Revenues from copyrights, especially from music and film, represent one of the fastest-growing sectors of the American economy. In recent years for example, U.S. copyright earnings grew at a real annual rate of more than twice the overall economy. The music publishing segment of the copyright industry for instance had recent revenues of well over $6.54 billion worldwide. Of this total, $800 million was earned by American owned song copyrights in the European market alone. Albion Leadbrook Music online was first established as a web based magazine for the internet music community in 2001, focusing on features and reviews of noteworthy musicians. ALMP has since opened its doors to music publishing, focusing on multi genre licensing of music for record labels, the TV and film, advertising and video game industries. What is music publishing? Music Publishing is the business of exploiting music through the licensing of songs and collection of royalties. The copyright owner may license others to use any or all of these exclusive rights for a fee. The income generated from granting a license is known as publishing income, and there are four main types: Performance Royalties: Every time your music is played in public, you are owed a fee for the performance of your music. It is impossible for anyone to track every time a song is played in a club or on the radio, so publishers sign up with, or "affiliate with," one of the performance rights societies: BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated), ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and to a lesser extent SESAC, (Society of European Stage Authors and Composers). These groups issue performance licenses to radio and television stations, nightclubs, restaurants, and so forth, so that these businesses can play a variety of music. The societies then track and collect the revenues and pay the copyright owners. Mechanical Royalties: When you issue a license to a record company to manufacture and distribute copies of your songs on tapes and CDs, the record company will owe you a fixed price per song on each copy sold. This fixed fee is the "mechanical royalty rate," and it can be either negotiated and set in your recording contract, or based on the current statutory rate as fixed by the Copyright Act. The mechanical royalty rate is set by the Compulsory License Provision found in Section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Act and is subject to periodic adjustment. Synchronization Income: A "synch" license is what you grant to film or television productions to allow them to use your song as an accompaniment to film and TV pictures. There is no standard industry fee for synch licenses. The fees are negotiated and depend on the importance of the particular song and how it is used in the production. In a situation where a popular song is used as the basis of a scene, such as the "Old Time Rock and Roll" scene in "Risky Business," the fee can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. For local television commercials and low-budget films, the fees are whatever you can negotiate. Print Income: These royalties are generated by any publication of your songs in written sheet music or a "folio", which is a book of songs. This category is not a big earner for many artists, but "Greatest Hits" print anthologies published for artists like Joni Mitchell and Led Zeppelin are examples of popular printed music. For each book or sheet sold, the copyright owner of those songs receives a percentage of the retail price. What do music publishers do? A publisher is responsible for "administering the rights" associated with your copyrights, which involves getting your songs played, issuing the appropriate licenses and collecting the money. In the standard arrangement, a songwriter will sign over his/her copyrights to the publishing company for administration for a given period, and in turn the publishing company agrees to pay 50% of all revenues collected to the writer. The publisher collects mechanical, synchronization, print and foreign release income for the author. The company keeps the "publisher's share" and pays you the "writer's share." The one exception to this arrangement is in the performance income collected by performing rights societies. The societies issue the writer's share directly to you, and issue the publisher its share separately. Back to main......