# Live music venues have two options for playing copyrighted music Mechanical Streaming Royalties are not collected by your Distributor or Performing Rights Organization. They are collected by another party called a Mechanical Licensing Agent. The main way anyone makes money as a songwriter is through publishing agreements. Publishing is an important part of the music industry. The music business swirls in its own continuous change. For the first time in history, you can know who your audience is. You can collect the email address of everybody who likes your music. Maybe give a track away for free for an email address. Maybe not all of the addresses will be valid, but if they’re truly fans, they’d love it if you contacted them in the future. Sometimes, soundtrack albums are financed by a record company that pays for the music and gets the right to put out the album. The monies paid by the record company are advances against the soundtrack album royalties, and because the film performers’ fees come out of these advances, all or a portion of the fee is often treated as an advance against the artist’s royalties. Music artists have adopted social media platforms to promote their music, putting traditional music publicists out of business. Many artists choose to do it themselves, either to save money or because they prefer to connect directly with their fans. Major labels, with millions in their annual budgets to promote their projects and those of their partners, are able to claim considerable space on the weekly sales charts, on curated streaming playlists, and on the major airplay charts. Publishers will often seek recording artists that can produce chart-topping hits. While the music industry and streaming services are being very well rewarded for their dissemination of music, copyright is failing artists and songwriters. But luckily, copyright is not set in stone and where it's not working, the law can be changed. In the past decade or so, the way to achieve success in this exciting and diverse industry has evolved, meaning your formula for finding success within its ranks has evolved greatly from the methods used by the icons like Elvis Presley or The Beatles. Music revenue leakage by inaccurate calculations and forecasts can be avoided by using [Music Royalty Accounting](https://www.curveroyaltysystems.com/) for your music business. If you work hard, remain consistent, and build your network through value exchanges over a sustained period of time, you will gain traction and start to elevate in your musical career. Know your artist’s customer because music fans are not all the same. The artist’s fans who buy tickets, recordings, merchandise, streaming subscriptions, and digital products are first on the list. Digital marketing makes selling music easier. It also allows your promotional efforts to be tied more directly to sales. The definition of records includes any other device now or hereafter known that is capable of transmitting sound alone, or sound with visual images. Even more importantly, the current deals define records to mean any kind of delivery of your performances for consumer use, whether sound alone or with visuals. This is designed to pick up the Internet, including Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, and Vevo. Internet radio is highly effective and will continue to become more effective at a rapid rate. Internet radio is boundless; it takes away all the guidelines of broadcasting limitations. As the digital music revolution continues to grow, so will Internet radio and so many other things. Using an expert for [Music Publishing Management Software](https://www.curveroyaltysystems.com/features/publishing-royalties) is much better than trying to do it yourself. What do artists make on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, and other streaming platforms? It‘s not that easy to answer this question. Well, at least in theory, because even that stream share gets split up again between record labels and distribution services, artists, songwriters, and publishers. Any track that is registered with PRS for Music can be used by the TV networks without the need to seek individual clearance. You must keep up to date on the entire music business in this ever changing world of the music business. If you work in the music industry you know that there are a lot of moving parts. It’s the nature of the beast. With all of these moving parts, interoperability becomes key, especially when we are talking about music metadata standards. Audience is critical in any creative endeavor — and songwriting is no exception. These days, when most of your listeners are on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, there’s a wealth of data available on how best to reach them with your music. Something as simple as [Music Royalty Accounting Software](https://www.curveroyaltysystems.com/) can clarify any issues around artist’s royalties. On-air personalities and disc jockeys move up the career ladder becoming better known, building larger followings, and moving up to bigger stations and other opportunities. The Internet is a mixed bag right now. Email campaigns are less effective, as spam has become so much of a nuisance. Five years ago a band could count on emails to effectively market a gig or product. Now they need to rely more heavily on fans hitting their website for updated information. The media still plays an important part in promoting music, and the recording and song rights are still owned by recording and publishing companies, but rights-holders now license their recordings and songs to music streaming services. The music streaming services pay the rights holders, who then pay musicians contracted to them. Only a very small portion of revenue generated by streaming services actually gets passed down to the artist. A producer helps to maintain good relationships between the engineer and others on the team. He or she needs a great ear and a sense of what’s current in today’s music market. There has been some controversy regarding how [Royalty Accounting Software](https://www.curveroyaltysystems.com/) work out the royalties for music companies. The music industry needs greater transparency of data. Accurate data, presented in a way that is easy to understand means we can make better decisions right through the chain. Universities, colleges, and specialty training schools offer programs designed to help individuals prepare for careers in music, leading to certificates, diplomas, or degrees, including at the graduate level. But the focus of the trainings and curricula are often only on the skills needed to perform the work and not on how to access the work through careful career preparation and entrepreneurial thinking. A score album is an album wholly of underscore (i.e., with no songs), often because the only music in the film is underscore. Unless there’s something extraordinary about the situation (for example, the film looks like it’s going to be huge), the soundtrack album deal is relatively modest or, more commonly, nonexistent. Songwriters and composers can learn how to structure a song and present the song in a recognised format but the definition of a hit song is extremely subjective. While record companies traditionally have shared with their artists receipts from synchronization licenses equally, in recent years, as profitability in the record industry has declined due to the diminution in record sales, certain record companies have reduced the artist's share of master synch fees to as little as 20% of receipts. The music industry has always had a fairly complex monetization structure which can