12.14.06 Can I Record My Own Music, Please

I started my life in the music business at a publishing company.  Publishing companies own and administer the right to songs. 

A song’s ownership (and income) is divided into two equal parts: Writer share and Publisher share.  Most writers can’t get a larger piece of the pie than this on their first publishing deal.  Because I knew to ask for it and how to get it, and because I truly do half the publishers job (getting the song placed on a recording) I got what’s called a “co-pub.” Essentially I own all the writer share and a portion (which I can’t contractually disclose) of the publisher’s share too.  This is why the copyright info on my CDs says something like Copyright 2001 NewSpring Publishing/shaungroves.com. all rights administered by Brentwood-Benson music publishing.

The “NewSpring” part is my publisher’s share (a sub-publisher of Brentwood-Benson.) The “shaungroves.com” part is my share of the publishing (the name of my co-publishing “company.” Brentwood-Benson though administers all rights.  if you want to record my song on your CD or use my song in your film you get permission from Brentwood-Benson.  They give you rights to use their share and mine.  That way I don’t have to be an attorney and keep track of licenses etc.  AND Brentwood-Benson collects all the money for the use of the song AND pays me my share.  This way I also don’t have to be an accountant either.

It’s a great partnership.  Unless I want to record my own songs.

The live CD is taking a while for many many reasons.  One of which is that I can’t manufacture the CD until I have proof from the copyright owners that I have permission to replicate their songs and sell them.  I need a license from the administrator of the songs: my publisher.  The manufacturer, understandably, won’t budge on this.  Problem is getting that license isn’t an easy or quick process.  First of all, I have to know how long the recording of each song is on the final product and I couldn’t know that until the final mix was completed only recently. Then some of the songs I’ve recorded aren’t showing up in the publisher’s records.  So, I’m waiting as they get re-entered into their system and it’s proven that I wrote them in the first place.  This is all stuff a label would ordinarily work through.  But, as an indie, I am the label.  Oh, joy.

To make matters more complicated I have a finite budget as an indie.  From that budget I have to pay for the manufacturing of the discs but also for the license: $.091 per song per CD (if the song is under five minutes, otherwise it gets pretty expensive.) Now, most of that licensing fee (set by Congress, by the way) will just turn around and get paid back to me since I own most of the pie.  And it sure would be great to just pay upfront the portion my publisher will end up with aftre paying me my portion but no such luck. 

Confused?  Well, basically I’m waiting for permission to record my own songs and pay a publisher a large amount of money that they’ll mostly turn around and pay back to me.  But that’s the music business.