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 42: Releasing Covers Can Be a Career Catalyst
Cover songs might be the unexpected secret weapon in your artist development strategy. Whether you're an emerging talent trying to build a fanbase or an established artist looking to expand your reach, strategically releasing covers can dramatically accelerate your growth while helping you discover your unique sonic identity.
Many musicians mistakenly believe that releasing cover songs requires navigating complex licensing hurdles. The truth? It's remarkably straightforward. On streaming platforms like Spotify, Tidal, and Deezer, you can release completely re-recorded versions of songs without obtaining separate copyright clearance. Your distributor and the platforms handle the mechanical licensing automatically—you simply need to declare it's a cover. This streamlined process opens up creative possibilities for artists at any stage of their career.
The strategic benefits are substantial and multifaceted. Cover songs provide immediate familiarity to potential listeners, creating a comfortable entry point to discover your original work. They boost your visibility through search algorithms when people look up popular songs. They help you study the architecture of successful music—just as The Beatles and Rolling Stones did when learning their craft. Most importantly, interpreting others' work forces you to infuse your personality into established material, helping define what makes your artistic voice unique. From Aretha Franklin's seminal version of "Respect" to Jeff Buckley's haunting "Hallelujah," music history is filled with artists who transformed borrowed material into career-defining moments. The question isn't whether you should include covers in your strategy—it's which songs will showcase your artistic vision most effectively. What song will you reimagine next?
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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'm the author of the book the Music Business for Music Creators, available in hardback, paperback, e-book format in all the major bookstores and online. I'm a music creator with a variety of credits I'm a consultant, an artist manager and a senior lecturer in both music business and music creation. Wherever you are and whatever you do, consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of the community. I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over 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 am talking about releasing cover songs and its importance when building a fan base and gaining traction as an artist. It's not as difficult to do on a sort of contractual level perhaps not as difficult as some people might think it is, so I'm going to break down why to do it and what to bear in mind and how to go about it. Are you ready? Here we go. Okay, it is entirely possible to release a brand new recorded version of a cover of a song in digital format on multiple streaming platforms without the need for any copyright clearance. Now, that might surprise some people, but there are some factors to bear in mind with this, and let's start by just understanding the difference between digital and fixed digital. So digital would include downloads. Fixed digital relates to streaming services, right?
Speaker 1:So, first off, this does not extend to sampling an original recording, Not even a tiny little snippet, by the way. So no matter how seemingly insignificant it might be to sample a little piece of a different recording, it might even be to the point where you go. Well, that's not recognizable. And you know, there is this kind of line between criminality and creativity, and I understand that closeness sometimes, but it's such a gray area. Something to bear in mind, if you are sampling an original recording there as well, is that you might sort of, for the want of better words, get away with it. For now, however, I have been privy to some information in new tech startups which suggests that even very, very old recordings, if sampled and manipulated and changed pitch and changed speed, may still be recognizable in the future. So that's a can of worms ready to be opened one day.
Speaker 1:So my advice to you is to try and avoid it for a cover, if you can. Now, to use any part of a recording, creators must obtain clearance from the rights holder of the recording right. So in most cases that might be a record company. Now, secondly, if a newly composed song features even a fraction of a composition, so that's somebody that's created a song that has a little bit of a well-known song in. If that little bit is recognized and previously released, you know, as a song, then it could be classified by the DSPs as a cover. Now, a real gray area here is the subject of parody. So the idea of taking a song and changing its lyrics, that would still be classified in the current streaming era as a cover. So that's something to be mindful of as well.
Speaker 1:Now, thirdly, it's not possible to release a cover of a song on all platforms in all countries. So, for example, the USA and Canada, mexico, pakistan, india have policies that prevent this on some platforms. Now there are a growing number of DSPs by that I mean digital service platforms that no longer have any global restrictions in place for releasing cover songs. So it's possible to release covers in all countries on Spotify, on Tidal, on Deezer and also on KKBox, and I think maybe, as time goes by, it might be realistic to expect that more of the DSPs will go that way. That's where things currently stand Now.
