit in just a minute. So throughout the years it's become easier and easier for artists just to set this up on their own. And the reasoning need to do that is because there's kind of there can be just kinda of money falling into this bucket. And basically doing this, creating your own publishing company makes the bucket, that is the bucket to catch that money. If you don't have that bucket, the money just falls right through. So that's how that works. 7. Co-Publishers: Okay, So what about all the rest of the stuff? Let's look at this. This says except, so that means all songs by Benjamin delivered and published with BMG platinum songs and where I'm calling from music except the song Gold Rush, which I'll tell you just a quick and passing. There's one song on this album called Gold Rush. And it includes a sample of this older side, I guess by Yoko Ono. It's really just a person going Gold Rush. But this was probably the deal they needed to make to get that sample. So that sign is published. Is written by Benjamin delivered, Dave deeper and Yoko Ono. Okay, I don't know who David pepper is, but I know who Yoko Ono is. So in order to get that sample cleared, he must have had to give co-writing credits to Dave deeper and Yoko Ono. And it is published by BMG platinum songs, where I'm calling from music and Fantasm a sag Grado songs, BMI, which must be the publishing company of Dave deeper. I only know that because I'm going to have safely assume, oh, no music BMI is the publishing company of Yoko Ono. Okay. Oh, no music, BMI. Okay, and then here's a separate song. So each of these people, Dave differ and Yoko Ono, have their own publishing companies here. This one, David upper, this one, Yoko Ono. So whenever somebody who writes a song, they basically get a songwriter credit and a publisher credit. Now, those two things are going to become super important shortly. But the key to remember for right now is that there are two things when you do this. So here's another song, Summer years by Benjamin Gilbert and JSON mugger. K. Published by BMG platinum songs. And where I'm calling from music than gigahertz publishing company and giant beat Sung's. So giant pizza lungs must be the publishing company of Jason mugger. There you go. So co writers are also Cole publishers. 8. Cashing In on Publishing : Okay, when we have a copy written piece of work, anything intellectual property, let's call it. There are a whole bunch of rights we get. And we can divvy those out. How ever we want. We're gonna talk about all of these in this class, but right now we're going to focus on performing rights. But here's what the main ones are. There are the performing rights. Oops, the right to perform the work. There is the mechanical rights, which is an oddly named thing, but what it means is the right to record the work. There are dramatic rights, also known as grand rights. That's the right to use something in a play. There are sync rights, also known as synchronization. That maybe I spelled it right. Synchronization rights. That's the right to use something in a movie or TV or anything like that. Those are the big ones. So each of these rights can be given away or licensed or used however you want. And this is where that publishing thing really matters. The publisher manages these rights for us. And if you are the artist and the publisher, you manage these. So why create this extra DOM step of having a publisher? When the publisher is just me and it's just me giving myself a goofy title. And doesn't that just seem like an additive amount of paperwork? Because I don't need to do that. I could just do it myself under my real name. There is a reason it's a weird legal reason that you would do it this way. And in order to understand that, we need to talk about performing rights, in particular, Performing Rights Organizations. So let's go on a little foray into the performing rights organizations. And then we'll come back to publishing pretty quickly actually. And this idea of why you need to create yourself a publisher will make all the sense in the world. 9. The History of the PRO: Okay, So here's how the story goes. In 1917, the composer Victor Herbert went into a restaurant. I believe this was in New York. And he was a well-known composer. He was doing quite well. And he sat down in the restaurant to have dinner. There was a pianist in the restaurant playing music to entertain the customers, right? Not an uncommon site at the time. Someone just kind of sitting up there playing music. That pianist happened to be playing. The music of Victor Hubert for the duration of his meal. Okay. So Victor Hubert sitting there and he's eating his dinner, being serenade by this pianist to the music of Victor Hubert. So he feels awkward, whatever. I don't know how he really felt, but the point is eventually the end of after he finished eating, his bill came. So the waiter puts the check on the table and says, Thank you. Mr. Hubert's that'll be x amount of dollars. And Victor Hubert says, no, I will not pay that. Because you should be paying me. Because you've been using my music this entire night to entertain all of your guests. How how is it that IOU, anything when I've been your entertainment for all of your guests, right? So this started, I'm a roller coaster of things to happen. And eventually ended up with this thing called the performing rights organization, also known as the PR. Oh, okay. So I'm going to be using the term PRO a lot in the next bit. Every time I say PRO, we're talking about performing rights organizations. Okay? So victory Hubert sued, I believe. And one. And as part of that, congress created the first PRO, the first organization whose job it was to monitor performances and collect royalties on behalf of the composer. So this is an organization who needs to go to that restaurant and say, whose music are you playing tonight? And collect a certain amount of money that will then get handed over to the composer. That's how that works. Now, the way it works now is still fundamentally the same. But because the scale is so much bigger, it's the entire country and actually the entire world. There are a couple of concessions that have been made. The organizations can't call every restaurant in the world and say, Who's music are you playing tonight? But that first PRO, that was created was called ascap, which stands for American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. There's that word again. We'll get back to that. So that's how ascap was created. There was a government order that said, yes, the composer should get paid when that pianist is playing, playing their music to entertain the guests at this restaurant. So I don't know if Victor Hubert ever had to pay as his dinner bill. But what ended up happening was the creation of this whole system that we're gonna talk about right now. 10. What They Do: Okay, so what do they do? What do these organizations actually do? They ensure that songwriters and publishers are paid for the public use of their work by collecting royalties on behalf of the rights owner. Okay, so the PRO makes sure that the songwriters and the publishers get paid for the public use of their work. Now, that word is going to get a little sticky in a minute. But hold on to that. Public use of their work by collecting royalties on behalf of the rights owner. Okay. So if I write a song on the rights owner, okay? I, while I'm part of the rights owner, the other part is the publisher. More on that soon. But me and the publisher own the rights to the song. So the PRO is going to ensure that I'm paid for any public use of my work by collecting royalties on behalf of the rights owner. So the reason I bolded collecting there, That's another thing that we have to talk about. So how the PRO gets paid is a tricky thing because it's not that they go to every restaurant and say, you played music of J. Allen last Thursday. You played one song of his, I need you to give me $2. It doesn't work that