Congratulations, you've worked your behind off, spent all your time (and probably money) on creating your album and you're finally finished. But really, the hard work has only just begun! You want to start shopping your album around to labels, PR firms and anyone else who might like it and be able to help you, but before you do that, you have to make sure that no-one hears your great ideas and decides to copy them and cut you out. So how do you do this?

As I've said before, when you create a work, by the glories of Intellectual Property (IP) Law, you own it. And while strictly that is enough on its own, to prove it will usually involve lengthy court proceedings with expensive lawyers and, in all honesty, some big firms will gamble that you're not going to be either willing or able to do this. A way to save all this trouble is to copyright your work. That way, no-one can argue with you. You can, and if you have any doubts, should, hire an attorney to file this for you, however it is possible to do by yourself.

In recent years, this process has become a lot quicker and easier, as it has become possible to make payment and submit works for copyrighting online. Visit http://www.copyright.gov (for the US, different countries have their own sites and procedures). Fill in the application form, pay the fee (anywhere between $35 and $100 depending how much you do online - the more the better!) and upload your files. That's it! Your copyright will be valid for your lifetime plus 70 years after your passing.

It generally takes up to 8 months to process your copyright, but don't worry, your copyright protection will be active from the date you submitted the application and, as I said at the beginning, you're still protected under IP Laws. Just think of copyright as your insurance policy!

Remember, the music business is still a business, so make sure you're protected!

Your album is coming out, and you want to do everything you can to bring awareness and get fans to hear your music. So you decide to make a music video. It's a great form of publicity and fans like to have a face to go with the name. And, let's face it, it's one of the most fun parts of making music anyway! So how do you do this and make sure that you're in control and own the final product to do with as you choose?

This ties in with my blog on hiring outside musicians to play on your recordings, it's the same principle. The need to protect yourself on this once again stems from Intellectual Property (IP) law. It all comes back to the principle of when someone creates something, they own it. So each person owns their work on your music video, even though it's your video. So you want to stop all the many people who put work into making the music video (and it takes a lot more people than you think at first) from having a claim over over the final product.

In order to prevent the principle of 'you create what you own', you need to make sure that everyone working on the video signs a work for hire agreement, just like musicians in the studio. This means you are hiring them for a specific price, to do a specific job, and that in exchange for the money you're paying them, you will own the work at the end and they have no further claim over either the work or royalties from it. You can have the same contract for everyone, just leave a blank space for name, job and payment amount and fill this is by hand at the time. However this can still amount to a lot of contracts to keep track of and you have to be vigilant in making sure everyone on set fills one in.

One way to easy the burden on you is to hire a production company to produce the music video. That way, the only party that you are responsible for contracting with is that company. You have one agreement with the production company stating that you are hiring them as work for hire, and then anyone they hire to work on the job is their responsibility to deal with. The down side of this is that you don't get to pick the actual people you'll be working with. But honestly, do you really need to find and hire single person? I know people that choose to, but it's just an unnecessary amount of work for most people. Hire a production company to handle the bulk of the work, and then if you wish, hire a few key people yourself, such as the stylist and hair and makeup artist. Just make sure to have them sign a work for hire agreement!

Remember, the music business is still a business, so make sure you're protected!

Recently, I was approached by a friend to look over a contract she had been given by a distributor. It was not a long or complicated contract and not written to deceive. It clearly stated that, in exchange for 3-year exclusivity, a $500 ‘set up fee’ and 20% of net profits, they would handle the digital distribution of her single. Sounds simple enough right?

The main sticking point for me is that they were only willing to handle digital distribution. It is not necessarily a problem to only distribute your songs digitally, and in the modern era of music, that will be your most wide-reaching and common form of distribution. It is not unusual these days (I sound like my mother!) for people not to print physical CDs or vinyls at all. The problem was the extortionate price they were changing for this service. Digital distribution is not a difficult task. Thousands of independent musicians handle this themselves – myself included. There are services such as Tunecore and CD Baby (amongst others) that facilitate this. On Tunecore (as this is the service I use and so know the most about, although there are others for similar pricing) it costs $9.99 to distribute a single and $29.99 to distribute an album for one year to over 80 online stores and radio services, including iTunes and Amazon. In my opinion, the task of doing this is neither difficult nor time consuming enough to warrant a set up fee of $500 and following costs of 20%.

That being said, if the distributor was willing to distribute physical CDs and get them into stores (although the number of stores selling physical CDs is getting fewer and fewer) this may be worth considering. Getting physicals out there is verging on impossible for the independent artist. Sure, you can sell copies at your gigs, maybe even be lucky enough to get them into some local stores or sold at music-friendly coffee shops, but to get them into a national store like, for example, Target, is impossible. Having your physical CD sold in a store like that is publicity you can’t buy. If a distributor were offering you this, then they would be worth considering. Obviously their costs would be a lot higher and you would have to have the contract checked by a shark of a lawyer to make sure there were no hidden rotten eggs in there that would end up costing you down the line. But in these circumstances, it would be likely that a distributor would be well worth your while.

For digital distribution however, I honestly recommend (and this is just my humble opinion) considering handling it yourself. Unless you find the task really daunting, confusing, or you do not have an hour that you could dedicate to it (in which case I would think carefully about whether being an independent musician is right for you), there are better ways to spend the $500. Spend it on printing physicals to sell at gigs, or perhaps a good bit of publicity to let people know your songs are out there. But don’t give it away to people taking advantage of independent musicians who think they need help to get their music out there. All you need is a little information on how to proceed by - and for - yourself.

