If you sell a million records, it, if you stream a million records, it doesn’t equate to the same amount of money and revenue and profit for you as an artist or a writer and the label and publisher, it doesn’t equate to the same amount of money that it once did. So, so again, it adds to the, the companies being a lot more, more conservative on the mainstream, but it’s also led to a lot of people kind of going out on their own and saying, I can do this differently. I can do this better. And that’s where, where I really like to sort of enter from the perspective of being an independent.
it, it’s the, the shrinking of the majors in, in concept and in actual bandwidth and market share, has led to better, broader, and bigger opportunities for independence, on the creative side and, and within the industry, business structure as well. and then not only that, it’s, it’s also becoming more ex, it’s becoming more necessary for you as a creator to create your own sort of development platform.
Like I mentioned before, the tools are there for you in a way that they weren’t. So, one, you can make better sounding music, you can collaborate differently. You can release your own music, in and around the music industry. You can just go straight to a distributor. And, and, and that also leads to the last sort of thing I wanna talk about on this slide before I I switch, is that switch in that shift in technology, because of all of the different opportunities for music to exist, things like video games, music is an advertisement, music is in fashion, music is everywhere now, but the values of those usages are substantially lower for the most part.
and it’s also in a way almost desensitised people towards the value of music.
There’s a lot of distraction, you know, for every opportunity for music to be used, music used to be used, you know, if it was used on television in a, in a synchronization, when there were fewer channels, everybody saw that sink. And it was sort of that water cooler conversation. A really big sink would command a, a large amount of money. but it would also be part of like popular culture on a ma on a, on a, on a very broad sort of platform. That too is different. There’s streaming services, there’s original content being created everywhere, and not everybody watches the same thing anymore.
every, it, everything’s a little bit of a cottage industry. So that’s also shifted the rates and shifted the payments and, and made it harder for, you know, the industry to profit from music, and also made it harder for artists in the more traditional sense and, and songwriters to profit from music. So all of these shifts in, in technology, in in culture, they’re all advances in some ways, but they also provide cha, they, they provide challenges. And, and, and, and certainly from a financial standpoint, the, the challenges are real for creators more than ever.
And, and I think everybody kind of knows, if you read anything about the music industry that the songwriter is, it’s just at the bottom of the food chain of, of who, of how they get paid when they get paid. and it’s so counterintuitive to everything, I believe, on a, on a creative level, because without the songwriter, without the fundamental, lyric and melody composition, the underlying song, you don’t even have a music industry, you know?
but, but anyway, we’re gonna talk about that in a minute, and how that’s all valued. That’s the next step. so, so it’s harder for everyone to make music, but yet music is everywhere and there’s a reliance on, a different path for creators to present themselves to the industry and a and a different reliance on the way the industry sort of values and, and acknowledges and, and, and represents music today. So, that’s a very fat slide.
So, just to show you, not to scare you, I don’t know why it comes out this way, but, oh, hold on. Sorry. Having such a strange, lemme make sure this is, there we go. Okay. That’s the full slide. So the artist, then, you could be a purist. You could be a, a, a songwriter and an artist, and you could go the mainstream through the mainstream. And if your music touched the soul of an a and r person, you’d get a record deal, and then you’d get a publishing deal.
Now you have to be the artist, the songwriter, the producer, the art director, the photographer, the content creator, the social media manager for yourself, the booking agent, to get yourself out on tour, the tour manager for your, for your, for your crew, and the label and the publisher. and, and so yes, that’s, it can be a lot if that’s the kind of career you wanna have. And, and maybe everyone here today is having, has sort of a different vision for how they see themselves. You may not wanna be a touring artist, you may just wanna write songs for other, so you can cut some, cut some of those off the list.
but, but this is a little bit the way the business works now from the mainstream, a lot more reliance on, on you to do the work. So, so let’s see. Hold on. Lemme, There we go. So you can, on the positive side, the, the good part of technology and the shifts in culture, you can make and release music a hundred percent on your own. It’s amazing and empowering. You shouldn’t think of it as intimidating, although of course it is.
it really is wonderful because you can, you can do what your heart tells you to do in the way you wanna do it. And if you just wanna be a hobbyist and make music to release commercially for your friends and family, you can do that. And there was a point in time, you know, not that long ago where you couldn’t do that. So I think all of this is a real positive that you don’t actually need the music industry to make and release music. However, there’s a caveat in that, and this is really why we’re here, and history lesson is over, at least for a minute.
the caveat is because of the, the way that the platforms, and when I say platforms, things like the digital service provider, Spotify, apple title, the ease of distribution, the ease it is of you while I’m speaking, you can just release a song, to, and, and, and, you know, maybe your song gets picked up on a playlist and is sitting next to Taylor Swift’s song. I mean, it, it, it’s, it’s, it’s not so likely that that is gonna happen, but the fact is, you can actually put your music out there and, and there’s a, and there’s a chance.
