Serena is a living, breathing, library! This is about the third time I've heard her speak and I'm always amazed; HOWEVER, the material and info is head spinning!
Serona is, literally, brilliant. She is so well-educated on the music business, she gives generously of her knowledge so the rest of us can benefit from it. We appreciate this very much. (I watch her MLC webinars too. You can never get too much information on these confusing subjects.) Ari, you do a great job too, so thanks to both of you.
Sooooo good. I've personally Zoomed with over 20 indie artists in the last 2 months, that have already released music, and when I mentioned ASCAP or BMI etc, they had no idea what I was talking about. Performance royalties, mechanicals...never heard of them. With indies that have less than 50k monthly listeners, being the largest group of artists on Spotify alone, it's unimaginable how many nickels and dimes are being left on the table. Actually, under the table. I wonder why the DSPs don't add a box to check that says: Have you registered your song with the Performing Rights Organizations and The MLC?
How does mechanical licensing function for an independent artist or producer? If I distribute my music through SoundCloud to platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, what do I need to know about mechanical licensing? What are the implications of publishing and copyrighting music under my own name? How does holding a trademark affect the mechanical licensing process?
What about if I using Songtrust, don’t they collect the percentages of mechanical royalties. On the royalty statement, it’s showing they are only paying the percentage I own, not the co-writers share.
At around 1:02 on this conversation, Ari and Serona confirm that Songtrust (which I recently signed up with) takes responsibility for registering our songs with the MLC. And then Songtrust DOES take a percentage of whatever money they collect from the MLC on our behalf.
