Okay, re the Universal deal: "What is a publishing deal?"
Bart Van Hemelen
http://www.music-law.com/publishing.html
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Publishing is a lucrative area for bands that write their own
material. When a band writes a song, they own the copyright in that
song. Publishing is the money you receive for writing the song. A
quick distinction must be made between the copyright in a song and the
copyright of a sound recording. When you record the song for a record
company, the company owns the copyright of the sound recording (the
version you record for them), but you retain the copyright of the
underlying song. Publishing money comes from the copyright of the
song, not the sound recording. Bands that write songs own this
particular copyright and receive publishing money from their
ownership.
The owner of the song is entitled to certain exclusive rights. This
means that only the copyright owner can do certain things with his
song, unless people pay him to use it. When people pay the copyright
owner, the owner is said to grant a license. The money from these
licenses is what is called publishing. There are essentially four
areas of publishing income: performance, mechanical, print and
synchronization. There are a few others, but they rarely come into
play.
The right to prohibit public performance of your song is the first
right and area of publishing income. No one can play your song in
public unless they pay you. BMI and ASCAP are responsible for
collecting money for licenses from people who want to play your music.
For example, every time your music is played on the radio, you are
entitled to performance license money which BMI or ASCAP will collect
for you. These organizations are involved in one small area of
publishing (performance licenses) and are not true music publishers,
but I will touch on this later.
The second right of the copyright owner is the right to reproduce the
song. This is known as a mechanical right which gets its name from
when they used to mechanically make records on wax tablets. This
technique is gone but the name remains. A mechanical right means that
each time someone makes a physical copy of the song you own the
copyright for, you receive money. The current rate, as set by the
United States Copyright Office, is 7.1¢ per song. Once again, there
are exceptions to this, but they are too complicated to go into here.
If you write 10 songs on an album at 7.1¢ per song, you will receive
71¢ for every album made. If you sell a million albums, it does not
take an accountant to figure out you are looking at serious publishing
money.
The third and fourth main areas for publishing money are print and
synchronization licenses. These are small compared to performance and
mechanical, but they are additional sources of revenue. A band
receives publishing money from a print license any time the song is
written down and published. For example, the piano score for
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" has probably made a lot of money from
print licenses. Money from print licenses are usually a few cents per
copy printed. A synchronization license, affectionately know as a
"synch" license in the industry, is granted any time your song
accompanies a visual image. Videos are a good example of synch
licenses. In addition, commercials, movie soundtracks, and background
music on TV are also examples of publishing money from synch licenses.
The amount of money for a synch license varies widely. Your record
company will demand a free license for a video while a feature song
for a movie soundtrack from an established artist can exceed $100,000.
Each license will generate a different fee.
Since figuring out how much money everyone owes you from your
publishing can be difficult, many bands hire a publisher. A
publisher's job is to collect all this money for you. They will also
have a better idea of the going rate for the various licenses you will
want to grant. For example, how much would you charge for a commercial
which wanted to use your song? Publishers "administer" your copyrights
which is just an industry term for collect money. Not surprisingly,
publishers do not do this for free. Most publishers will collect your
money and give you half while they keep the other half as a fee. There
are other arrangements, but this is the standard publishing deal. It
surprises many bands when they find out that they actually sign over
("assign") the copyright to the publishing company. A publishing
agreement usually states that the band assigns their copyright to the
publisher and in exchange, the band will receive one half of the
publishing revenues generated. In this way, it really does not matter
that you do not own the copyrights as long as you still receive your
money. For those of you who want to know why you must assign your
copyright, the answer lies in a legal technicality that states the
owner of the copyright must sue to enforce a copyright. You pay the
publisher to take care of enforcing your copyright for you. Ask
yourself the question, would you rather be in court or on the stage?
Many record contracts force you to give your publishing to their
publishing company. This should be avoided if possible; it is just
another way for the record company to take more of your money. The
reputation of publishers is very important. Only sign a publishing
agreement with a company that knows what they are doing. A good
publisher will make you money. The alternative is to administer your
own publishing and set up your own publishing company for your songs.
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--
Bart Van Hemelen
http://pr1nc3.com/BVH/
http://GeoCities.com/TenThousand/
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Rich Hall : "Nothing more dangerous than a heckler with statistics."
Paul Merton : " 'You suck, and I can prove it!' "
"Room 101", BBC 2, January 19, 2001
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Rik
"Bart Van Hemelen" <tenthousa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4h05vtsqmhe0oj5be...@4ax.com...
PutNeatNameHere
bitter, no life obsessed Prince fan so we can all understand that better.
underground
ways the labels really sock it to unknowing artists when they sign.
For the most part, as you mentioned, when you sign with a large label,
you're forced to use their publishing divisions to oversee the
publishing in the deal. This is definitely ONE of the rackets that
should be addressed by the justice department as they look into
anti-trust, publishing is so lucrative with hit artists, when you have
a publishing house that is a division of the label's home, it's real
easy to make the numbers come out in favor of the label, because if
they're one in the same, inside info goes along way there.....
Another thing that is overlooked so much in deals, is the label's
publishing house will give a lump sum to the signing artist for all
publishing for a certain period of time, which at signing looks like a
large amount yet after an artist has a hit or a few hits, that lump
sum looks like chump change. Never lump it at signing, unless you want
to give away alot of your future earnings for quick cash....
Definitely Prince had the publishing blues with his old label.....no
telling how much he lost....he probably has the figures though, it'd
be interesting to know....hundreds of millions probably. Even if he
didn't lose alot, that loss of control for so many years is enough in
itself to make a scene
Todd - Underground
http://undergroundrecords.org
Bart Van Hemelen <tenthousa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<4h05vtsqmhe0oj5be...@4ax.com>...