The moral of this story is make sure you read all your contracts carefully and be sure of exactly what you’re getting, and have to spend to get it. Hire a lawyer if you need to. Don’t trust what anyone tells you in conversation, that has no relevance to your agreement with them. In the event that there is a dispute, the only thing that will matter is what’s written in the contract.

Remember, the music business is still a business, so make sure you’re protected!

The band name. The most difficult part of starting a band. It’s easy for all these solo acts that just use their own name. But if you don’t want to use your name, or if you’re a band, you have to come up with a different name that you’re happy representing you. It’s going to be your calling card, how people know you, your brand. Once you have a following, it’s difficult to change your name, so you spend hours thinking about it, trying out different things, making words up, checking as best you can that no-one else is using it and you’ve finally settled on your name. Now how do you make sure no other band starts using the same name as you?

As I covered in my last post, when a person creates something, they own it. Good old Intellectual Property (IP) Law. And this goes for your band name too. You create it (even if it’s a commonly used word), you create your brand, you own it. But what if down the road you realize that there’s another band out there, all the way over the other side of the world, that’s using the same name? Who gets to keep it?

Generally speaking, the band that can prove, through legal channels or otherwise, that it was using the name first owns it. And using it first could be by as little as a week, or even a day. Finding this out and then fighting over it can involve lawyers and litigation and can be costly and time consuming. Not to mention the cost of having to reprint any CDs, merchandise, changing websites and erasing any use of that name should it turn out you weren't first. Even if you know you had it first, the other band may have a bigger following than you, or be so adamant that they want to keep the name that they force it to a judgment before they’re willing to give it up. So how can you avoid this?

Well it’s never possible to be 100% sure that this won’t happen, but the best way is to trademark your band name. This way you have a definite legal date of when your band name was yours. A trademark is a word, phrase, sound, or symbol that represents the commercial reputation and identity of a product or service in the marketplace. Like, for example, your band name. Start by googling, searching iTunes, Amazon, Reverbnation and various other music sites to make sure no other band is already using the name you’ve chosen. Then head over to the US Patent and Trademark Office website (or your country’s equivalent) and do a trademark search to make sure the name hasn’t been registered in the field you want to use it. This is where it can become difficult to understand and the use of an attorney may be beneficial to you, as the name can have been registered for use in another field and still be ok for you to use as long as this won’t legitimately cause confusion between the two brands. Once you (or your attorney) are sure that there is no conflicting trademark, you can proceed with the registration.

Make sure you apply for your trademark under every category that you want to be covered in (for music, most of these fall within category 041 although some do pop up in other categories, so make sure you’re covered everywhere you want to be). I tend to use the more general category definitions rather than the ones that are extremely specific, (for example just ‘music production services’ rather than ‘music production services in relation to the field of …..”) that way you’re covered with more bredth.

The cost of filing a trademark application is between $275 and $375 (USD) per category, depending on if you file online or by snail mail. You could file the forms yourself, they are not overly difficult, the main sticking point for most people would be identifying your categories. But if you do not feel confident with the process, it is always best to hire an attorney who specializes in this field, and unfortunately their fees will obviously be higher. It can be a costly process, but if you’ve decided that you want to make music your career and you really believe in your band, it’s worth the outlay now not to have problems later.

Remember, the music business is a still business, so make sure you’re protected!

Congratulations, you’ve written a great song (or great album), played it over and over, refined it, figured out how you want it to sound, raised the money and now you’re ready to hit the studio.

If you’re a band then this is much easier as you have a lot of the musicians that you need already at your disposal, and, as they are part of the band, you should already have your pay-divisions discussed and arranged. However if you’re a solo act, you need to hire all the musicians you want to use. If you’re a band, you may still want to hire extra musicians to put a specific instrument or sound onto your record, or perhaps hire professional backing singers to give it that polished sound. Remember, a record is just a recording, it’s not necessarily how you’re going to play your song live every time. You have a lot of creative freedom in the studio. So you audition musicians, take recommendations and rehearse in preparation for the studio. But what do you have to do legally in order to make sure these “outside” musicians aren’t claiming ownership of your recording?

When a person creates something, they own it. This is known as Intellectual Property (IP). The legal definition of IP is an intangible creation of the human mind, usually expressed or translated into a tangible form, which is assigned certain rights of property.  This goes for all fields of art and creation, be it drawing, painting, photography and, of course, music. A person’s creation of music includes the style in which they have played or sung it, the intonation used, the volume, the emotion, all aspects of the performance. So, although two people could be singing the exact same line, it can sound completely different depending on how it’s done. That is the creation and performance aspect that causes it to be owned by the creator. Therefore, although you may have written the song, if you have someone else sing on it or play an instrument, they own their performance, especially if any form of improvisation is involved that uses the artist’s own creativity and specific talents, which is usually what you’ve hired them for in the first place. This can give rise to them effectively owning a part of your record at the end. So how can you avoid this?

Every time you hire an outside person to work in the studio with you, you need to have them sign a work-for-hire agreement. This is an agreement that states that you have hired them to do a specific job, for a specific amount of money, and that in exchange for this, you will own all rights to the work at the end. The agreement should contain the project name, date or dates worked, the amount of money that you are paying the musician for their services, and the statement that the musician understands that in exchange for this, you will own all rights to the recordings made on that date and the musician will have no claim for royalties or any further form of payment. One thing that I also like to add into my work-for-hire agreements is a clause allowing the use of the musician’s image and / or name in the promotion of the album. That way, if you take any great behind the scenes photos in the studio, you don’t have to get further permission to use the musician’s likeness in promoting your song or album.

Remember, the music business is a still business, so make sure you’re protected!