Audio Recording

This book was written by Eric Beall:
http://ericbeall.berkleemusicblogs.com/
One of the most respected veterans in the music publishing business. I will give a short review on his book “Making Music Make Money-An Insider’s Guide to Becoming Your Own Music Publisher” to give my personal insights.

I will divide this short review into 3 sections, the first one for the “what can you learn” section, 2nd one for the “Strengths” and the 3rd one for some points for improvement recommended.

What can you learn in reading this book?

1. This book is for anyone who plans to launch a music publishing business. This is recommended for songwriters who seem to be less familiar with the business aspect of songwriting and decide to be launching their own music publishing venture.

2. Learning the music publishing aspect pushes every songwriter one step ahead in the competition. Instead of being lonely sitting in your bedroom writing songs the whole day; music publishing adds some level of career, interesting challenges and opportunity growth. This book teaches you how to promote and pitch songs, finds ways to find contacts, and teaches you to manage your catalog, manage finances as well as the providing insider information on various aspects of the business.

Also, the role of “music publisher” has been clearly defined in this book. IF you are not really sure what you will do if you are a music publisher, this book discusses your responsibility in details.

This book does touch heavily on marketing and promotion of independent music and explains the right and wrong in marketing music as a publisher.

Book Strengths

1. The good thing about this book is that it is being logically arranged from the most basic to advanced topics of music publishing. This will let any beginner grasps key concepts without being drowned by complex information.

If you are a songwriter that does not have any idea how music publishing works. This book guides you slowly by introducing key basic concepts before advancing to more in-depth subjects.

2. Actual examples of administration documents –> you find it very useful especially if you have no idea of how the documentation of the music publishing process is being done.

Examples of documentation are the split agreements between songwriters, for example how much Songwriter A contributed to the song as compared to Songwriter B and C. The total would sum up to 100%, for example:

Songwriter A= 50%
Songwriter B= 25%
Songwriter C= 25%

Documentation makes it easy for you to manage your catalog. The book includes a form that you can use. Aside from the above example, there are lots of form sheets illustrated on the book.

3. Useful references –> the book actually provides tips where to find useful resources; well you may think it is as easy as using Google but its not. The author has a lot of years of experience in music publishing business and knows the best references to find useful information such as finding contacts/ clients.

4. Useful tips to assess your catalog –> the book do illustrate very clearly how you are going to assess the strength of your catalog. This includes finding this and prioritizing these songs in your marketing process. It even describes the characteristics of popular/hit songs as well as the importance of having great lyrics.

Some limitations

Some very complicated music publishing matters is not being discussed especially the legal aspects. I understood that this problem is much better consulted with an entertainment lawyer. For example, if you created both the lyrics/melodies and sound recording (which most indie writers/producers does) of a certain song, does filing Form SR in the copyright enough to support both claim (ownership of song and recording)? A lot of music publishers particularly the beginners have this question.

Some hot/modern topic in music licensing for independent publishers is not being covered such as royalty free licensing, creative commons licensing and free music licensing.

Online music licensing is not thoroughly covered and explained. This is a hot topic in modern music licensing where traditional paper work is becoming less popular particularly for independent music projects and publishers.

As you might have observed, there is a strong trend for independent music publishers to be building businesses online. It would be great to have this included.

Other than that, the book flawlessly explained everything in detail; I suggest reading this book over and over again. It contains a lot of useful information which is always helpful in your daily role as a music publisher. Click here to buy this book at Amazon.

OVERALL RATING: 4/5