How Royal is it? & #IAOTW - Jazz Jam at Jazz Becuzz

Hey, it’s TJ Miller, you want some game? Let's Tip Unda The Hat!  

This week Royalties - Let’s go -  

Everybody wants and needs those royalties, but who really understands them? Well I could just end this whole thing and say get a lawyer. I bet my buddy Karl M Washington Esq would say yeah do that. But just so you know a lil bit about your money, I’ll share this. Royalties (in the area of music) are payments made to the owner of a copyright for the expressed use of their original content. A royalty is a cut off the top of revenue earned for the use of that content. The royalty owner gets paid first before everyone else, and that payment usually comes quarterly. Copyright laws give exclusive rights to the creators of original content and can not be used without the proper licence. And just so we are clear, saying “I do not own the rights to this music,” on Facebook means nothing; I actually laugh  everytime I see that...but I digress. For recorded music there are two copyrights; the publishing which is for the composition (that’s the lyric and melody), and the sexy one that everybody likes to shout about - the master, which is for the recording itself (basically what you hear). Now we’ve talked about this a few blog posts ago but it’s worth repeating; the publishing portion of your song is split between the songwriter and the publisher. The good thing about the DIY world is that for most of you the songwriter and the publisher is one person - you! The master is between the recording artists and the record label. Guess what - you are probably the record label with a distribution deal with one of the DSP’s like CDbaby, Distrokid or United Masters. That’s a lot of money (hopefully) to split between you and yourself. Now obviously there is a lot more to royalties than this so feel free to contact me and ask me what you’d like to know.  

This week's #IAOTW - Independent Artists Of The Week is the Jazz Jam at Jazz Becuzz with guest The Pete Rioux Trio.  

For more information or to hire Unda The Hat as your brand or label consultant send a message via  undathehat.com. See you next Tuesday.

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