Audio Recording Tips

OK let say you have completed your songs and planning to gain airplay. Cool, but is it really a simple process? No.

It is a bit complex matter that needs some preparation, in fact failure to observe certain required processes can prevent you getting airplays or at worst you will never earn a single penny from your promotions.

Below are the important processes which every independent recording producer or artists should observed in order to broadcast or promote their music online and earn some money:

First things first:

Step 1: Register your work in the government copyright office. IF you are promoting your music in the US, you can register it in the US Copyright office. You can do it online here: http://www.copyright.gov/eco/

The most important thing if you own works, the song (lyrics and melodies) as well as the recording is to file both PA and SR forms. PA is for the copyright of the song while form SR is for the recording. If you find it expensive and would like to save money in the process, you can register it both using form SR.

Step 2: After the copyright office confirms that they received your work. You can register with performing right societies; so that you can receive performance royalty of your work. If you are US based, you can register with either of these big 3 societies: ASCAP, BMI or SESAC.

Step 3: OK once you are a member with any one of the mentioned societies; you need to register all of your songs/work (of course those songs that you need to broadcast or promote in the airplay) with the performing right society database. This will help them to monitor those performances of your songs and pay your money.

Step 4: After song registration, you also need to register your work with Nielsen Broadcast Data systems. The main purpose of this registration is for this system to capture performances of your work which are used by various radio stations.

In other words, Nielsen broadcast data systems makes it possible for them to track which radio stations are playing your work. Click here to read more about Nielsen BDS. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone has a certain moments in their life that they listen to commercial FM radio stations. You might hear a lot of great songs and some are still memorable as of today. Then you might asked, how this songs comes out to be played on the radio? Who created this one? Is this done by the song artist itself or only the recording company is involved?

Then you might see music videos of artists playing in the bands along with their instruments that might take place in a recording studio. Then you might ask again, does the song might be recorded in that studio? A lot of fascinating questions, even I before didn’t have a single idea of the entire music production process.

Below are the steps and processes of music production:

Step 1: The moment the artist recording label (like Universal Records, Sony BMG, etc) decided to start an album recording project. The recording label assigns a record producer to the artist. In some cases, the artist will be the one to select a record producer but this is subject to recording label approval.

Step 2: The recording producer along with what has been agreed with the artist and recording label will finally decided on what type of sound they are planning to achieve. Some rough ideas on songs to be included on the album might be discussed in this stage (if the artist has some rough demos before). Read the rest of this entry »

iTunes (http://www.apple.com/itunes/ ) is currently the leader in online music distribution in 2009 and may continue well in the future. Song downloads is currently one of the hottest and modern ways to sell your songs online.

As an independent artist that writes your own song and produces your own recording, iTunes offers ways for indie artist songs to be listed. I know it is almost impossible for an independent artist to get some kind of national or international distribution without major recording label backup. If you need some kind of worldwide distribution then iTunes is one of the best ways to distribute your music.

Currently below are the tips and procedures needed for you to submit your songs to iTunes. I observed it to be a two major step processes. First major step deals with securing your songs and filing application; the second major step deals with submitting songs and application with itunes partner sites like cdbaby.So if you are ready here we go (the sub-steps):

Step 1: Write and produce broadcast quality song recordings.

Step 2: iTunes requires you hold the sound recording copyrights. So it is essential register your catalog (or the songs you are interested in submitting to iTunes) to US Copyright Office. You can file online here: http://www.copyright.gov/eco/ Read the rest of this entry »