Selling a song for the first time....


snojones
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snojones
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04/04/2015 8:24 pm
So I have an opportunity in which I might sell a song to a name band. It would be the first time I have sold a song and I am unsure just what is a reasonable deal. Should I just be glad to have some interest in my work? Or should I buy a new house on the big bucks that will surely follow the signing of the contract? What is the market norm? Any info about this process would be of great interest to me.

Captcha is a total pain in the........

# 1
JeffS65
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Joined: 10/07/08
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JeffS65
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04/04/2015 8:56 pm
Originally Posted by: snojonesSo I have an opportunity in which I might sell a song to a name band. It would be the first time I have sold a song and I am unsure just what is a reasonable deal. Should I just be glad to have some interset in my work? Or should I buy a new house on the big buck that will surely follow the signing of the contract? What is the market norm? Any info about this process would be of great interest to me.


It depends on what is termed as 'selling a song'. Is it an outright sale, in that when they tender cash, you've signed away all rights to that song's sale? Or, are they going to use the song and you received payment based on the number of sales?

This is important to know. Publishing is a tricky business. If you sell them the song for 5 grand outright and they sell twenty million albums, you have 5 grand. In that same scenario of twenty million albums but you are paid publishing by per sale of the song, you may see a considerable amount of cash.

Anyone that's been in the music business for long enough will tell you that the real money is in publishing for the reasons above. It is very important to understand publishing in the music business.

It's been a while since I've been around publishing but it used to be that you would get 2 cents a minute for any given song you owned the publishing for. So a three minute song is worth 6 cents. Think about what the equates to in large sales.

Before you get dollars and houses bought (like you were joking about in your post), it is still tricky waters to navigate. You need to create a publishing company through which you will get paid and establish who will collect those royalties for you (i.e. - Harry Fox ).

Before selling a song, spend some time reading up on the pitfalls of music publishing. If you have songs good enough to sell, it will save you headaches and lost money.
# 2
snojones
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snojones
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04/04/2015 9:00 pm
Have any good source material about the music publishing buisness?

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# 3
JeffS65
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JeffS65
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04/05/2015 12:16 am
I don't have any readily available but I would go do a Google search for 'mechanical royalties' and the like. Maybe even do a search 'music publishing 101'. My experience was from first hand (paying them) so I never really went to a resource.

I should note that I corrected my royalty amount in my post...After thinking about it, I think it's like two cents. It's been 15 years and I'm gettin' old sooooo.......
# 4
nick page
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nick page
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05/16/2015 6:34 pm
so how do I set up my own publishing? I've written about 100 songs and recorded 2 albums on my own dime, just to have them. But I've heard that any
one wanting to "cut" them will insist that they get the publishing.

A friend of mine has recorded 2 of them and plays them in his gigs. That is just a casual thing that im very proud of , but what if someone else wants them?
# 5

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