way. That would be way too tedious and time-consuming. So that issue is complicated. We're going to devote a video to that in just a second. But first, let's deal with this public term. Because what they're saying here is that they ensure that the writers and publishers are paid for the public use of their work. So what does that mean? Does that mean every time someone play is one of my songs on guitar down on the beach that I get paid for that. Does that mean every time the the local like bakery up the street plays my music while they're back in the kitchen. I get paid for that. What does that mean? So let's go into more detail on that next. 11. What is Public: Okay. What is public? Public for the purposes of the PRO includes anything in a venue and also radio, TV, commercials, and things like that. So let's talk about this venue thing. So generally speaking, it means any place where there is an organization behind the performance. So using some of the examples I just said, someone that decides to just sing my song. I don't an acoustic guitar down at the beach. Does do I get a royalty for that from the PRO? No, because there's really no kind of governing thing there. But somebody plays one of my songs at at a bar down the street. Do I get paid for that? Yes. Because that's a music venue. What about at the local college? Yes. What about at a church? Yes. Although that word is that the payment is a little bit less, I think. But I think there are still usually payments for music that happens at a church. Definitely if it's part of a concert, if it's part of a church service, I don't think PRO's collect for that. If one of my songs gets played on the radio? Yes. Now, that brings up an interesting thing. What does it mean to be played? What is performed? Performed means any presentation of the work. So that means someone covering my solid yes. That means a recording of my song being played. Yes. So if somebody, if a radio station decides to play my song on the radio, Do I get a royalty? No one's performing it live. There are playing a recording of it, but that still counts as a performance in terms of the performing rights organization. So yes, I do get a royalty for that. If another band covers one of my songs, do I get paid? Yes. In theory, yes. So you don't get a royalty for every performance everywhere. You get a royalty for things performed in any kind of venue. Especially if that venue is making money, if there's a ticket, although that is not necessarily a prerequisite. But if there is a ticket price or a cover charge or something like that, then you're definitely entitled to a royalty. But even if it's a free concert, you might be entitled to a royalty also. Concerts in the park. That's something that happens a lot in my neighborhood. And those would be subject to getting a royalty from. It's actually most things you're entitled to a royalty from. Now. The real, the real trick here is you're going to get a royalty. If the PRO collects a royalty, right? Because they have to collect a royalty from somebody in order to give you a royalty right there, the middleman, middle person. Um, so if you're going to collect a royalty, they need to get a royalty. Know who did they get the royalty from? If it's just somebody playing your song down on the beach, then there's no one for them to collect a royalty from because they don't collect it from the performer who the guy is standing there playing the guitar. In most cases, the actually collected from the venue. So let's go to a new video and talk about how the PRO gets money that they then give to you. 12. How the PRO Gets Paid: Okay, How does the PRO get paid? This is something that is commonly misunderstood. So let's say I'm a performer, I'm in a band and I'm going to go to a bar, and I'm going to cover a Bob Dylan song. So do I have the right to cover that Bob Dylan song? And how does Bob Dylan get paid? The answer is yes, I have a right to cover that Bob Dylan song. And but Bob Dylan isn't going to come and shake me down. That's not how it works. The PRO is not going to come and shake me down. That's not how it works. How it works is the venue. It all comes down to the venue. The venue is going to have you're supposed to have a license from the PRO. Okay, so let's use ascap. For example. We'll talk about other PROs and just second. But so let's say ascap has a license that covers the venue. So the venue has paid ascap some amount of money per year to have a license. So let's just say that's a $1000. I'm not sure what it is, but it's $1000 for this particular venue. And that means they have a license so that the music of all artists represented by ascap can be performed in that space. That means they can be played on the jukebox recordings of theirs can be played over the PA. Bands doing cover songs can use those, can play those songs. Now let's say Bob Dylan has a member of ascap. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but let's just assume it is for a second. Then that means that a slice of that money that the venue pays for that license is going to go to Bob Dylan for my performance of that Bob Dylan tune. Okay, For my cover of that Bob Dylan tune. So it's the venue that pays the license. The artist doesn't have to pay it. The artist doesn't really have to do anything. As long as they're playing in a venue that is that has a license from the PRO. And in fact, you kind of need a few of them, right? Because there are more than one PRO. We've only been talking about ascap, but there are more. We'll talk more about them into second. 13. How the PRO Knows About You: So how does the PRO, know about you? If someone goes to a bar and plays one of your songs or if the hair salon down the street is playing your music, how did they know to track you down and pay you? The answer to that is, you have to become a member. You have to align yourself with one of the PROs and only one. You can only be a member of one at a time. Okay? So here's how you do that. Let's go to the ascap website. We would have to join basically. And you can go here and say, you know, I'm a music creator. Well, let's just look at it. And it says join ascap today already a member, you can log in. And you would become a member of ascap. Now they kinda keep changing like whether or not this costs money or not. Some of them do and some of them don't. I don't know what the current policy is. But if it does cost money, it might cost a small amount once and then never again. It's not a subscription thing. I haven't paid any money to ask happened a long time. I get money from mascot. We can also on the ascap website and I'll take you inside to my ass cap account so you can see what it looks like. But we can also, I'll do that in just a second. But we can also look inside here and see the different people who are aligned with ascap, who are members of ascap. So here's how you can purchase a license if you're a venue or a restaurant, bar or nightclub. If you're a website, music licensing for other business, radio, television, church ministry, dance, studio music license or other. But let's look at ace. Ace is kind of the title search thing. Terms of Use it or you have to click on repertory here. So let's look up Bob Dylan. Okay, So Bob Dylan is a member of ascap, it would appear. But perhaps this is a different Bob Dylan. Actually. The performer is what's listed here. And remember that the ascap isn't licensing the performer there representing the writers. So these are songs that Bob Dylan has done by ascap performers. However, this one, it looks like was co-written by an ascap member. So it doesn't look like Bob Dylan is an ascap member. He's a member of one of the other ones. So let's talk about the other ones. 14. ASCAP or BMI or SESAC: So what are the PROs? There are three. In the United States, I should say. There are three. Primarily. Three. The first is ascap that we talked about above. It stands for the composer. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. The second biggest one. Well, I shouldn't say that ascap and BMI are the two big ones. They're both big. I don't know which one's bigger. Bmi stands for, I believe Broadcast Music Incorporated. Bmi came later, but it is a very big one. And I would guess that if, if you, you know, 99% of the time, if it's an American artist and they're not a member of ascap or BMI. The third is CSAC, which is significantly smaller than ascap and BMI. It works very slightly differently, but it is a viable thing. So a lot of people are members of CSAC as well. I think CSAC started in Canada and has maybe a bigger following and Canada. But it is open to Americans and there are a lot of Americans that use it. Not nearly as many as ascap and BMI them. There are, there is at least one more and that is the main one. And Canada which has not CSAC, but there is a Canadian PRO knee, the PRO that has recently opened up memberships to essentially to all of North America, I believe. And I can't remember the name of it. But so I'm just gonna say the Canadian one. The Canadian one, that's terrible. And that's kind of it, I believe for your options in the US now every country has different things. And usually in the country you're in, There's one. But you don't need to register. In all the different countries. These organizations have relationships everywhere. So if you are in Minnesota, you register for ascap, BMI or SESAC are the Canadian one if you want to, but only one. And then you are represented by them. If you're a music is performed anywhere in the country, it will in theory, get you a couple bucks. If it's performed in most countries around the world, it will also in theory, get you a couple bucks because of the relationships between the American PROs and the PROs and every other country. They all share information and are supposedly able to get you your money. So those are the three big ones. Let's look really quick. Body mass, index, BMI music. Here we go. Bmi.com. I was set up exactly the same. Fish were bar. We can search here. Places have a BMI license. I want to search. Sure. Site or repertoire. Bob Dylan do sort by relevance. Well is they're going to give me a bunch of articles about by building. I don't really know how to search the BMI website. But that reminded me of one important thing to point out. And that is that any, any American venue. So if you are a place that plays music, what you're supposed to do is have a license to all three. But because you sack works different, maybe you don't need one. But definitely ascap and BMI that represents you. That means you have the right to play music of ascap and BMI artists, which represents most artists. So any venue should have a license for both. That is kind of the rule. 15. How You Get Paid: Ok, how you get paid? So let's say you're a member of ascap and somebody plays your own music in a bar. And they have an ascap license, okay? All those things have to happen. And then poof, magically, you get money. No, really, it doesn't quite work that way. Ascap can't keep track of every piece of music played in every venue, everywhere, all at same time. It's just not possible. So they use a very bad system, but it's the system they use them the less. And BMI works the same way. By the way, they use a system of polling. So what they do when they're polling places is they will say, they might go to that bar that your music was played at. And they might say, tell us all the music played on this particular night. And the bar is supposed to be able to say what was played. And so they report that, but it's just one night a year in that case, right? So if you're a music showed up, if you're a music happened to be played on that night, you're gonna get some money. And if it does show up, they're asked to epsilon to say, okay, this person's music showed up once. They'll maybe, maybe, let's assume there was five or six other ones that we missed through the polling. So they're gonna kinda extrapolate from that data the other places that your music may have been played. They're gonna guess basically. So it could be your music gets played all over the place every night and you don't get a penny because you're unlucky. That's possible. It's also possible that your music is played once and you get paid a good amount of money because you're lucky. That's also possible. It's not a perfect system. If you are performing artists, you tend to think of ascap money as are the PRO money as kind of a lotto ticket in a way. You know, that, you know, four times a year because it's quarterly that they pay four times a year. You're gonna get something from the PRO. It's it's the check that shows up is going to be somewhere in-between a little in a lab. So you don't ever really count on that money. Being a certain amount. It's kind of fun. Money that comes in and it's great, or it's not so great. And that's just the way that this is, the way it goes. So it's really hard to predict what you're going to get based on your performances. So it's a polling system, It's not perfect, but it's just how they do it. 16. The Publisher's Cut: Okay, So how does the publisher gets paid and why do we care about this in terms of publishing? Here's why. When the law was created that established ascap as a thing that established ascap and created performing rights societies. And eventually BMI and SESAC came along to fit into that mold as well. But still working under the same legal precedent. I guess. What, when that was created. Nobody could imagine. Remember, this is like 1920. No one could imagine a world in which you didn't need a publisher. So the way it was set up is that for every royalty generated, for every time you get paid, anything, it's split 50, 50. And this is still true today. So always 50 percent goes to the artist and 50 percent goes to the publisher. Okay? So that means if you don't have a publisher, you don't get that 50, 50% percent just goes poof, goes away. The PROs keep it actually. So it's insane not to have a publisher because the publisher gets 50% of your royalties no matter what you do. The maximum royalty you will get as an artist is 50 percent of what you're owed. The publisher gets the other 50 percent. This is why going back to what I said at the very beginning, artists create publishers, even if they do absolutely nothing, It's a way to catch that 50% that's going to slip right through your fingers because you can't have it. It has to get paid out to your publisher. So when you create an account on ascap or BMI or anything like that, it's going to say, Who are you create an artist account. And it's also going to say, who's your publisher? And I believe I haven't done this in a really long time. But I believe now the way at least asking it works as it says, if you don't have a publisher right there in the application, it's going to say, click here to make one. And you just give it a, give it a fun name and say, this is me, this is my publisher. And you create two accounts. So you have an account as a publisher and an account as an artist or a writer is what we call it in this case. So this is super important. This is the most important thing about PROs, is that no matter what you do, you will only get half of what you're owed. That is the law. The publisher gets the other half. So be a publisher. This is also really fun because I think I said in the previous video, checks come quarterly. So four times a year, you'll get a check or now they just do it with a deposit. But it used to be a check and a month behind each writer check comes to the publisher check. So you can always assume that like if you had a good writer check and then you'll know that the next month you're gonna get the same check again. So I remember one time I had a month that was really good and I wasn't expecting it. I was like, Wow, this is like, you know, money from heaven. All of a sudden I get this big check in the mail. And I was like, This is great. But then I was like, Oh, that