Common myths about the Music Business
You and your buddies are slamming back a few cold ones after a particularly good practice session or gig, and are starting to get ideas about furthering your music career and getting out of the bars by writing your own material and seeking a record deal and bigger gigs. Despite the many killer players out there, unfortunately there are very few who know much about the business end of things beyond the bars. From my years of local performing, I've heard many speculations from other musicians that simply aren't true. In an effort to sound important among their drinking buddies, some guys/gals can come up with some real (and dangerous) whoppers. Making a business decision based on unreliable information can kill your career before it even starts. The information on this page comes straight from ASCAP, Billboard, the Library of Congress and proven, trusted professionals in the "big time" music business I've had the good fortune of working with from time to time. My sincere thanks goes out to these individuals, and to YOU for making the effort to educate yourself in the roughest, dog-eat-dog business in existence! |
Copyrighting your material - it is absolutely necessary!
"I mailed it to myself, so the song is protected" Don't even let them finish this sentence! You must provide the copyright registration numbers and dates when you register your songs with ASCAP or BMI. The author of a song cannot collect royalties until that song is registered. If you can't get paid for it, it might as well be stolen anyway! Avoid thousands in future legal hassles, and do it right the first time. Regardless of what anyone trying to sound important tells you, the courts will side with the person who has officially registered the song as opposed to someone with scraps of paper with chicken-scratches of lyrics and notes. Furthermore, if that person has made a lot of money from "your" song, that means he/she can afford a better lawyer. As you probably already know, the better and more expensive lawyers win cases. |
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| " I was the drummer on Wipe Out, I played with Willie Nelson, I wrote a song that was stolen by Dwight Yokam, I had a chance to play with Thin Lizzy, etc." |
| I have actually had people try to feed me this stuff. But let me tell you something: To get that far in the business, you have already gotten so much attention, you're not about to attract more and you certainly don't need to be the one tooting the horn. I can play virtually anything popular on guitar (and can prove it anytime if you pay me for my time), and can compose entire orchestra scores without touching any instruments - and I have been dismissed from my share of really good bands! Interestingly, the "Thin Lizzy" rumor was about ME. Apparently, I had the chance to become a member but screwed it up by showing up at the audition wasted out of my mind. Who started this rumor, I'll never know - but I've heard similar stories from people who didn't play very well but needed to show me they were great and just had some tough breaks. Hey, don't tell me - SHOW me! Save yourself from a lot of hassle and call the bluff of these morons, because they never go far enough to make up the rest of the story. If they say they wrote a great song, ask to hear 10 or 12 others - NO ONE writes a great song without a lot of practice and experience, it just can't happen. If they "played with Willie Nelson", compare their playing skills with the best professionals you've ever heard. Again, famous people have easy access to the best of the best, and anyone who has gone this far can name off the chords to an unfamiliar song upon hearing it for the first time. Stars need to get things done fast, and would never wait for some local wannabe to catch on to 3-chord music. The many guys who claimed to be the drummer on Wipe Out couldn't name the other members of the band, the song on the flip side or even the record label. That was an easy one to debunk quickly. Thisseems to be the most popular rumor in music history. |
| If you have songs playing on the radio, you're rich, happy and famous |
| Well, that depends. First of all, by the time you have your first song playing on the radio, you're about $50,000 in debt to the record company for advances made to record your music. You've been racking up studio time, the services of an engineer, and hopefully been paying several lawyers, agents and promoters to get you to this point and protect your interests. So this basically means: If you have one song that made the charts and nothing more, you've lost a great deal of money and will have to play the same song for the rest of your life to keep making your living in music. History is chock full of artists who led miserable lives because of being famous, as their monies were not managed properly, or they were out-and-out ripped off by their managers and other personnel. Assuming that you've copyrighted your material and didn't sign a contract turning those rights over to the record company to get your career going, you get just a few pennies each time your song is played on the radio, in a jukebox, etc. That means you have to get a LOT of plays to make any money at all. Sadly, many artists will sign any piece of paper that they think will advance their careers, and