So, but because of that, and because the goals of platforms are different, they house music, they’re sort of a, a, a repository for music. and they make portions of revenue based on that, that, there, there not really as concerned with the personal protections that you as a creator should be taking to protect your work. meaning registering songs in the United States, and we’re gonna talk about this on a territorial level ’cause I recognize that p everyone here might be, you know, living in different places.
everything I’m gonna talk about sort of going forward is sort of territorial spec, territorial specific. and I’ll talk about that a little bit more. But, you know, there really are no registration requirements to protect or monetize your copyrights, your songs, your, the lyric and melody of the underlying composition of your song before releasing music on streaming platforms. And, and I talk to my students about this all the time. They put music out there and they’re, they’ve got a, you know, a Spotify page, and they’ve got, a YouTube channel, and they’re like, why am I not making any money?
I, I see a lot of activity. Well, have they done their homework and registered in their business in the right way? No. And, and, and the, the hard part about the business today is that it, unless you really go out there and try to figure out how to do this, there isn’t really a roadmap, because it isn’t exactly the same way for every writer and every artist in every territory.
So, as of yet, this is really something that you as a creator have to go out and, and learn about and figure out the right way to do it for you based on what your goals are, based on what your business aspirations are, and what your needs are. and, and, and, and chart this path that I’m gonna try to give you a little bit of a, cliffs notes on now. so anyway, I hope that none of you have, while I’m speaking, have released music without doing what I’m about to tell you to do, because you can actually get a viral hit.
You can have a, you can have an online hit, and you can make $0 on your publishing. So, so as much as you don’t really need the music business to chart a course professionally, of being a, a, a recorded music artist and, and publishing yourself and, and, and even having a publishing deal, you do need to understand some very basic aspects of copyright law in your specific region. Really basic, not, you do not need to have a law degree or, or even get close to that. but just in terms of how it relates to the rights that you hold as a copyright owner, and then a little bit of the way the music industry works and operates or, the business model so that you can try to monetize some of your work.
okay, let me move to the next. Okay, so now the why I’ve just explained what happens if you don’t do this. Here’s the why to protect and monetize your work. And ultimately, if this is your goal, to try to make a living doing what you love, and and I always start from that place of why are you here?
Do you make music because your heart is telling you to do it? Are you making music to go and be successful and profitable and famous? Everybody’s goals are a little bit different. and, and I think if your, if your goals are, because it’s, it’s all, it’s, it’s inevitable. It’s like you can’t just, you can’t not write, you can’t not put out music, then, then trying to make a living doing what you love is, is a really wonderful aspiration and, and profession. So, so I’m gonna start from that point that you wanna do this.
maybe it’s not your sole source of income because it takes a long time for it, for it to get to that point. but, but let’s just, let’s just say that you are here because you wanna understand how to manage your business and, and potentially profit from it. So, so let’s think about songs. Let’s think about the concept of what a song is that you create. It’s basically like, kind of building a house, creating real estate, whether you write it with somebody or whether you write it with a team of people, and, and create and produce the, you know, the elements of the, the, the decorative side.
as a, as a producer, you know, you, you create, the minute you create something tangible, a copyrightable work in intellectual property, that property has value just as your home has value, and you have to take care of it. You have to do the right thing so that it can grow and sustain and, you know, not like, be a house of cards and, and fall apart. so, so I wanna talk about really quickly, I have a few slides to talk about the way songs are valued in the music industry, because again, it’ll help you understand why it’s important to do what I’m then gonna tell you to do, to set yourself up on the business side.
and again, value factors into everything. You know, the music industry values, songs, music, songwriters, composers, collaborators differently now, again, because of a, a combination of technology changing the landscape for how music, rates are. and, and also just, some free market conditions. You know, there are government rates that are set for physical units of sales for the reproduction and distribution of music, and there’s a lot of subjective marketing conditions, which value songs, you know, potentially in the sync world, at, at, you know, different price points.
And it, all of that factors into how a song is valued and how much, how much you can get from that value. so you have to understand, you know, some of these values. And, and, and as a starting point, this is a little bit what I teach in publishing, and I’m gonna just go through this quickly.
it’s kind of a whole course and masterclass on its own to talk about publishing in, in specifics. But let’s talk about, what the values mean for your songs. there are income streams on both sides of a song. I spoke, I’m speaking on the publishing side about the, you know, the song, but there’s also values on the, on the master side. I’m gonna talk about that now for a second, just a really quick couple of slides on a breakdown of the different sides of songs and their value.
because each, each aspect of the song on both on either side, collects revenue, earns revenue, differently, and, and it’s collected differently.