means my publisher check is coming next month and it's going to be the same amount. It has to be. So that check is actually gonna come twice. If you are the publisher. If you're not the publisher, then if you, meaning you have a different publisher or you don't have a publisher at all, you're not gonna get that money. If you have a different publisher, the publisher is going to get that money. But it's super important that somebody gets the money. So you've got to have one. 17. Inside the ASCAP Website: Okay, So let's look inside the ascap website. So I'm here inside my personal account. So what we can see here is all the music I've ever written and registered with ascap. It's important to know that whenever you write a piece of music, you need to register it with ascap doesn't cost any money. You just have to go to ascap and fill out the form. It's right here or a destroyer work. You don't need to submit a recording. You don't need to submit a score. This is not a copyright. And all you really need to do is fill out information about it, which includes the title, the instrumentation, the duration. And then like who the writers are, if there's any co writers, anything like that. So I'll point out a few things here. Let's look at this, for example, this is a track of mine that somebody did a remix of. So let's look at what this looks like. Okay, So that means me, this is my ascap member number. This is me. I own 50% and I collect 50 percent. This is my publisher name, hyperacusis music. That's my publisher. They own 50 percent and they collect 50 percent. That's the maximum. Those are that's the way that has to be. Okay. Details. Who submitted it? Any other details is the album it was on. Instrumentation is weird because this is just a track, electronic track. So it just says electronics be recorded. And cue sheets would be if it showed up in any like TV shows or anything like our movies or anything like that, which it hasn't. So pretty simple. In this case, the person who did this re-mix for me was someone who I really liked, who is just getting started out and they didn't have a PRO account, so they didn't get credit for it. They're credited on the album and they were paid. But they're not getting royalties on it because I didn't set the stuff up yet, which is crazy. Let's go to another one. Let's see ostraca. He's probably in here. No, he didn't either. Well well, it anyway. So like here's a piece of mine. This is just me. This is another publisher. That's still me. This is just my publishing name. I changed the name of my publisher at 1 from hyperacusis to academics to long story. But basically, anything past a certain date is going to be called academic, but it's still just me. So 5050. You'll notice these ones as I Will Survive a through G. These were things written for a TV show and they're licensed to me and like a bunch of other people. Okay. So if I go through here, so I wrote this and I got it to a licensing house, which takes its cut and then tries to get it put into a show. So here's me and I get 25 percent of this royalty. Here's this person. I have no idea who this person is. They're registered on BMI, but they get 25 percent. Here's this agency. They get 50 percent, so they're acting as the publisher. So the original publisher is the agency. And then sub publisher of them as black with music ink. There are collecting 50 percent but ONE, none. And this one is collecting 0, but owning it. So this is the one collecting it. So EMI is collecting it. And a mole International owns it. The publishing rights. This person must have, must probably work for the agency and touched it up and therefore got 25 percent. And then I wrote the original thing and I get 25 percent. So it's kinda crazy how that works. But the thing to remember here is that look here, composer author and composer author. These two together have to add up to 50 percent. And Publisher, publisher, these two have to add up to 50 percent. It can't be that this is 75 percent and this is 20, 25 percent. It can't be because all writers have to split 50 and all publishers have to split 50 percent. It's just how it works. So it's kinda weird, but so I need a publisher. 18. Back to Death Cab for Cutie: Okay, so let's go back to our death camp for QT example. So let's read this one more time, knowing what we know now. Songs by Benjamin Gifford, copyright 2018, BMG platinum songs. That's a publisher. And where I'm calling from music, that's a publisher. And now we know what this means. Bmi usually say that after the publisher's name. So where I'm calling from music is Ben Barres publishing company and he is registered with BMI. Okay. What that tells me is that if I want to cover this sum, then it's BMI that I need to make sure I have a license with right now if I want to record a cover of that Sung, there's, I'm not going to just go to BMI and there's actually another place you would do that. We'll talk about that when we talk about mechanical rights and mechanical licenses shortly. But I know that where I'm calling from music is the name of Ben good bards publishing company. And it's registered with BMI, except gold rush by these people. Where I'm calling from music, BMI, Fantasm us Sanrio songs, BMI and OTO music, BMI. So all three of them are with BMI. And there was this other one here, Jason mugger, whose giant beat songs BMI. So that brings us to the question of if you are an artist, should you register with ascap or BMI? This is like the question that's as old as time, and I get asked this every time I talk about publishers. Here's the answer. It kinda doesn't matter. Roll the dice. There was a time when what we're seeing here was indicative. Meaning that more people in the pop music world, we're going towards BMI and more people in the kind of classical art music world we're going towards ascap. I don't think that's true anymore. Bmi definitely has a Pull. It had a pull towards the pop music side for awhile. But ascap does too. I'm not married to ascap. They do some things that I don't really care for. I don't know much about BMI. I think at the end of the day you'll make the same amount of money from both of them. So it kinda doesn't matter. If you need someone to give you a definitive thing, find your favorite artists, see which one there with men do that. That's all I can really say. They are really quite similar. Csac, on the other hand, is quite a bit different. And I don't know a ton about how CSAC works other than it is a bit different. So if you're interested in that, I would encourage you to look up CSAC, find out how they pay, how they pull. Look up some of their members, see who their members are, see if there's anyone that strikes a chord with you and consider it then. But I don't know a lot about them. I'm sure they're great, but I don't know a lot about. 19. The Player Piano: Okay, it's time to talk about mechanical licensing. What we're looking at here is a player piano. Okay? You may have seen one of these before, and there's a reason that I'm showing you a player piano when we're talking about mechanical licenses. Trust me. What a player piano does is in the early 19 hundreds before recordings were easily available even before you late 18 hundreds. I think. You could buy this role, a piano roll. And it was this piece of paper that you see here. And it has little holes punched in it. And if you had a player piano, you would put it in the player piano. There's a special kind of piano. And then you would pedal it, you would pump it kind of like a bike. A little bit different than that, but kinda basically the same idea as the bike. And that would push air through the little holes when it hit this part and play the note. Okay? So this, in a way, is the earliest predecessor to recording, right? Because this is how you played the music of other people. Other than just playing it, right? You could just play the music of other people for a long, long time. But this was a mechanical reproduction of someone else's music. Okay, now that term mechanical becomes really important. Because we consider this to be mechanical because it was a mechanism, right? It was a you had to pump it, move it, and that's what played it. So the law for mechanical licenses, which we're gonna talk about now, was written back in this period when this is how they worked. But they don't work this way anymore. Now. They work by digital means. And what I'm trying to get at is mechanical license means are recording. If you want the right to record something, you need to get a mechanical license. Mechanical license is the right to record. That's what it means. Okay. Don't forget that. Right to regard equals mechanical license. And it's all based on the player piano. 