The Music Business Buddy
A podcast that aims to educate and inspire music creators in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. A new episode is released each Wednesday and aims to offer clarity and insight into a range of subjects across the music industry, all through the lens of a music creator for the benefit of other music creators. The series includes soundbites and interviews with guests from all over the world together with commentary and clarity on a range of topics. The podcast is hosted by award winning music industry professional Jonny Amos.
Jonny Amos is a music producer with credits on a range of major and independent labels, a songwriter with chart success in Europe and Asia, a senior lecturer in both music creation and music business at BIMM University UK, director of The SongLab Ltd and the author of The Music Business for Music Creators.
www.jonnyamos.com
The Music Business Buddy
Episode 25: A Guide To Song and Recording Registrations
Have you ever wondered how to effectively register your songs and recordings to ensure you receive the royalties you're owed? Join me, Jonny Amos, as I demystify the often-overlooked distinction between songs and recordings, a crucial step for protecting your creative work. From the intricacies of joining Performing Rights Organisations (PROs) and Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) to the nitty-gritty details needed for registration, I provide a straightforward guide to navigating these essential administrative tasks. Equip yourself with the knowledge to secure your rightful earnings in the music industry.
In this episode, we also unravel the complex world of music industry codes that are vital for tracking and managing your music rights. Discover the importance of ISRCs, Tunecodes, EANs and more key components in ensuring your creative work is properly identified and royalties are accurately paid. Understand how music publishers and record companies typically handle these processes and why aligning with organisations like PRS and PPL is crucial for long-term success. Whether you're an independent artist or part of a larger team, gaining clarity on these systems will empower you to elevate your music career and ensure your creations reach their full potential.
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The Music Business Buddy. The Music Business Buddy. Hello everybody and a very, very warm welcome to you. You're listening to the Music Business Buddy with me, johnny Amos, podcasting out of Birmingham in England. I am the author of the book the Music Business for Music Creators, available in hardback, paperback and ebook format. I'm also a music creator with credits on a variety of major and indie labels. As a writer, producer, I am a senior lecturer in music creation and also in music business. Wherever you are, whatever you do, consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of the community around it. I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from anywhere in the world in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music.
Speaker 1:Okay, so in today's episode, I'm talking about the importance of, and the process of, registering your songs and recordings. Now, very often, the episodes that I put together on this podcast are informed by the areas of need that I either witness or am requested to cover by other people. Now, this area is not a request from anybody, but it is a fairly urgent area of need. It's something that a lot of people don't know that they need to do, and so it's so important that this subject is tackled Now. There's a couple of steps that need to be addressed before we can go into this, and that is all around the ownership of the intellectual property of your songs and of the recordings of those songs. Now, I know it's easy sometimes to think, especially if you're an independent artist, to think about your songs as being your recordings or as your recordings being your songs. And they're not. And just bear with me on this, because I know it sounds odd, but they're not. They're totally separate things in the eyes of collection, in the eyes of intellectual property and in the eyes of the music business. It is therefore important that you register your songs and register your recordings separately. However, there's a step before that you can't register your songs or the recordings of your songs until you know who the co-owners of those rights are, of those rights are.
Speaker 1:Now this takes us right back to episode one of this podcast, where I talked about the trust and terms of song splits. Now, if I time, jump right through to episode 20, while I was interviewing the brilliant Gavin Monaghan, he was talking about how bands very often split up when it comes to the subject of song splits and how cliche. That actually is as heartbreaking as it is, and it is heartbreaking, but again, it all comes down to education, right? Once those song splits and those recording splits are in place, and it's in writing, then, and only then, we can move on to this next part. Ok, so if a song is not registered with a Performing Rights Organisation, or PRO, then songwriting royalties can't be collected and distributed to the rights holders. Likewise, if a recording is not registered with a Collective Management Organisation or CMO, then recording royalties can't be collected and distributed either. Therefore, it's crucial that all of the steps are taken to correctly register the songs and the recordings with their correct organisations.
Speaker 1:Now again, much like the last episode, right, I know that this subject is not necessarily one of the most exciting subjects for music creators. I can identify with that. It is perhaps a little bit of a grey area, but it's really really, really important. The misconception is often there that music creators just, you know, make the music and don't have to worry about this stuff. And it just is wildly inaccurate. Right, you do have to worry about this stuff, not worry, but you do have to do something about it, right, and that is registering the songs and registering the recordings. So let's have a look at what that actually looks like. Okay, so it starts by becoming a member of the correct organization.
