This book was written by Eric Beall, 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 you can learn” section, 2nd one for the “Strengths” and the 3rd one for some points for improvement recommended.
What you can learn by reading this book?
1. This book is for anyone who plans to launch a music publishing business “independently”. This is recommended for songwriters who already earn some reputation but seem to be less familiar with the business aspect of songwriting.
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; managing your music publishing business adds some level of excitement, interesting challenges and opportunity for growth. This book teaches you the following core principles such as:
a.) How to promote and pitch songs
b.) Finds ways to find contacts in music industry that can help your business
c.) Teaches you on to manage your catalog
d.) Manage finances of your business 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 to do in managing your business as 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.
3.) One of the most important highlights is that it provides techniques on how to assess the quality of your music catalog. It also provide tips on how to evaluate great songs as well as a lot of hit songwriting tips that you can explore.
Book Strengths
1. The good thing about this book is that it is being logically arranged from the most basic to the most advanced topics of music publishing. This will let any beginner grasps key concepts without being drowned with complex and hard to understand 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. It illustrates the transition from being a songwriter to a music publisher in logical steps.
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 business is being handle.