20. The Publisher and Mechanical Licenses: So mechanical rights are another right that you have as the creator of intellectual property. In particular, in music. You have the right to record that music. Now it is your right and your right alone as the writer. However, if you want to dish that right out, if you want to allow other people to record, then you need to grant them a mechanical license, right? Any of these rights that we're going to be talking about are rights that creators of works, writers of works have that the publisher is responsible for, okay? Or if you're your own publisher, you are responsible for. So far we've talked about the performing right, the right to perform the work. Right? Now, just to recap on that, the right to perform the work is yours and yours alone. And you could lay down the law and say, I do not want anyone else to perform this work. Can you do that? I'm not actually sure you can't do that now that I think about it. But a mechanical right? You do have more control over with the mechanical right. You can say, I want to allow a person to make a recording of my song and sell it. Or I don't want to allow this person to record my song and sell it. So there are kind of fairly easy ways that we manage mechanical rights. But it's the publisher's job, so to speak, to manage mechanical rights for us. So let's say you, you're in you're in a band and you want to record a cover version of Stairway to Heaven. So you go into the recording studio and you'll record your version of stereo to stereo to have Stairway to Heaven. It turns out great and you're really happy. Now you want to put it on an album and sell it. Now you've got a problem. You can't just do that. Now anybody can just record somebody else's work and put it on an album and sell it. You need permission. And in order to get permission, you're going to need to pay money. Luckily, There's a system setup, so it's actually fairly easy to do. You could record a version of Stairway to Heaven and put it on an album. It's not that hard to do. So in this section we're gonna talk about how to do basically exactly that. 21. Two Methods for Obtaining a License: Okay, so let's talk about this first. From that kind of performers perspective, the person who wants to record a version of Stairway to Heaven. So I need to get a license. There are really two ways that you can get a license. The first is direct from the publisher. Okay, so we could look up who is the publisher of Stairway to Heaven? Or publishers could be multiple, remember? And then we could contact them and say, I want to record a version of Stairway to Heaven. What do you need from me? And they're gonna say I need X amount of dollars per copy or depending on how you're going to distribute it or whatever, there's gonna be some amount of money based on the success of the recording. But that's hard. I'm going direct to the publisher can be hard to track down because if you're just a garage band from oklahoma and you don't know anything about anything. How are you going to track down the publisher of Stairway to Heaven? Like that's really hard and how, even if you can get in touch with the right people, how are you going to get them to take you seriously and even answer an email? That's going to be tricky. So there's an easier way. That is through a clearinghouse called the Harry Fox Agency. Now the Harry Fox Agency is far, far, far more common way to do that. And what we would do is we would go to the website for the Harry Fox Agency. This is an agency that just does this. They dish out mechanical rights and mechanical licenses. So you could go there and say, I want to record Stairway to Heaven. What's it going to cost? And they have already figured out what Led Zeppelin will let you do that for, right? Because the amount is what's called a statutory amount. It's pretty much fixed. So that the government at 1 in a Copyright Act has said, this is what mechanical licenses cost. So Harry Fox Agency can determine it and grant the license on behalf of the publisher and thereby the artist or the writer. Now the writer could also preventively say, I do not want Harry Fox to be able to grant licenses, they can do that. So let's go look at the Harry Fox website and it'll make a little bit more sense. 22. The Harry For Agency: Okay, here we are on the Harry Fox Agency website. Now, it used to be that you just searched the Harry Fox Agency's website, but now they've kinda switched everything over into this thing that they call Rumble Fish. Rumble Fish is the Harry Fox Agency. So how do I get to rumble Fish? Or no, It's called song file. Okay. Get started now. So on file I except okay, so once we're gonna create an account, but I think if I just go to public search, yes, there we go. So let's search for Stairway to Heaven. I have noticed in the past that this website is really slow. Okay. So there's a whole bunch of them. You know, anybody could, can name a song, Stairway to Heaven. So these people have written songs called Stairway to Heaven. That's cool. But this one, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, is the one that I want. Okay, so there it is. Let's look at the detail for that son. Okay, So it has to publishers WC Music Corp, OBO flames of Albion, music that you see Music Corp, OBO suck Cubists Music Limited. So Debussy Music Corp is probably the label. This is, I think this is on behalf of flames of Albion music and suck EBUS music are probably Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's publishing identities. So here I can see a list of people who have covered it, right? So lucky Brooks has covered it on an album called GH. Rick Wakeman covered it on an album always with you. And this is an abbreviated list. Obviously there's a whole bunch more. Dread Zeppelin covered it. Dream circle, Frank Zappa covered it. Gerardo covered it. Well, there is a way somehow to get the full list. I think if I log in, I get the whole list. But this tells us who's covered it so that I can see who I'm competing with, I guess. So I think if I go to submit yeah, from here on out, I have to be logged in with an account. But from there, I could go deeper and buy a license to do it. I don't ever have to get in touch with Jimmy Page or rubber plant because they've given permission to the Harry Fox Agency to let them grant licenses of their work. You can find anything you want on here and there's a lot of songs on here. We came in search by writer. We could say Bob Dylan were talking about him earlier to find all the songs by Bob Dylan that we can record if we want to. Oh, it's giving me a combination of both of those. It's not what I want, what just Bob Dylan. Okay. So here's a whole bunch of songs by Bob Dylan. And there's more than this, obviously 91 songs have come up. So let's say I wanted to record dirt road blues. I could go here and I could buy a license to do it because Bob Dylan has granted permission to Harry Fox to do it. Now this is interesting. This is showing covers of this Sung, but it's really just showing other places that it's showed up. So there was an album called blend on blood. There's the album called blues. There was an album called infidels or mercy time out of mind. So Bob Dylan has put this out on multiple records. You see this a lot when people really sick a live album, it'll show up two or three different times. Because it shows up on a live album. That's technically a cover of their own sun. They don't need to get permission to do a cover of their own sun. Because they already own the right, the mechanical right, to do it. They can do it as much as they want. So Bob Dylan didn't have to go to Harry Fox to get permission to record the song for time out of mind. Even though is already on blind on blood. For example. He has the right and his publisher has the right. But we don't have the right to record the song unless we buy a license. 