Online beat licensing has become quite popular within the last few years. Sites like Soundclick, mybeatshop, Beats Planet and a ton of others are paving a way for emerging music producers to get their beats heard while giving both aspiring and major league music artists the audio tracks necessary to lay down their raps, song lyrics and/or hooks. Although the licensing of beats is nothing new, the agreements that accompany them can be both intim...

So now that we’ve covered the two types of income (you can’t stop taking your mind off the passive income, can you?) – understand that as a songwriter, it is up to you to act as the administrator of your songs so you can properly capitalize on the many income opportunities by licensing your songs. If you form your own publishing company, you can hire someone to administer your song catalog, or you can do it yourself. I also recommend that y...

Are you a songwriter who is searching for the different ways you can make money from your songs? Don’t go anywhere! This two part series will give you the answers you need. For starters, I want to define the two types of income as it relates to you as a songwriter. One is active income, the other is passive. 1. Active Income Active income is performance-based pay or more specifically, the money you get in exchange for your services. The ma...

In my post Performing Rights Organizations 1 – ASCAP and BMI; I explained the general functions of the two PRO’s from a songwriters point of view (I use ASCAP and BMI as examples, because they are by far the two largest PRO’s in the United States). Now, I’m going to put some focus on the publishing aspect. There is a way to get paid double….yes, double by ASCAP or BMI for your performance royalties. This is often an overlooked area ...

If you recall in the first post of this series, I talked about that nifty little formula that ASCAP and BMI like to use to calculate earnings (BTW: if you stumbled upon this article and don’t have a clear understanding of how PRO’s work, it’s worth taking the time to go back and read the the first post of this series to get a better perspective). The crazy aspect of these PRO’s, is that most people in the industry don’t fully underst...

What is BMI and ASCAP?  This is a popular question that I get asked frequently. It's bit detailed, so to give a quality answer, it's going to take more than one post. Hopefully after this series is done, you will have a clear understanding on the function of performing rights organizations, or more commonly called PRO's. Like most kids growing up in the middle to late 70's, I made it point to collect anything related to KISS. I mean, KISS wa...