Artists….Have you registered with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO)?  Do you truly understand the value of publishing your music?

When it comes to many up and coming artists, especially many hip hop artists, we want to all be able to make a living from music.  But, most don’t understand just how lucrative publishing is.

Publishing is basically management of your songs for the purpose of maintaining value and receiving royalties for your work.  In order to see the full benefit from publishing, you have to learn how to make an ORIGINAL tune.  Understand that your thoughts transformed into song are ASSETS.  There is VALUE in EVERY SONG you write!  So it is important to understand the value in your tunes, and if you publish your songs, you have the potential to be compensated for usage of your work, whether it’s a record label wanting to manufacture your songs for commercial sale, a song is chosen by a company to promote their product, or a song is used in a soundtrack for a movie.  These are just a few of the many ways you can take advantage of “publishing” your songs.

Performing Rights Organizations collect performing rights royalties on behalf of its members.  ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC are the three major PROs in the U.S., and there are several others outside of the U.S.  A performance rights royalty is basically money that you, as the songwriter, would receive any time your song is performed.  The PROs generally collect these royalties, then pay the songwriters, members, and publishers, each quarter (after administration costs are covered).  So the basic idea to grasp here is once you understand that your songs are valuable, sign up for a PRO in order to collect any money (i.e royalties) that you are to be paid for usage of your valuable songs.

Potentially, you could see royalties for a song for as long as you own it.  You ever think about those car commercials that have a nice song as the backdrop?  The owner of that song received royalties when he granted Ford, Lincoln, or Toyota access to his/her song for their commercial.  You don’t necessarily have to release an album in order to take advantage of publishing.  Just think about all of the songwriters that never released an album, never had to conduct 100 interviews, never deal with good/bad reviews, not obligated to constantly tour just to make ends meet…You could be relatively UNKNOWN, and make a living off your songs…FOREVER.  The funny part is…when it comes to hip hop tracks,  there’s probably some older guys that could care less about hip hop, and is making a pretty penny providing songs to companies that are looking to promote a new product.  If anything, I feel that more hip hop heads should be compensated for delivering THEIR art to those that want it.

I tell artists and producers I know all the time…GET YOUR PUBLISHING IN ORDER!  Pay the small fee to become registered with ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC.  But most importantly, make sure you are registered as a Writer AND a Publisher!  I’ll soon be giving more details on publishing and how things splits and shares work, among many other details.  But first things first, sign up with a PRO now!  You can’t receive any money if a PRO can’t collect any money for you because you’re not registered.

Any questions, leave it in the comments!  peace.