Understand What The Top Revenue Streams Are In The Music Business

Four Major Income Streams:

Performance Fees + Royalties

Publishing + Synchronization

Mechanical Royalties

Sheet Music

Purchased, streamed, covered, played on the radio, performed in public, heard on YouTube, sampled, sold as sheet music used as the soundtrack to a film, TV show, commercial, video game, or presentation.

Music publishing plays a large role in that equation, but it’s also one of the least understood aspects of the music industry.

These top four revenue makers in the music industry encompass a wide range of sub-topics, but it’s important you understand how you can make money from the three main sources.

Access doesn’t equal understanding; and just because an independent songwriter CAN make money from publishing these days doesn’t mean they know HOW to do it.

Performance Royalty

Every time a song is played on radio or an artist performs a song on television, there is a fee payable by the broadcaster to collection society. This fee is based on a percentage of their advertising income.

Live performances are currently affected with COVID-19. It’s now a digital world and time you jump in on YouTube, FB & Instagram Live getting the fans to your pages to stay relevant.

YouTube is the biggest bet, high time it is utilized to full potential.

Get as much people as you can to subscribe to your YouTube, the more you build your audience the more you can monetize.

Publishing

Here are some source of income available:

Physical Sales, Downloads, Streaming, Live performance, Television, Film, Advertising, Radio, Cover versions of writers’ song/s, Production Music, Print – (Physical & On-line)

Key Elements:

            (a) Registration

Ensure all your compositions copyrights with collection societies globally (ZIMURA, SAMRO, APRA etc.)

            (b) Exploitation

In Music Publishing “Exploitation” is a great word…

“Exploitation” in publishing means working to get your musical composition USED. Getting an artist to record your song or placing it in a broadcast media (known as synchronisation in TV/Film/ Advertising) is considered exploitation. If your publisher is not “exploiting” your works they aren’t doing their job!

Mechanical Royalties

Is the process of getting the songwriter paid from the collection of copyright/ royalties’ income globally both physical & digital formats?

You can think of a music-streaming service as a radio station that you can program by genre, artist or mood. That said, not all services are made equal.

Most offer you the ability to stream unlimited music, but some also have provisions for streaming via mobile, offline caching for listening without an internet connection and streaming to other devices through the home.

Every time a song you’ve written is manufactured to be sold in a physical form, downloaded on a digital music retail site, or streamed through services like Spotify, iTunes etc you are owed a mechanical royalty.

NB* Writing and recording original music can ensure you own both your master rights and your performance/mechanical rights, giving you the ability to publish and control your own works

Synchronization Royalties

To pair a licensed musical composition with audio visual images in a moving picture.

There are 3 Synch income streams from a composition/recording.

1. The Negotiated Fee to use the recording (master).

2. Negotiated fee for the composition (referred to as a Front-end Fee)

3. Performance royalty for its broadcast use. (Referred to as a Back-end Royalty)

NB: not applicable for TV & Radio commercials

Israel SEBENZO® is a Singer, Songwriter and Artist & Repertoire (A&R) Executive