Ownership & Royalties in 2019

You're a budding independent musician. Not only have you focused on your craft, but you've built a business around it. You are a master of your artistry, from creation to production to marketing.

You’ve chosen to remain independent, so you own 100% of the rights to your music - both the composition and sound recording. No outside influence or hands reaching out for a cut of your creation. So when your music sells you keep 100% of the revenue, right?

Not exactly.

Even if you own 100% of the rights to your music, you still have to get it into the hands of your fans. And DSP's vary widely on how much they think this service is worth.

If you are able to record and produce a record while retaining all of the rights to the creative work, good on you. This would have been an anomaly in the recording industry of the past. Today this is only half of the battle.

Rights & Royalties in the Digital Age

It is now up to the artist to decide how to distribute their record in the most cost efficient way. Luckily, there are usually no exclusive agreements when it comes to selling your music online. This means that you can release your music on a handful of DSP's (iTunes, Bandcamp, Shopify + Single). Because fans use different DSP's, it makes sense to sell music across multiple platforms.

But as an artist is often their own personal marketing team, they can direct fans to whichever service offers them the best deal and reports album sales to the official charts.

Maintaining copyrights to your music is a luxury that has become commonplace. This is amazing for modern day musicians. Now, it’s time to maximize your revenue from your creative work.

Do you have questions about this post? We’d love to hear from you.

- Joe