Song composer? Make sure your songs on the Internet are properly protected
First, a quick test; What 2 things do ALL these artists have in common?
– Beyonce
-Westlife
-Josh Groban
-Mariah Carey
– The prince
-Led Zeppelin
– The Rolling Stones
-Eminem
-Carola King
-Tupac
– Flaming Lips
-George Harrison
– Cat Stevens
– Coldplay…
The answers will come in just a minute, so stay tuned…
Think about this; As songwriters, we write songs because… well, we just love to write songs. Anyone who picks up a guitar or turns on a keyboard knows that the next thing they write could be a hit. Every songwriter’s dream is to make a living just by writing songs. He can free you from the daily grind, because writing songs can give you the kind of income that lets you kiss the boss goodbye. Hasta la vista baby. But for good.
Financial Independence. Sit down to write until 4 in the morning and don’t have an alarm set… because you can get out of bed whenever you want. Work when you want, where you want because all your work is in your head. Hang out with the muses. Live your life in a big studio full of faders, mics, guitars, synths, drums and f/x. Play music all day and most of the night. Valhalla!
And the BIG plus is that writing and composing songs can be extremely lucrative. Just ONE hit song can suck huge amounts of warm, comforting cash into a songwriter’s bank account almost literally overnight. They assure you of a continuous ‘residual income’: royalties for years and years that no pension plan can give you…
But anyway, back to the quiz…
Answer #1 – Just like you and me, all of these people are songwriters.
Answer #2: EVERYONE has sued (or been sued!) for ‘Illegal Use’ for copyright infringement, licensing rights, publishing rights, or other legal matters at one time or another. And that’s just some of us. There are thousands more…
And just like you, they ALL spend a lot of time selecting D, G and A7 on a guitar or C, F and G7 on a keyboard, humming melodies and writing words.
Now maybe you’re not as financially burdened as these guys (I’m not); but the fact is that in many cases, they got into legal disputes over bad advice or bad contracts, sometimes when they were starting out and other times when (or because) they started making big money.
And when the boxes start “KAA-CHI-III-ING”, you better believe there are a LOT of people looking for a part. In YOUR creation, in YOUR earnings.
Do you think that the ones who earn the most are the composers? No. The biggest earners are music publishers. And don’t get me wrong: a good publisher can squeeze the last hundred out of a song and find profits from his work that he never knew existed.
But it used to be that ‘Song and Music Editing’ was the exclusive territory of those almighty ‘Music Publishers’. And it used to be that ‘Copyright’ was something that was written with a little ‘©’ or paid to the government. Not anymore.
Expert songwriters and composers are using the power of the web to self-publish their material. That way, they retain their licensing rights to your work for private listening, for use in advertisements, as ringtones, perhaps for movies or TV as well.
That said, the internet is a dangerous place to post any copyrighted material – it’s very easy to ‘pull’ anything into digital form with just a ‘right click > copy’. Self-publishing is best practiced with an independent ‘Third Party Witness’ who can attest and back up the fact that you published your songs and music when and where you said you did, especially if you self-publish using social media sites.