Your Name Here

Today's independent and DIY artists now have multiple ways of making income from their music. One such way is through music publishing. If you write your own songs as well as perform them, you could take it a step further and pitch your tunes to other artists who might record them.

Traditional music publishers like EMI Music or Warner/Chappell Music basically take the songs of songwriters or songwriter/artists, and gets them before labels, producers, music supervisors, and other recording artists who are looking for songs with hit potential. Signing a contract with a publisher usually means a 50/50 or 75/25 split of the publishing royalties while the writer receiving 100% of the writers royalties, unless otherwise designated, if the song becomes a hit.

Publishing your own music would first entail that you join a performing rights organization such as ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC. Which ever you choose, you may want to sign as both an artist and as a publisher. When you sign as a publisher you should try to pick a name that best fits your music, or at best one that goes well as a, "doing business as," name, which in most cases would just be your name followed by the word, music. Then, since you are the publishing company, you have to find ways of getting your songs out there.

If you're an artist and you record your music, you could if you wanted to, try pitching your songs to artists, producers and labels. However, a large number of of artists, producers, and labels don't except unsolicited material. You could sign up with TAXI, which is an A&R service that allows you to submit your songs to be evaluated, for a small fee. If your songs make the cut, they are then passed on to record companies, publishers, and music supervisors that call TAXI directly, looking for new artists or material.

Of course, what you could do is set up your own website and post samples of your songs there. Both Myspace and Facebook offer you a chance to post an artist page that can include a certain amount of your music along with video clips, a bio, and contact information. There are also other music sites such as Soundclick, Reverbnation, and Bandcamp, that allow artist to set up a profile with music clips and the ability to sell your music.

Now that so much music is being sold online, you may need to sign up with Soundexchange. Soundexchange is an independent, non profit performing rights organization that collects royalties from satellite radio and internet streaming of an artist's music. It's free to join and royalties can be posted directly to you bank account.

My publishing company is called Crowheart, and I was surprised how easy it was to establish. In fact the hard part is getting your music played on radio. Of course, there are lots of other possibilities, like film and television, which are excellent ways of getting your music out to the public, which is what publishing is really all about.