Speaker 1:Now, in chapter 14 of my book, the music business for music creators, I list an entirety of all of the collection organizations in the world, so all of the rights organizations that link to either recordings or songs, dependent upon your geographic location. If you're not sure and you're based somewhere in the world and you think I don't know who my CMO or my PRO is, just Google it or use ChatGPT that's probably more accurate and just find the answer as to who your relevant partners are. Now, the process for registering a song may vary slightly, dependent upon who your PRO is, but it won't vary that much. Now remember this as well that a song's copyright is intangible right Now. What that really means is that the song is not in a fixed form as such. On a tangible level, a recording is.
Speaker 1:So when you register a song, you won't actually be uploading an mp3 or a wav file or anything like that. You just have to register it differently. So here's how you want to do it you register the song title. You register any alternative titles that that song name uses. You also list the names of the songwriters and the percentage split of each songwriter's ownership. You would also input any information on the music publisher, if it's applicable, and if it's a split of the ownership of the songs it might be. Some songwriters have publishers and some don't. By the way, it's worth always checking, if you are signed to a music publisher, that they are doing this process for you. The last thing you want to get is duplicates of songs, because that can be very confusing.
Speaker 1:The next thing is the duration of the song, which I always think is a slightly odd one. I know why pro's do it. They do it to differentiate between songs of the same name perhaps. However, if a song is intangible, when and we talk about duration of a song, it usually tends to align with the best known recording of that song. So if you're unsure as to what to put there because there are different versions of a song perhaps, then pick the most known recording of that song and use the duration of the song length there. Then you would want to put the type of work, whether it's a song or an instrumental. You would also put the language of the song, what language it's in, and also there's often a box to put in the known usage of the song, if it's applicable. So that might be that you've already got some information as to the usage of the song. That can be as simple as inputting an ISRC code sometimes, which is a subject I'll come back to in just a few moments time. So if, for example, you know that you plan to release that song, if you've got the ISRC code for the recording of that song, input it into the song registration with your PRO.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's now look at the general information required for when registering a recording. So we've got the title of the recordings, that's the song title. We've then got the name of the recording artist. That's the primary artist. We've then got the name of any featured artists no-transcript. In addition to that, you also want contribution information. So that's the names and the roles of everyone who performed on that recording and that's often referred to as the non-featured performers as well as the featured performers. So the featured performers would be the people that are named inside of the primary artist or the people that are the featured artist alongside a primary artist, and the non-featured performers would be those that are not mentioned on the title of the recording but whose parts have been used on that recording. This will link to neighbouring rights.
Speaker 1:Now, it's very important that the person that who registering the recording really really goes to the nth degree on listing absolutely everybody that played a part in that recording, whether it could be a horn player, a backing vocalist, a bass player, a keys player, because it is traditionally very, very, very difficult for performer members of a CMO to add themselves to a recording. It's a very difficult procedure, so it's actually very important there's a sense of ownership and accountability on the person that is registering the recording to ensure that everyone's name and role is listed within that recording process. One's name and role is listed within that recording process. Also, it's worth listing the name of the distributor, because that can be a very useful piece of information too. Now, I mentioned earlier about the huge list of PROs and CMOs out there that collect on rights holders' behalves. Now, if we just take the UK as an example because that's where I'm based, right, what we'd be talking about here is PRS as the PRO and PPL as the CMO. So that would be PRS that works on behalf of the songwriters and music publishers and PPL that works on behalf of the recording rights holders. Now there's a few codes that are linked to both of these aspects. So there are some song and recording codes that you're going to need to be aware of, so let's have a look at those next.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's start off with the song codes. Not the song recordings, but the song codes. So an ISWC, that's an International Standard Work Code and it's an international 10 digit code which is assigned to the identity of a song copyright. So the song copyright, not the recording copyright. Now, a music publisher or a PRO can create and assign an ISWC code to the registration of a work. However, if it's an independent songwriter that is setting up a song to be registered with their performing rights organisation, there may well be an internal process that takes place before an ISWC code is actually assigned to a song. Are you still with me? So it's not an instantaneous process, so it could be.
Speaker 1:For example, there are a couple of administrative codes that are assigned to a song before an ISWC gets attached to it. It's complex, I know, so let me give an example. So PRS for Music that operate in the UK and for other countries have kind of two additional song codes that they use for registration. One is instant and that is an electronic joint notification of work, or what they refer to as an ejnw. So that is an auto-generated code that's used by the prs database to help track a song's identity before it then becomes formally accepted onto the PRS database. So that code is then superseded by what's called a tune code once the process is complete. So a tune code is an eight digit code that helps PRS for Music to identify a song in relation to queries regarding royalty payments.