be simplified by using [Royalties Management Software](https://www.curveroyaltysystems.com/) today. A degree in law is helpful in the music business, as is a master’s in business music administration, although an undergraduate degree in business does give the manager a good general working vocabulary and understanding of the business world, which helps in effectively managing artists. You should be planning your networking time to be in the company of music industry people who you can bring into your network. Do you have any connections that could prove worthwhile? Do you have extra capital laying around that could be invested into a company? Do you have sound equipment that could be used at venues or festivals? Are you a hard and dedicated worker?I know that being a hard worker might seem like a small thing, but it will go a long way in the music industry, because in general it's a hardworking industry. The music business has a variety of settings for business-social events, and how you should dress for them will depend on how others are dressed. It’s the world of the music business, not the genteel a friend told me. Events, festivals, showcases, and contests offer another way to establish fame in the music industry and provide opportunities for an unsigned band to be seen and heard by industry influencers. Music royalties are easy to track using [Music Royalty Companies](https://www.curveroyaltysystems.com/) that really know their stuff. Spotify and YouTube are businesses of scale. Their entire model is predicated on building a user base of millions or even billions, and then earning a little bit of money per user through advertising or subscriptions. This makes complete sense for these businesses. Every field of human endeavor entails some form of environmental destruction, and the music industry is perhaps no worse than any other. A sour critic might point out that printing a book about the political ecology of music makes its own contribution to the despoliation of the planet. Sampling is taking the sound of a recording made by someone else and using it in your own recording. Many musicians consider it an art and like to lift beats and sounds and hooks from other people’s records to incorporate into their songs. But unless you get permission to use a copyrighted sound, you run the risk of being sued. Unauthorized sampling is copyright infringement. With mobile devices improving and offering more services, having one has become the norm, rather than the exception. Therefore, the demand for mobile content keeps increasing. Selling ringtones can be a good revenue stream. More important, having your music on people’s phones is a great source of promotion. Streaming can still be about singles but also, for the first time, equate to the album era too. And, if streaming is going to cannibalise radio listening – and the listening habits of the young suggests it will – we need to have dealt with how artists and songwriters enjoy the same rights and remuneration they've had. As record labels make a fixed percentage of streaming royalties, an industry has sprung up around [Music Publisher Software](https://www.curveroyaltysystems.com/features/publishing-royalties) and the management of these. Songwriters and musicians are entitled to royalties when their songs are performed or played in public. If a production company wishes to use a song, they will have to purchase a ‘sync license' from a music publisher. A performer with enough knowledge, time and drive can affiliate with one or more neighbouring rights societies, register their works and ensure they are properly credited on all recordings. But in many cases, the volume of recordings, filing idiosyncrasies and time commitment outweigh the benefits of complete self administration. Getting any career started especially as the manager of an artist in the music business requires a functioning network of contacts of people who you can do business with. Working full-time as a producer doesn't necessarily mean that the only thing you do is produce music. Many artists I know that make a living in the music industry have diverse income sources. They make money from playing shows, selling merchandise, collecting streaming royalties, teaching, and creating educational content. The percentage share, however, depends on how the song has been used. If the song is played on a streaming service, royalties are split evenly across mechanical and performance royalties. Music streaming services need something like [Music Publishing Software](https://www.curveroyaltysystems.com/features/publishing-royalties) to be accurately tracked. International royalties can be collected by your local collection society and in the UK, this will be PPL. Artist music managers have a good sense of business and are good at budgeting the two resources that are not unlimited: time and money. Pphysical records are sold on a 100% return privilege. This means that, if a retailer orders one hundred records from RCA but can’t sell them, it can bundle them up, ship them back to RCA, and get credit for (or a refund of) the price it paid. Such a practice is unlike most other businesses, because if you buy a load of plastic flamingos and can’t sell them, you eat them. Amazon has two music streaming services to its name – the standalone Amazon Music Unlimited and Amazon Prime Music, which is included with a Prime subscription. It doesn't have adverts, and songs can be downloaded and listened to offline. An engineer is usually involved in setting up mics, tracking, editing and sometimes mixing. They play a big part in shaping the sound of the project. An assistant engineer will often take care of the grunt work, including cabling, mic positioning, editing and preparing mixes, carrying gear and so on. Your business is not [Music Accounting Software](https://www.curveroyaltysystems.com/) and you shouldn't waste your time trying to do this when you can use experts instead. If an artist signs a management contract with a manager who works within a management company, they will most likely have a clause in their agreement called the key man or key person clause. This clause protects the musician in a number of situations including if the person who you signed with to be the manager leaves the company. The more you manage music copyright and publishing issues properly and take precautions to ensure you’re getting what you’re entitled to, the more potential you have for making money. The truth is that you must set your own time limits and, if necessary, switch representatives regularly. Decision making about an artist’s career certainly has to do with business, but there are also decisions to be made that deal with art and artistry. You must have a sense of your direction. You must understand, experience, and manage time in ways that the rest of us would never comprehend. Prominent streaming services can easily be tracked using [Music Royalty Software](https://www.curveroyaltysystems.com/) in a SaaS environment. Live music venues have two options for playing copyrighted music. They can pay either a flat annual fee or a percentage of revenue made from ticket sales. Many musicians worry about people stealing their music. It does happen. But fans will want to support you. They also like having the artwork. Prominent streaming services are almost impossible to avoid given their dedication to advertising, another facet of the industry that contributes to the increasing popularity of such sites. But at what cost does this come to the artists included in online streaming libraries? Do they miss out on the revenue they'd otherwise receive from album sales?