Speaker 1:The reason why it's possible for just about anyone to release their own version of a song on those platforms is because most of the digital service platforms actually pay for the required mechanical release themselves. So when you hear people saying, well, if you're going to do a cover, you need a mechanical release, you do that is true. However, it might not necessarily be something that you need to mechanical release you do that is true. However, it might not necessarily be something that you need to do yourself. In fact, if you only plan to release a cover through the dsps, only through fixed digital, where people can stream it and can't download it, then in most cases the digital distributor that you're going through will take care of that for you, as long as you declare that the song is a cover.
Speaker 1:Now I just want to clear up mechanical releases, because it's kind of in my mind. It's kind of odd that that term is still used, because even in a digital context, people still use the term mechanical release and actually it's not kind of where the term came from. It actually came from a physical reproduction, ie a physical release. Right. So the term mechanical release. It still used even in that digital context, despite that original definition being linked to physical format. So it is possible to gain your own mechanical release for all platforms in all countries, and you can purchase that through services like Easy Song Licensing or the Harry Fox Agency in America, for example.
Speaker 1:But just to simplify this right so, if you only plan to release covers that don't contain any of the original recordings so it's a brand new recording, brand new interpretation of the song and you only plan to release it in fixed digital through the streaming services, you don't need to do. All you've got to do is to declare that it is a cover song through your distributor and the rest will be taken care of. There you go. We got that out the way, nice and easy. Okay, let's now start looking at the benefits of doing this. So we've talked a little bit before about sonic identity and an artist finding their sound and how important that is right. Right, but this can partially be discovered through working on cover songs. So the idea of kind of taking a song and expressing a sense of uniqueness or a sense of a twist and artist identity being forced into a song, it can really allow for artists to expand their discovery rate.
Speaker 1:There is this kind of automatic built-in appeal of releasing a cover song because it has a sense of familiarity to people you know. So there is, of course, the ideal setup of expanding reach. There's also an artist showcasing a sense of versatility and interpretation and then of course, there's actually the process of boosting an online presence. There's the wider audience appeal, new fan acquisition, etc. There's the social media engagement side of things as well.
Speaker 1:But if done correctly and packaged correctly, as you would do for any other multiple kind of single drop or EP release, covers still have to be strategically planned, you know, with perhaps six-week breaks between releases, that kind of thing. And also you know they don't have to be amazingly, you know, kind of all bells and whistles, full production. You know, sometimes a cover can be a very, very stripped down, reduced version and, by the way, anytime we ever do that and I call that an author version of a song, right, a song that could be played on a piano or a guitar it really showcases the song and the artist. When those embellishments aren't there, we see a sense of sincerity and honesty to it. We know that's worked. It's worked for decades, you know.
Speaker 1:So it does give, you know, an opportunity for artists to showcase a unique style and also to experiment and to find a connection with an existing fan base that may be automatically interested in that song. There's also the search benefit. People often search for specific songs that they love so they may discover an artist as a result of that. There's, of course, the algorithmic boost and playlist potential. There's also the potential for working more closely with sync agents, for example. So, you know, even though there wouldn't be any songwriting royalties for you covering that song, there would still be the exposure, the kudos, and, of course, if you own your own recording and the rights to that recording, then you will make money from that too. Let's just jump back in time for a minute, right, because there's kind of nothing new about this. It's just a little bit easier to be able to do now on a contractual level.
Speaker 1:So if we think about certain songs let's take, for example, you know, aretha Franklin we might think immediately of Respect, the song and what she did with that. My God, she owned that song, but she didn't write it, and that's okay, right, otis Redding wrote the song and did really well with it as well. But Aretha Franklin's version of that song gave her a sense of identity. The song resonated with so many more people when she performed it. Or let's take something like Jeff Buckley's Alleluia. You know, again, the song was written by Leonard Cohen and Leonard Cohen also did a very fine version of that song, as have many other people, because it's a wonderful song. But what Jeff Buckley did with it was different from what anybody else had done it, because he interpreted it in a way that was suitable for his art in that particular time and it resonated with millions and it continues to resonate with millions.
