Music Licensing and Royalties… Confusing?

Jumping through the hoops to get the necessary license or permission to record someone else's song can be a daunting task, especially if you've never done it. 

One option is to go to The Harry Fox Agency, probably the largest publisher representatives in the business. They have an excellent video tutorial that explains LIMITED QUANTITY LICENSING. You can click on the Harry Fox Link to be taken directly to that video. IN the example given for digital downloads, for an estimated 500 downloads of someone's else's song, the cost is about $60. That includes a $15 processing fee and the required mechanical license fees.  

We suggest that you let Limelight  handle it for you.  At the time of this writing, the going rate is as follows:

$.091(that's nine and a tenth cents) per copy pressed, burned, duplicated or replicated for any song that is less than five minutes long.  If the song is over fives minutes long, add $ .0175 per minute, rounded up to the nearest minute.  These rates vary for streaming and digital downloads. Check the variables at the limelight site by clicking the link above.

Limelight has a fee of $15.00 per song (they have price breaks as you add more songs).

You can start with as many copies of that song as you want with that license.  You can start with as little as 25 copies but do the math, That's $17.28 to release 25 copies of one song… legally. If you were to order a mechanical for 100 copies, the tab would be $24.10. That means that the licensing fee for that one song on one CD would be $ .241 or just over twenty-four cents whereas for the 25 copy license, it would be $ .691 per CD. 

You can go to the websites of either BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC to try to locate the original composers/writers of a particular song. There are other similar organizations, but these are the main three.  My personal preference is BMI.  You can go to these sites and enter the song title into their search engine and you will probably have several items show up. This is usually more of a problem with rock, r&b, blues, country, gospel and bluegrass music that it would be with classical titles.  A lot of the more modern (1940's through the present day) have similar titles whereas it is unlikely that you'll find multiple listings for classical music. When all else fails, find the original recording and in most cases, you'll find the writer/composer and publishing company listed along with their affiliation, BMI, ASCAP or SESAC printed on the actual record.

Hopefully, you will sell more than 25 copies and hopefully you'll sell more than 100. Limelight has a pricing guide that can guide you through the process.

If all this gets too confusing, let me know and I'll try to walk you through it.

Barney Conway