Our topic for this lesson was Royalties. We were discussing basically how they work. How musicians get paid and who else is involved in their music.
Allan wanted us to research about royalties, so a lot of this blog is research on various websites such as, PRS, Musicians Union and HowStuffWorks.
WHAT WE DISCUSSED:
Allan said that making money in the music industry is tricky, but everyone knows that. We looked into the world of music royalties and researched how money is made in this industry.
The first thing we talked about was the difference between recording-artist royalties and songwriter/publisher royalties.
Recording artists and songwriters do not earn royalties in the same way as each other. Recording artists earn royalties from the sale of their recordings on CD's, Cassette's and Vinyl's.
Allan told me that recording artists don't earn royalties when they perform live, or even when their music is played on the Radio, on TV or in bars. I was really surprised when I heard this, but Allan explained more.
It's because it is "a long-standing practice that's based on copyright law" (Musicians Union) and when their songs are played on the Radio they think more CDs and tapes are sold.
Songwriters and publishers, do earn royalties in these instances as well as a small portion of the recording sales.
The time where artists earn royalties is for "public performances" which is when the song are played in a Digital place like webcast or satellite radio. And that is non-interactive, meaning the listener doesn't pick and choose the songs to hear.
These are the main forms of Royalties:
First - Mechanical Royalties - Which is when music is reproduced onto a CD or something like that. The music has permission to be mechanically reproduced. The mechanical royalty is paid to the Recording artists, the Songwriters and the Publisher.
Second - Performance Royalties - Is when your music is being performed live or it is being broadcasted. The royalties would be paid to the recording artist, songwriter and the published.
Third - Synchronisation royalties - It is when a song is being used on a T.V programme, film, video, commercial, radio. This would get paid to the songwriters and the publishers.
Four - Print rights royalties - This is a royalty paid to the songwriters and the publishers based on the sales of printed music.
I thought this lesson was very interesting. I found out so much information on royalties. The most helpful website to me was:
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/music-royalties.htm
I found out most of the information from that site. I think it has nearly everything I need to know about royalties.
Learning about royalties for me is so beneficial because I want to be a performer/songwriter. So learning about royalties now is giving me a head start.
I really love learning about Royalties and Contracts because they are two topics that are so complicated to deal with, they have so much information. But once I get to grips with them then it'll be so much easier. Right now I only have a ruff idea about royalties and contracts.