Speaker 1:So if we can kind of get past the or it's almost kind of pride and ego that we have to be the writers of that song if we can get past that, then we can really open up some possibilities as to what we do with our songs and how we interpret those songs. So again, if we go even further back, let's think to the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. You know, back in the 60s those bands learned how to write songs because of the songs that they were covering and in many ways it's the same as people that play in cover bands, without perhaps realising it. They are constantly subconsciously studying the formulas of hit songs. You know whether that be analysing and absorbing and performing those lyrics.
Speaker 1:Maybe it could be the idea of taking those chords and go oh yeah, that chord formula works really, really well. What about if I do this with it and then I just change the speed? Remember, guys, you can't copyright a chord sequence. You've never been able to do that and I don't think you ever will, because it's only one component, one third of a song. So when you take those chords and, by the way, if you ever stumble across a chord formula and you go, I can't use that because such and such has used it. Yes, you can, it's okay. It's okay, don't worry about it, because by the time you finish writing that song and you've done you with it, it won't sound like that song that you're worried about it sounding like by the time you're done. It just might sound like it at the beginning and that can sometimes feel like oh, you know, I can't continue with this, it sounds too much like this. Just, you know, work with it. But anyway, we're on about covers here. So one of those things to think about there when we're covering a song, is let's, let's look at those chords, let's look at the way that melody is shaped.
Speaker 1:Sometimes one of the most useful things can be to take a melody of a song and look at it in midi format. You know, there's so many tools out there now where you can record a vocal line and then convert it into midi and you can just kind of see the shape of the music. For those that can't read music sheet music and I am one of those people, and so is Paul McCartney and many other people, not that I'm comparing myself to Sir Paul, but you know it's not a total requirement to be a solid composer, right, especially now because we can convert those melodies into MIDI and look at the shape of them. And it's all these things that we're doing kind of subconsciously whilst we're doing covers and we build up this almost tacit-like knowledge whereby we understand the key components of what makes a song. So all of those things also happen as a result of studying hit songs and doing those covers of songs.
Speaker 1:Now, perhaps the most difficult part of all of this is to actually know how to choose the right song to cover. So it could perhaps just be a song that really, really resonates with you. You know, if you feel something when you're working on a song, whether you wrote it or you didn't if you feel that others will feel it too right, even if it's a deeply personal connection that you've got to a particular lyric and it is usually lyrics that people gravitate to when it comes to something that resonates with them. Of course, melodies, chords play a part in that, but if you can choose a song that you genuinely like and genuinely sort of have a connection with, then your passion will come through into that performance and it will make it more authentic and it'll it'll help people to understand it and engage with it.
Speaker 1:You know, now I do see a lot of people that right now, you know, in the social media era, especially with TikTok booms, is people kind of choosing songs that are trending and and I understand that, but I don't think it is perhaps as career defining. Perhaps something that's more career defining would be something that perhaps fits the other previous example that I mentioned a song that really resonates with you. But also, you know a song that you know perhaps hasn't been overdone. You know songs that have been really really over, overdone with covers and really really saturated. Um, you know, I understand the appeal as to why people do it, by the way, because people are searching for those songs. I do understand that.
Speaker 1:But finding a song that really fits your style and your genre is very important because it ultimately it has to align with your style or it has to be able to be adapted to your style, so it could be a song that is kind of you know, pretty well known but hasn't really been kind of covered since its original release, perhaps in the 70s or the 80s or the 90s or somewhere since then. So, understanding your own kind of library of music and the things that you like, maybe you need to expand that a little bit in order to be able to find that song and then just sit at a piano or on a computer or with a guitar, or however you want to do this, and just think about how it feels when you sing that song. If you're, let's say, a dream folk artist, imagine just taking a well-known rock song, for example, but reimagining it in the style that suits you, with that flavor, that palette of sounds that you use for your style. That that's the gun. We see it a lot in dance music, by the way, you know, songs that are very, very, very well known, that are just kind of cut up into sort of two or four bar loops that are then piped into a house track, and again it's the same thing, whereby there's a sense of familiarity to it, you know. So the goal is to find a song that allows you to infuse you into it and to think about what those things are. Even if you were to cover a song exactly how it was but it's you singing it it will just feel different, it will sound different, and it's then that you can then start looking at all the other ingredients. What is it that makes your sound? I can tell you that those artists that I can think of, that I've worked with over the years, that have started their careers with covers and done very, very well for themselves and kind of discovered their sound as a result of doing those covers. Now, that might just be changing the arrangement a little bit, or maybe even changing the chords to fit with the style of chords that are in your style, or maybe it's changing the speed of a song. Sometimes, when we change the speed of a song, we it slower. Sometimes it can just breathe differently.
