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  • Part Three. How Your Songwriting Generates Income.

    In this Part Three of this blog series on songwriting revenue, I discuss performing rights licenses.

    Performing Rights Licenses

    Each time your song is performed in public, you are entitled to receive royalty income for that public performance. It doesn't matter whether your song is performed by a live band, or if a recorded version of your song is played. Both can qualify as a public performance. That means your song is performed publicly when a recording of it is broadcast on a radio station, when it is played as part of a television program or when it is played in a nightclub. To comply with copyright law, the radio station, television network, or club must have a performing rights license authorizing the public performance.

    No General Public Performance Right for Sound Recordings

    With some limited exceptions, performing rights apply only to the song and not to the sound recording. Each time a song is performed publicly, the songwriter – but not the recording artist singing the song or the record company that released the record – is entitled to receive compensation. There is a public performance for sound recordings played online and by other digital means. Some are trying to extend this limited sound recording public performance right as a method of getting more revenue for recording artists.

    Role of Performing Rights Societies

    To eliminate the need to negotiate a separate license with each radio station, night club, and restaurant that wants to perform their song, songwriters or their music publishers affiliate with performing rights societies. ASCAP, BMI and SESAC are the performing rights societies in the United States. These associations specialize in negotiating performing rights licenses and collecting performing rights revenues. The societies often negotiate blanket licenses with radio stations, television networks, and restaurants that allow those organizations to perform any song in the catalog of the performing rights society issuing the blanket license.

  • Part Two. How Your Songwriting Generates Income.

    In this Part Two of a blog series on songwriting revenue, I discuss mechanical licenses.

    Mechanical Licenses

    A mechanical license gives a record company or other party the right to reproduce your song onto a record. You might negotiate this license directly with the person who wants to record your song. Alternatively, the person who wants to record your song may obtain a compulsory mechanical license.

    The compulsory mechanical license is a creation of the United States Copyright Act. Here's how it works. Once a song has been commercially released, anyone may make another recording of that song and sell copies of his recorded version as long as he pays the song's copyright owner the license fees set by copyright law. In order for a compulsory mechanical license to be valid, the copyright owner must have authorized the commercial release of the song, and the song must be non-dramatic.

    The Copyright Office periodically modifies the compulsory mechanical license rate. The current compulsory mechanical license rate, also called the statutory rate, is 9.1¢ per song per record for recordings of up to five minutes. If the recording is more than five minutes, the rate is 1.75¢ per minute per record.

    Despite the existence of the compulsory mechanical license, most mechanical licenses are in fact negotiated. Many songwriters or their music publishers use the Harry Fox Agency to negotiate and issue their mechanical licenses, and to collect the corresponding license fees. The Harry Fox Agency charges a fee equal to four and a half percent of the mechanical license fees they collect.