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.

To register, send an email to: clientservices@bdsonline.com and then use the subject “Virtual encode”, and then in the body of the mail include the following required information:

a. Your full name
b. Company name or your label name (if you do not have a label use your; use your full name)
c. Contact number (cellular phone number is fine as long as you include the country code).
d. Primary email address that you are using

Nielsen BDS representative will then send you additional procedures to upload your work online.

Step 5: Once your work has been successfully encoded, you can then proceed with actually submitting your songs to radio stations. In online radio, you can submit it to Jango.com, which will expose your songs to a lot of listeners looking for fresh or established artists.

Offline promotions especially commercial FM radio stations maybe a bit harder because you will need a radio promoter to actually have your work submitted in the hands of those radio stations.