Music industry is one of the best industries to work with if you are a musician. Like all businesses, this type of industry is often misunderstood particularly for beginners dreaming to become big rock stars, pop stars, etc. The same with other industries, the path to success is persistence, great talent, great working attitude and the extreme patience of neglecting rejections.
This short guide is written for a beginner musician wanting to work in the music industry. This is by no means an official guide and this is based from my years of experience and interaction with this industry.
The beginning: Songwriters and the Music Publisher
The best way to show how the music industry works is by showing them logically in a chart with the interactions of key industry players:
It all starts with a songwriter, and then the songs of the songwriter will be signed and marketed by a music publisher. This is if the songwriter is connected or affiliated with a music publisher. This is not really necessary. By laws of copyright, the songwriter or the author of the work automatically possess music publishing rights upon creation.
There is a lot of reasons why songwriters would want to be signed by a publisher. These are the following reasons:
1.) Music publisher have more expertise in marketing music more than the songwriter. This would allow greater opportunity compared to working both as a publisher/author at the same time.
2.) The business side of things are complicated to learn. The music publisher can fill in this role while the songwriter can focus on the creative side of things.
3.) The songwriter does not have a lot of contacts that could help increase the opportunity of having the song landed in big and lucrative projects. The music publisher would have a lot of contacts to make this happen.
The music publisher will then provide songs to the rest of the industry namely:
1.) The recording labels
2.) Film production companies
3.) TV production companies
It is important to know what is the difference between music publisher and music library. As you can often see a lot of music libraries today in the Internet, while at the same time there are also a lot of music publishers.
Recording Label Role
Let’s check what will happen when the song reaches the recording label. The recording label would then hire a recording producer to create quality recordings for a certain artist.
When the record producer officially accepts the terms and agreed with the label/artist, the music production project officially starts. Music production process is a very complex process. It involves a lot of time, cost and energy among other players in the industry. Below are some important tutorials pertaining to this process, you can read below for more details:
Music Production Process: How does it take to produce a song
How to Release a Digital Album Online: Complete Steps
The finish product of the recording label is an album, single or any recordings made by the artist.
Distribution of recording albums, singles
The recordings would either be released as an album/single to record stores which fans can buy. The recording label has a distribution department that coordinates with different store outlets.
Alternatively, it will be released in iTunes as a digital album or single. Radio stations and music television also gets songs from the record labels for promotions. Big recording labels (such as the major labels) have departments solely responsible for marketing and promotion of recording artist and their albums.
For film production companies, once the song has been received from the music publisher, it will then be included in a movie sound track and it will be distributed to be seen in the movie theaters or released as a DVD, etc. Same thing with TV production companies, the producer or director will get songs from the music publishers then add that songs to their TV programs and it will then be aired on TV channels. They also work with recording labels to get permission for the use of sound recording of a particular song.
Bear in mind that music licensing is a very broad topic since involves a lot of rights. For example there is a lot of music rights for film that the licensee needs to be cleared before the music and the underlying sound recording can be used in the film/movie projects. In standard definition, the music publisher owns the song/lyrics copyright so the film companies would be asking permission for sync, mechanical rights, etc. This is except for the sound recording/master recording for which the usual owner is the recording label.
There are other big and important licensing rights that you need to understand in the music industry. Refer below:
Public Performance Music License
What is a mechanical license agreement
The gold rectangles in the chart are the ones which music consumers/fans and normal people like you will interact with the products of the music industry. Those behind the box (in light blue shaded), you normally won’t notice their contributions as they are behind the action.
But those components are vital to keep the music industry alive. So if you are planning to join this industry, where would you be? If you are artist, you will be working with recording labels; the same thing with recording producers, mixers and engineer. If you are a songwriter, you will be working closely with music publishers.
Content last updated on July 25, 2012