This course provides an engaging and methodical insight into the past and present cultural and commercial music industry developments, directions, and trends. It will equip the students with the knowledge and skills necessary to appreciate, understand and more productively participate in today’s music industry field.
Methods and Practices Part 1: Recording Industry (Part 3)
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Из курса от партнера West Virginia University
Today’s Music Industry
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Recording Industry
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Darko VelichkovskiMusic Industry Program Director
Music Industry
In our module on music publishing, we spoke about how to properly set up our own sole
proprietorship music publishing company in today’s industry. The part about the general
organization, taxes, and so on, holds true for the general set-up of a sole proprietorship
micro indie record label as well.
Also, let’s keep in mind that if are going to be selling recordings AND managing music
publishing, we don’t necessarily have to create two business entities – a record
label AND a publishing company. We can simply create just one sole proprietorship, under
one DBA name, that does both things – publishing and record sales. Let’s say John Smith Music.
If we are going to be producing recordings as well, that too can be a part of this one
company, as a commercial activity. Meaning, we can produce and sell recordings, and publish
music, all under one sole proprietorship business entity. That way we have one name, one bank
account, one set of expenses, and one set of taxes. Makes it easier to handle things,
at least in the beginning. If we decide to split it up into separate businesses later
on, we can always do that.
And isn’t this possibility of handling music business across-the-board ourselves exactly
what the contemporary advances in technology and communications brought about, and what
many artists are doing, or attempting to do, today in the industry? A singer-songwriter,
who writes his own music, publishes his own songs, records his own music, and sells his
own recordings. Or a music entrepreneur who produces and sells recordings, and publishes
music on behalf of his artists. Both running their own micro indie labels and publishing,
powered by the Internet and the online music market instruments and tools.
Anyway, let’s talk a bit about some commercial activities and issues of such a universal
micro indie, and of today’s market paths, and build further on what we learned in a
segment about setting up our own publishing.
First of all, just like we have done with our COMPOSITIONS when we talked about managing
our music publishing, we need to register our RECORDINGS with the Copyright Office as
well. To do this, go to the copyright.gov site, and look over a document called Circular
56, which will take you through the whole process of registering sound recordings. If
you are a composer and a recording artist, and own both - the compositions and the sound
recordings – you can register both at the same time. Circular 56A on the copyright.gov
will take you through that combined copyright registration process.
Once our recording are registered with the Copyright Office, and since we will be selling,
streaming, and licensing those recordings, we have to make sure that we obtain our ISRC
Registrant Code, AND that we assign a unique ISRC for each of our recordings before we
start doing anything in the market place. IRCS what? No. ISRC. International Standard
Recording Code. A code unique to each of our recordings, which will permanently identify
it in the market place as our recording. It is used across the music market to identify
a recording in sales, streaming, and in managing various rights and licensing. It can, and
it most often is, embedded in the digital masters of the recordings in the mastering
process, so it can serve as a digital fingerprint unique to those recordings. It is not only
a useful market tool, but is also required by many online distribution and download services
in order to do online commerce. So it is important that we do it.
ISRC Registrant Code is what we need to get first, before we can assign ISRCs to the recordings
we own or control. There are two types of Registrant Codes – for those who own the
rights to the recordings, and for those who do not own the rights to the recordings. Those
who do not own the rights to the recordings, and who need a Registrant Code, are services
that provide music production, duplication, distribution, end so on, for the artists and
the labels, and offer ISRC code assignment as part of their services. In the ISRC terminology,
they are referred to as ISRC Managers. Now, in our hypothetical case here, we own the
rights to the recordings, so we are not interested in an ISRC Managers Code, but a regular Registrant
Code. By the way, the whole ISRC process we are talking about here is done online at USISRC.org.
Anyway, the Registrant Code we obtain will be our company’s code through which we can
assign up to 100,000 ISRC codes per year. You think that’ll do? I think we’ll be
ok with that number. Once we obtain our Registrant Code, then we can assign ISRCs to each of
our recordings. And, by the way, if we are going to produce music videos of our recordings,
and place those on the commercial market, we should assign a separate ISRC code for
each of those videos as well, so they can be appropriately identified for different
commercial purposes. Again, we can do all of that on USISRC.org.
The next thing to do is to register with SoundExchange. You remember SoundExchange, don’t you? From
our module on licensing of the sound recordings? Yea, yea, yea… I know, it was so long ago
we spoke about that. The whole two weeks or so. Excuses, excuses. OK, to save you time
fumbling trough those course videos, and I know you didn’t take notes (or did you?
now, that would be a pleasant surprise.) - SoundExchange is a non-profit performing rights organization
for the sound recording copyright owners, collecting the non-interactive digital transmission
royalties, and the ephemeral recording royalties, and distributing them to its members. Non-interactive
digital transmission services would be services like Pandora, or SiriusXM. SoundExchange is
the only legally designated and authorized organization to perform such task in the United
States, and as such, it collects from about 2,500 digital radio licensees, has 27 international
performance rights agreements, and distributes over 500 million dollars of statutory royalties
to the record labels and recording artists annually. I say we register with them, don’t
you agree? But seriously, it is the only way to get paid from all those non-interactive
digital transmission services out there, and if we don’t we might be missing on an important
income stream in today’s industry. Just go to SoundExchange.com, and join as
a copyright owner AND as a featured artist, if you ARE a featured artist on the recordings
you produce and will distribute, of course. Because just like the PROs that collect on
behalf of the composers (ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, remember?) SoundExchange sends half of the
collected royalties to the artists and half to the sound recording copyright owners, which
is usually the labels. Since in our hypothetical micro indie you have your own label here that
produces and distributes recordings that feature you as a recording artist, we would register
the label as a copyright owner, and you as a featured artist. That way you will receive
all the funds collected and not just half. We did the same thing when we hypothetically
registered with ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC, where we registered your publishing company as a
publisher AND you as a composer, separately. Once you join SoundExchange as a copyright
owner AND as a featured artist, make sure that you register all the recordings you control
with them as well, of course.
OK, so now we have our recorded songs registered with the Copyright Office, and have the ISRCs
in place for all those recordings. We are registered with SoundExchange as a copyright
owner AND as a featured artist. Plus, if we wrote those songs we recorded, AND if we are
managing our own publishing, like in our little hypothetical micro indie scenario here, we
have those COMPOSITIONS registered with the Copyright Office as well, back in our module
on publishing. Plus we registered our publishing company as a publisher AND ourselves as a
composer, with a PRO, separately and accordingly, right? This set-up is not only a proper business
practice, but is the only way to participate in many aspects of the today’s music market,
and the only way to benefit from much of its income sources. Meaning, if we are doing the
business end of music ourselves, it’s not an option. It’s a must, before we start
distributing, selling, streaming, and licensing our music.
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