23. Rates: So what will you actually pay to cover something? Now remember, it's always the same. You're not going to pay more for a Dylan song than you are for cash. I sang, That's not how it works. The amount is the same and the amount is set by the government. So we can see here, it depends on what you're gonna do with it. So if you're going to do physical product, meaning records, CDs, and I like that, or downloads. You're going to pay ¢9.1 per unit for songs that are five-minutes and under in like so if the song is under five minutes, you're gonna pay ¢9.1 per download. So if somebody is downloading that Sung and they downloaded a 1000 times, you're going to pay 9.1 times 1000 back to Harry Fox, which is then going to make its way back to the artist after Harry Fox keeps little cut. Or you're going to pay ¢1.75 per minute or fraction thereof per unit of songs that are over five minutes in length. So you just say pay ¢1.75 if it's over five minutes. So that will roughly equals out to the same four or five minutes on. If it's a ringtone, you're going to pay $0.24 per song per unit. I don't know how they define unit here. And Interactive streams, $0.01 per stream. Wow, that gets complicated, doesn't it? Because that means you need to keep track of streaming royalties and then pay based on that. That's tricky. I bet once we get in there by that, they've got ways of actually keeping track of this and you probably pay something on top of it. And addition royal, if you TIF fees, there's a person processing fee of $16 for up to five songs because it's six or more selling at a time, processing fee is reduced to 14. So this must be Harry Fox is cut is they get $0.16. I thought I read somewhere that they also take 8.5% of the royalty owed to the artist and keep that probably both, actually. So that's what it costs. 24. For the Writer: Okay, so what does it mean for you if you are a writer? If you're the writer of a song, you can go to Harry Fox, the Harry Fox website and register your Sung's and effectively grant permission to Harry Fox to issue mechanical licenses. It doesn't happen automatically. It's not compulsory. It just is something that you manually have to do. You have to go to them and say, Yes, you have permission to grant licenses to my songs. Again, this is something that publisher should do. This is the responsibility of the publisher traditionally. But if you're a publisher, you're going to do it. But you have to do it if you want people to be able to record your songs. Let's say you've got a friend and they want to record a version of a song you wrote. Easy enough. You could do at the two ways that we talked about, you could either just work out a deal with that friend. You can say. Sure, you can record my song for a 100 bucks and six pack of beer. You can do that if you want. Write it down so that there's a record that you granted them a license, but that's all it really needs to be. Or you could register your song with Harry Fox and have them by the thing. Have them buy a license and then go through the whole process that way. Frankly, the first is a lot easier if it's just your front. And Harry Fox isn't going to give you a six pack of beer. But you do have to manually do it. It's not automatic. 25. Silent Movies: Okay, Let's talk about silent movies. We don't really care about silent movies all that much. But we care about though, is how silent movies were presented and the law around the music for those movies. And how that applies to us today. It's an important concept. So back in the day before, we could put sound directly into movies, we had silent movies like this. This is the captain of Dr. Calgary, very famous movie. Tax will come up on the screen like this. And you would read it and that was kind of the dialogue. There was no music. However, if you went and saw it in a movie theater, you might hear music. And the music you hear could be kind of anything. Really. It might be someone with a record player just playing it. Or, and more likely at this time, it might have been someone at a piano playing music to accompany the film. And what they would be doing is they'd be sitting on the side of the stage where the film is being projected. And they'd be playing music, could be any music. And they'd be kinda looking over their shoulder at the film and trying to kinda stay in sync with some of the action that was happening. You know, there'll be doing their best to stay in sync to that. So it came about that people started saying, Well wait, you're using my music to sync to this film. Shouldn't I get paid in the same way that the person who made the film gets paid every time you show the film. If you're using my music, I should get paid as well. Because you're synchronizing my music to that film. You owe me money. That's a use of my music. And as it turns out, they were right. They were granted through, I believe, through the Copyright Act. But now it's been around for a long time. They were granted what was called the right to sink. A sink, right? Or in other words, a synchronization, right? Okay, Now, let's stop playing this creepy movie. Although it is really fascinating film if you want it. And let's go back to our thing here. So we're gonna come back to dramatic rights. And just second I want to do is sync rights first. So sync rights are the right to sink film to a movie. And it's even more than that. So we still call it sync rights. And the same way that we still call the right to record something and mechanical rate, we still call the right to use music in a film, a sink, right? A synchronization, right? The right to synchronize that music to film. So it also works not just for movies. It also applies to film. Tv, I believe games is a sink, right? Video games, advertisements, commercials, et cetera. Any use of music to an image is a sink, right? Even actually a music video or a music video is a synchronization issue. So if I hire someone to make a music video, what are the rights at play there? There's not really a sync issue in that particular case because I hired the person to make the video. Therefore, it's a work for hire and I would own the video. But if someone comes to me and says, I made a music video for your song, can I release it? Then I would say you need a sync license. You need to get from me a sync license because that's what that is. Now, how do you get a sync license? Let's go to a new video and talk about how to get one. 26. How to Get a Sync License: For sync licenses, there is no compulsory license. And that also means no Clearinghouse, like a Harry Fox. So now, remember with mechanical licenses, we said there are two ways to get 1. First way, go directly to the publisher. That's the hard way. The second way, just go through the Harry Fox Agency. Easy. Anyone can do that. With sync licenses. There is only the hard way. There is no such thing as a compulsory license or a clearing house, a Harry Fox, anything like that? If you want to use somebody's music in a film or television or anything, you have to negotiate directly with the publisher or the artist. The writer can negotiate as well depending on their deal with the publisher, actually, which we'll talk about in the next little section here. So there is, that also means there's no statutory rate for it. So it's not that when we looked at Harry Fox, there was just like a rate, right? You can just see this is what it costs to get a mechanical license for a synchro licenses, no such thing exists. So it could be that if, you know, if I don't know, the the Gibson guitars calls me and says, We want to use your song in a commercial. I might say, cool. And thus they say, I'll pay you $1000 to do it. I might say, great, I'll take it and they'll buy a sync license for me for $1000. And the license is just an agreement, right? But if Gibson calls, you know, some really famous guitar player and says, we want to use your song in a commercial, will give you $1000. They're going to say no. The guitar player is going to say no, you'll give me $10 thousand. And then they might say yes or no. So it's the amount of money really depends on just what they can, that artists can command. It can go all over the place. It will cost more to get a sync license from Diddy then it will from me. So no compulsory license and no statute on pricing. 