end up bitterly regretting it in the long run. You're probably familiar with the Badfinger saga, in which Pete Ham had many hits on the radio, and was not able to make his house payment. The percentage of musicians who make the big time is INFINITELY SMALL. One popular book gives a figure of 1 in every 100,000 serious artists, and it sounds about right. You have to write and publish at least one mega-hit to really make money, and then the lifestyle a star tends to lead drains away that money, to the tune of hundreds of dollars a day in most cases. Plane flights, expensive hotel rooms, the ever-present arsenal of roadies, lighting personnel, lawyer and manager fees, studio personnel, graphic designers, photographers - they all have to get paid somehow. Then when you're no longer the flavor of the month, the record company will generally drop you. The record company is concerned with making huge profits, and couldn't care less about how great your music is - unless of course, it's music that they believe they can make lots of money from. Each year, the radio stations play fewer and fewer songs, over and over and over. This is no accident - it's the music industry's way of telling the listeners what they should like - basically, they can make bigger profits if they can induce the public to like a limited number of songs, which means less work for them to find, recruit, record, shape and promote hundreds of new artists. |
| It takes tremendous talent to hit the big time |
| No, it takes a tremendous amount of WORK. Most very talented musicians and writers end up playing and writing stuff that pushes the cutting edge, WAY before the public is ready to digest it. The very best musicians in history, you may never hear because they don't limit themselves to the "adult nursery rhyme" nature of popular, commercial music. "Sweet Home Alabama", when you think about it, is the "Three Blind Mice" melody repeated 36 times in a row - with only a cool guitar solo to break the boredom - and has become one of the most popular songs in rock history. You should know, however, that hitting the big time is a dream realized by ONLY A VERY LUCKY AND ASS-BUSTING FEW. No record company talent scout is going to walk into a bar, hear your kickess version of "Free Bird" and say "Hey kid, you're just what we're looking for and here's a check for $10,000 as an advance on your first album" Sorry, it's not like Wayne's World - not even close. The fact is, record companies daily get HUNDREDS of packages (press kits) from artists hoping to be the next Alan Jackson or Brittney Spears. They get so many that hardly any of them will even open an "unsolicited" CD, no matter how good you think you are. You have to have a connection to someone who has a connection to someone else who has a connection, etc. This means you have to be out there every day, networking with anyone and everyone you can find close to the music business, and every "overnight success" generally takes about 10 years to create. The music business has very little actual structure, and it's basically a huge group of hustlers who know each other. The good news is that more artists are publishing their own material (this is called "indie, meaning independent management of one's career), and the big record companies are dropping like flies. But the bottom line is that it takes WORK a lot more than it takes talent. |
"So how do I officially copyright a song?" First of all, PLEASE don't ever say the word "copywritten" !!! There is no such word and it will make you look stupid in the music community. The word is "copyrighted". In the past, you would call the Federal Information Center and ask for Form PA, fill it out with some very simple information such as your name and address, phone number, title of your song, whether it was a "work for hire" (a song you wrote for someone else and got paid), and that was pretty much it - anyone who can read and write can fill out a copyright form - it takes NO legal knowledge and is designed for the typical scatterbrained musician. You would check the form to make sure everything was correct, then send it to the Library of Congress with a check or money order for $30. It's much easier now, and of course a bit more expensive ($35). You can do the entire thing online which will save you $10 over doing it with a paper form. Simply go to: www.copyright.gov/forms On this website, you can fill out the entire form. Yes, it also has full instructions. Instead of sending in a paper form which must be reviewed by a human, the online version converts all your information into a bar code which is quickly and easily scanned. NOTE: The government is very picky about the form being the proper size, so it's best to use a laser printer. You can probably also submit the information directly and pay by credit card, which means your song will be protected the moment you click the payment button. Most forms have been replaced by Form CO, which is what you will use for musical works. Feel free to contact me with any questions if the instructions are not clear enough. You will need a physical recording of your song to submit. But it DOES NOT need to be a professional recording, as only the lyrics, chords, lyrics and melody are required. A simple tape of singing and guitar chord strumming is sufficient to register your song. |