Speaker 1:No-transcript. Okay, let's now move over to recording codes. The most important one is the one that I code for the song and multiple ISRC codes for recordings, because you can have one song and multiple different versions of it by different artists at different time periods. So you would have an ISRC code attached to every single song recording. So if it's a 12 track album, for example, all 12 tracks would have their own ISRC and ISRC allows for the tracking of that unique recording. So the codes are typically embedded in the sound recording, which basically makes you know tracking usage a little bit more kind of, cleaner and more accurate. It also enables streaming services to actually read the metadata attached to a recording to understand how to categorize that recording on their platforms. So, as I mentioned, one song could have various different isrc codes, because it's the irc that relates to the identity of the recording.
Speaker 1:Isrcs that can be obtained through your country's national isrc agency or by contacting the, the international federation of the phonographic industry. Now, the UK's national ISRC agency is the PPL that I mentioned earlier. But, as I also mentioned earlier, remember chapter 14 of my book, the music business for music creators, lists all of the different CMOs and all of the and where they relate to in the world. Now PPL, just as a case study. Here they offer free membership to their rights holders and their rights holders can be individuals, they can be entities, they can be organisations and once the membership process is complete, an applicant becomes a registrant with their own prefix to create then their own ISRC codes. Now, an ISRC code is a composite code that's dictated by three separate elements. So there's the prefix code, which is what you get when you become a registrant that can create your own ISRC, and then there are two digits, which is the year of release, and that is then followed by a five digit designation code which is picked by you, the ISRC registrant. Now, if all of that sounds a little bit too convoluted and a little bit too kind of stressful, then there is perhaps an easier, quicker option here, right, and that is to have your distributor to create the ISRC on your behalf. Now, this is an option that most distributors will offer to any music creator of any level. It's also worth mentioning that an ISRC code works as an identifier for both music and also video recordings as well.
Speaker 1:And then there are the catalogue codes. So there are basically three different things to think about here in catalogue codes. One is a European Article Number, or EAN, and this is a 13 digit product code which helps to identify releases. An EAN can be used as a barcode and consists of a country code prefix, a label code and an internally assigned code which is set by the label, so that is primarily used to account for product sales rather than to signify rights of ownership. There's also a unique product code, or UPC, and that is primarily used in the USA and Canada, and it's a code that is compatible with an EAN code, so EANs and UPCs can also be referred to as media catalogue numbers.
Speaker 1:I hope you're still with me. And finally, there is a label code, or LC, and it's a system that is governed by the German organisation for the management of neighboring rights in germany, so it's used for radio and tv in relation to broadcast rights and is not required for online music distribution. Royalties are paid to the label, not directly to the rights holders for that particular code. Oh sorry, everybody, that's a lot of codes, isn't it? I hope I haven't made you dizzy with all that information. Anyway, now, of course, the whole point of this is so that you can get paid, right, you know, for a recording and for a song, or hopefully both.
Speaker 1:But there are also some other things to think about here, and that is around the nature of visibility. So I'll give you an example of what I mean. If, for example, a company is operating a production company, putting together a television program, for instance, and they're putting together a list of music that they want to use, now it could well be that a performing rights organization, as well as a CMO, can issue licences on behalf of rights holders for the usage of that music. Let me just make that a bit more simple by putting it in context. So, under blanket licence system in the UK, for example, it could be that a production company wants to use a particular song. If that song is not registered with prs and ppl, that song won't get usage. So that's why it's important that songs and recordings are registered correctly with the correct organizations. Now, if you're signed to a music publisher, your music publisher is going to do this. If you're signed to a record company, your record company is going to do this. But I think it's important that we kind of get this stuff in our minds and into our practice so that things are set up in a way that success can then follow.
Speaker 1:Okay, so there you go. Not the, uh, not the sexiest subject in the world, but an important one nonetheless. I hope that's been useful to you. Feel free, guys, to rate the podcast. Get in touch with me, tell me subjects that you want covered. I'm on Instagram at the Music Business Buddy Podcast. Feel free to find me. I'm here to help. Okay, that's enough for me for today. Thank you for being here with me. I hope you've enjoyed this. I hope it's been useful to you. Until next time. May the force be with you.