27. Dramatic Rights: Hey, there is one other kind of right that is handled by the publisher typically, and that is dramatic rights. So dramatic right is also known as grand rights. So when you see dramatic rights and you see grand rights, those are the same thing, okay? So don't get don't think those are different. They're, they're totally, there's two different terms for the exact same thing. Dramatic rights and grand rights. So what those are is the theatre. So if you want to use a piece of music and a staged production with props and costumes, then you need dramatic rights, were grand rights. So any kind of stage production, there is some overlap though, between that and film, right? There are some productions that look that could be considered a film with actors, with live actors and their productions that could be considered stage with a little bit of film in it. There are some productions that work that way. I think the justification is typically, does it have props and costumes? As props and costumes, It's probably theatre. And that means dramatic writes. One other thing about grand right, the term grand rights. A lot of the time people think grand rights means all four of these rights. Like if you secure grand rights, it means you have now the right to perform. The performance right, the right to record the mechanical right there. The dramatic rights, the right for theater and the sink, right? The right to put it in music and film. And that's not true. That's not what grand rights are. Grand rights are totally just another term for dramatic rights. So how do you get dramatic rights? Is there a Harry Fox Agency? No. Dramatic rights. Grand rights work the same as sync rights in that there is no compulsory license, there is no statutory amount, and there is no Harry Fox kinda place. In order to get the dramatic rights for something, it must be a negotiation with the publisher or the writer. 28. All The Rights!: Okay, so let's think of an example where you need more than one, right? It's common for different projects to have to need multiple writes. The example I like to use a lot is, and the song hallelujah by a 100 going. So Hallelujah has been covered by a million people. But the most kind of monumental ones have been first Jeff Buckley. And in his version, he completely reimagines the song. Okay, if you listened to Leonard Cohen's original version and then you listen Jeff Buckley is version. They're barely recognizable. There are so different, but they are the same song. Then I'm a guy named Rufus Wainwright, covers bucketize version and it gets used in the movie Shrek k. So lot of rights at play here. So in order for Shrek to happen, what rights do we need? We don't really need the Performing Right, Right, Because there's no live performance in Shrek. If Rufus Wainwright wants to play it live, which I've heard him do, he needs the Performing Right? And if Jeff Buckley wants to play it lived, wanted to play it live, He's dead now. He would need the performing right? But that one's easy. The mechanical right? Jeff Buckley would have needed to get the mechanical right from Leonard Cohen in order to record his version. Rufus Wainwright would need to get a mechanical right in order to record his version, but he wouldn't get it from Jeff Buckley. He would get it from Leonard Cohen because Leonard Cohen is the writer of the song and Leonard Cohen's publisher would be the publisher. So in that case, Jeff Buckley, even though he completely reimagine the sung and Rufus Wainwright version is borrowing heavily from bucketize version. Buckley is kind of taken out of the mix here. Okay, What about dramatic rights? The right for theatre? There is a theater adaptation of Shrek, I think. And if that song is used in it, then yes, they need the dramatic rights from Leonard Cohen, not from Rufus and not from Buckley. They need it from cohen to put that song in the stage version. Same thing with sync rights. We definitely need the sync rights to get this song into Shrek, but not from Rufus and not from Buckley. From Cohen. There are other rights at play in order to put a recorded version by Rufus Wainwright into Shrek. Rufus get something because he recorded that version, but that's on the recording side. That's not a publishing issue for publishing the Sung, putting the song in there. Leonard Cohen is the one who we would need to get the sync rights width, or more specifically, Leonard Cohen's publisher. 29. Setting up an LLC: Okay, so like I said earlier, in most cases, the publisher is the writer. The writer of the song, creates an entity to be his kind of publishing arm. So let's talk about how that works. Really. The way you would do that is you do have to, well, I guess you don't have to, but in most cases, you want to create a business entity for the publishing company, okay? And the reason for that is only one thing. There's one very small at, but extremely important reason to do that. And that is so that when the PRO writes a check to your publishing company, you can cache it. There might be a way, depending on what state you're in, to do it with something like a doing business as a DBA license or a CAN certificate of assumed name, license, depending on what state you're in, you might be able to get one of those that would let you cash a check made out to a business entity. But what most people do is you set up the publishing company through ascap or BMI or whatever you're using. And then you create an LLC. Creating an LLC is very simple to do. It's something that here in Minnesota, it takes one form and you just fill it out and online and pay, I think 50 bucks or something like that. And you've got yourself an LLC. That makes it. So when the PRO writes a check to the name of your publishing company, you can take it to the bank with the forms from your LLC and cache it. You might decide to do more with that LLC. What I've done is and what a lot of people do is they use that same LLC that they're that they've set up for the republishing company as a kind of digital record label. So when you go to release music on iTunes and Spotify and wherever, you use that LLC as your record label, you can totally do that. There's a couple of hoops you have to jump through. We'll talk about that later. But that is something that you can do. You don't need to set up separate LLCs for all that stuff. You can do it just for that. So I would highly recommend setting up an LLC for the publisher, which is pretty easy to do here in Minnesota. 