Speaker 1:Collaboration is also an important part as well. It might be that you want to do a duet, for example, or maybe it's, you know, working with another artist that would also complement you in that taste. We know that there are benefits to collaborate with other artists, not just on a creative level but also on a sort of discovery level. So that's another thing to bear in mind too. Now let's just throw in remixes for a minute, because sometimes there can be a confusion between you know kind of a cover and a remix.
Speaker 1:So for a remix of a song to be deemed as an official remix, it requires the approval of the rights holder of the original recording, which, you know again, would usually be a record company. Right Now, a remix that does not have the approval of the rights holder is often referred to as a bootleg remix. So, unlike a cover of a song, where an artist records a new version of a song, a remix usually relies on the use of some of the original stems of the recording, especially a vocal usually. So it is illegal to release a remix on streaming platforms without the written approval of the rights holders. So don't expect a distributor to be able to deliver an unofficial remix of a song to the major platforms.
Speaker 1:With that said, you know, electronic music creators should not necessarily be deterred right from creating remixes, because it's a part of their art form. What you know, one of the elements of of that art form for electronic producers and djs is their ability to reinterpret. Youinterpret different elements of songs when they kind of fuse them together with other elements. So a mixtape of such examples to promote a DJ's work is a very effective way of showcasing their unique style of mixing and their ability to fuse different songs together. But that's different from releasing it, right? So it's also worth mentioning that record companies with, you know, a dormant catalogue, are always keen to hear how a song has been reinvented by an electronic creator of the next generation. I mean, I mentioned earlier about dance music.
Speaker 1:You know, if you're ever in that position, let's say, for example, if you're an electronic music producer or DJ and you go I can't use that because it's from Maybe you can, maybe you can actually, maybe it's not that difficult, maybe it's just a question of getting the right approval. Yeah, it can feel like, you know, like a long, drawn out, boring process to do that sometimes, but other times I can tell you from my own experience. Other times it's really easy actually and people are quite glad to, you know to have old recordings kind of be reignited by the use of a sample. And of course, there's other things out there that are much easier to work with, for example, like tracklibcom if anybody's ever used that before, it's a kind of um, you know a platform for getting sample clearance from a quite wide array of catalogs and stuff. It's much easier than kind of crate digging and then figuring out if you can clear it or not. So just to clarify on that though so if all of the instruments, stems and vocals are re-recorded, then it becomes a cover, not a remix. Okay, right, so there you go.
Speaker 1:There's a little bit of a of an overview on, you know, the kind of the purpose and the strategy associated with recording covers. Now I should add this at this point everybody because this is relevant to the everything I've referred to in the sort of last 20 minutes or so has been in relation to artists gaining more traction online, new followers, etc. So the idea of maybe a cover being then eligible for a particular playlist which then adds further discovery on an algorithmic level to an artist's growth I'm talking about that. What I'm not talking about so much is using a cover in an advert or using a cover in a sync opportunity. These things are entirely possible, they can be done, but they just require a different level of understanding in terms of licensing. So, for example, you would need a sync license for the song and a sync master license for the recording. Again, it's all doable, but it is a slightly different approach on a sort of contractual and mechanical level than it is to just release covers on streaming platforms, on fixed digital.
Speaker 1:Ok, right, there you go. I hope that's useful. I hope you can build that into your strategy and gain new fans out of it. It is entirely possible. So get thinking about it and, as always, rate the podcast. Reach out to me anytime you like. I wish you a wonderful day and may the force be with you. The Music Business Party.
