Relying on Music Licensing as a Source of Income
The dream of every music artist is to achieve his ambition of becoming a superstar. A superstar? “Yes” depending on your interpretation, every musician just wanna be able to succeed in every aspect of his or her music career. This is the kind of observation and characteristic of every creative person or including all human beings who works.
Hence the music artists are no different and will forever be right in striving very hard to make the music and with the hope that the music he or she makes we liberate his life financially and make life a better place worth living for him and his family. This is the very basis of this article and the focus on music licensing as one of the very main sources of income for you, the music artist.
Making the Music that could be profitable through licensing
The music producer, composer and the music performing artists have the ability to create or make all sorts of music in multiple genres otherwise know as categories. The ability to create music using your creative intuition and imagination is key to the success of the music you make. Over the years, music production or production music has taken a different route, as it evolves like an apocalypse.
Whatever music style; that is; so much admired and perceived as trending music today, or every 5 years or every decade at least, would not be the same as of tomorrow. Hence it is very important to take into consideration, the word “value” in every piece of music you make.
Music producers and the performing artists can decide whether to make a music piece that transcends generation, or the one hit wonder-type only. This is because it will be frighten to even think that the music you make today would not be relevant tomorrow. Therefore, my advise is that you may just wanna put a little bit of effort in considering more universal lyrics with a more universal language to be included in your music. This apparently should be a paramount decision if you want to also channel you music through the commercial licensing route as source of income. Think of Legends like Bob Marley, Tupac, Marvin Gaye and others…
Getting Your Music Licensed
While thinking of getting your music licensed or while considering putting your music up for licensing for any kind of special usage whether is commercial or Personal usage, it is quite important to understand how the process works. Now lets break it down in piece:
- Music licensed for personal usage.
As the name implies licensing music for personal usage means, the sale of your music right for usage by other individuals who might engage the usage of your music in personal production usages such a background music for videos, that can be used on the internet, tutorials theme song or tracks, and other related uses.
2. Music licensed for Commercial Usage
When referring to music licensing for commercial usage, one should think of the following:
- usage for advertising of all nature
- usage for films or movies and including as background sound or music for other commercial usages
- usage by broadcast houses including but not limited to tv, radio and internet
The above and many other related commercial usages are a great opportunity for music licensing that generates great financial rewards for the music artist.
Getting Paid Through Licensing Your Music
There are quite a various ways of getting paid through music licensing depending on your agreement or usage agreement with the client. This again depends whether you are dealing with a client directly, or you are dealing with a music licensing agency who is dealing with the client on your behalf. Whichever ways, the way you get paid might be determine by some of these factors.
Considering the above, there are what we called, payment terms as well, which are being determine by the usage terms or vice versa. If you agree to sign an agreement of a payment plan or terms which allows the client to pay you a once-off fees for using your music for certain once-off projects, that is fine. Or if you may also sign an agreement where your music is used continually, forever (perpetuity usage) and you are paid a once-off fee, that is quite legal too.
Other payment plan for your licensed music might include, a one-year, two-years or three years usage plan with option for renewal after expiration of the initial period. All of these methods are acceptable depending on the offer between you and your client. And all of these and many more are ways of getting paid through music licensing.
There you have it, folks, the issue of music licensing is way broader than this single page article, but I hope this might just achieve its sole purpose of contributing to your knowledge of the subject matter. If you would like to have more knowledge of the music business and how things work in the music industry, we recommend you sign-up for the Morgeez Mentoring Program here. Or would you need any of our music artists services including promotion, publishing, distribution, and production, click here. Or to contact us with a general inquiry, click here. We appreciate your comments below. Thanks for reading. “Knowledge is power”.