30. Administer Licenses: Okay, so like I said, there are not a lot of big publishers. But if you're on a major label, if you have a major label record deal, then you might be forced to use their publisher, or you might choose to use a publisher That's a major publisher. You can do that. If you do. There are a couple of things that you can expect of that publisher. The biggest role of the publisher, like we've already talked about, is to administer licenses. Oops. So we want that publisher to be in charge of our licenses. Now in order to do that, you might have to sign over complete ownership of the sung to the publisher. That means the copyright right, the entire copyright might get assigned to the publisher. That's fairly normal, even though it seems bizarre, it's normal. The publisher will then pay you as a royalty, right? You would think it would work the opposite, but it doesn't. And the reason for that is that the publisher basically needs to have the authority to grant licenses without Asking the writer anymore. Because some of these things happen fast. If the publisher gets called the middle the night and says, Hey, this is Ford trucks, I need to use that song, like tomorrow. Maybe that happens. Then. The publisher needs to be able to say yes or no without waiting for you to get back to them. So a lot of the time they do require full copyright gets assigned to them so that they can make decisions. And then you can get paid a royalty. You still do sometimes have warranties, some some approvals that you can make. You, you could set up with the publisher. I don't want my music used for this or that, that's possible in these deals that, that happened. But for the most part, the publisher will have free reign to do what they want. It's that can be kinda scary thing. I've never worked with a publisher that way and I don't really have any desire to. I would say avoid it if you can. But that is how they work. Now there's one other thing the publisher is expected to do and that's promote the music. So let's go to a new video and talk about that. 31. Promote The Song: Well, we also expect the publisher to actually promote the song that they've published. The reason is they get 50 percent cut, right? So they they want to make money. And that's part of the reason you would sign with a big publisher, is that they have the reach to do bigger promotions, then you can do on your own. So the publisher might do things like seeking out people who are looking for a license, right? So I wouldn't want to go with a publisher who's just going to sit around and wait for licenses to fall into their lap. You want, if you're going to sign with a big publisher or any publisher, that is it you yourself. You want to be able to know that they're out actively looking for licensing opportunities. Okay, that's a big thing because they want to be promoting the music. You want them on the street working to find those gigs. So in that way, working with a publisher can be great because that means you write songs. Then you sit back and say, Okay, Mr. Or Mrs, publisher, you know, go work this song that I wrote and make some money with it. While I sit back here and write more songs, that can be great. But it is the publishers responsibility to read like really actively working on making money from that song. I always imagined it like, like there's two rooms. This room's creative people and then this room is publishers. Meaning I'm going to be over here. I'm in the creative person room and I'm going to make music. That's all I'm gonna do is I'm going to write music. I'm going write music. I'm going to write music. Soon as I write a song, I'm going to handed over to the publishers. And there are a bunch of salespeople and they know how to like get out and make deals happen, do all this stuff. But they're not creative people. And they are the pencil pushers who know how to make money. So in that way, the relationship is great, right? That kind of relationship can be great. If you're going to publish on your own, you need to be both those people. You need to be the creative person and the person hidden history and looking for the gigs. Because those license opportunities don't come out of nowhere. There are, however, a few places you could go to find some license opportunities and those are worth talking about. So let's go to a new video and talk about places to look for, for license at seeing opportunities. 32. Licensing Opportunities: Hey, if you've got a song that you think could be licensed and you are the publisher of that song. There are a few things you can do. Two big ones come to mind. The first is one thing that I think we've already talked about, but I'm just going to reiterate it here. Licensing houses. There are places all over in every major city. There are certainly a handful of them here in Minneapolis that specialize in licensing. You can get your music to that. If they agree to take on your music, they will generally take it on as a publisher, meaning they will keep your publisher cut and they will work for you and try to get gigs for that song. But they will keep the publisher side of the revenue. Okay? So but that can be a good way to do it. Another as a service like taxi. If you've never heard of taxi, people will have different things to say about taxi. Some people love it, some people hate it. Some people say it's a scam. Some people say it's changed their life. I don't really have an opinion either way. Here's what I know about it. It's a service that you can become a member of. It's fairly expensive to be a member of taxi. And if you are a member, you get access to some opportunities. So they might send out an e-mail that says, Okay, we have someone from a major car company. There'll be a little vague. That is looking for an upbeat song that's instrumental hip hop. And they'll also say, it sounds like this. And they'll give you like a YouTube link that says they like this song. So we're looking for something that sounds kinda like this song. Not that song. That's upbeat, instrumental and kinda hip hop bot. So they'll give you some kind of description like that. Then you can submit directly to that. And then taxi will kind of cure rate and decide what to pass on to the car company, right? So they kinda cure itself and decide what's best. And then once it gets passed on, it may or may not get used. I didn't taxi for a year and I didn't get any big gigs out of it. I had a couple of tunes that got passed on to the actual car company or whatever the gig was. I don't remember. Nothing ever came of it. So some people do really, really well on it, some don't. But the thing to remember is that it's quite expensive to be a member of it. So if you're if you wanna go this route, I would wait until you have a good 10 or 20 songs ready to go, really good recordings, really solid. And then join and then submit to as many things as you can. But don't join if you don't have songs ready to go because it'll be a waste of money. So something to think about. 33. What Comes Next?: All right. You've made it to the end of part are these aren't really in an order. So I'm not going to say it's part two, but the second one that I'd made of the musicians guide series on music publishing and performing. Up. Next, we're going to talk about band partnerships. That's going to be the next one we're gonna make. And that's about how bands work together. Who gets what, when it comes to royalties and rights. And some of the conflict that happens. And most importantly, the band agreement, that's a contract between all members of band that all bands should have. And when I say bands, I'm talking about any musically collaborative people. Then I'm gonna do one on how record labels work. So how to read a record contract and what goes into it. Then we're gonna talk about distribution and then we're going to talk about taxes. So I've got a whole bunch of stuff going on here. It's going to be great. So please check out more of these musicians guide series. 34. Bonus Lecture: Hey everyone, want to learn more about what I'm up to you. You can sign up for my e-mail list here. And if you do that, I'll let you know about when new courses are released and when I make additions or changes to courses you're already enrolled in. Also, check out on this site. I post a lot of stuff there and I check into it every day. So please come hang out with me. And one of those two places are or both? And we'll see you there.