STUDIO CLASS PODCAST Episode 123: Sign Up for a PRO TRANSCRIPT --- MEGAN IHNEN: It's another Microaction Monday on Studio Class. Hi divas, it's Monday. It's time for us to get back into a Microaction Monday and we're talking about royalties. So my composers, my songwriters, babies, this one is for you. [Laughs] We're really talking about your microaction for today is signing up for a PRO if you haven't already, or submitting your scores. If you submit your scores, update your programs, we can talk about all sorts of microactions that are related to your PRO. However, I bet that most of us are thinking about getting signed up for your PRO because it's been coming up a lot recently. I've had a lot of people reach out and ask me about this and it's just such an important part of your life cycle and your work as a composer and songwriter. So we really want to make sure that this information gets out there. And I feel like this could always be covered a little bit more in depth in our academic institutions. And that's not always the case, but it doesn't mean that you can't figure it out on your own. Or come talk to me, right? This is what we do. So let's talk about PROs. PROs are performing rights organizations, performing rights, and we're really talking about royalties in this. And so you may know some of the biggies for PROs, for performing rights organizations. This is ASCAP, BMI, CSAC, there's a couple of other ones. So if you are in the States, you are likely signing up for ASCAP or BMI, CSAC maybe. And if you are writing music at all, get started now. This is a huge part of how revenue comes to you for that kind of work. And it may feel a little unfamiliar at first, but it's really not as complex or scary or, you know, anything like that, as it's made out to be sometimes. So really, this is about getting signed up for your PRO and that's really your first step. So if you're writing music and you want to perform it, record it and get royalty payments for that work, this is how you have to get started. Join your PRO, so you're joining a PRO as a writer. So my PRO is blank, maybe that's ASCAP, maybe that's BMI, and the concert music reps at both ASCAP and BMI are fantastic people. They answer questions really, really well. They will walk you through or they'll have their staff walk you through getting started if you get stuck. So please don't worry about that. Just head on over to their website, become a member. Couple things to know, ASCAP does a survey model for royalties, BMI does not. So there are some details, like a bunch of details about how they capture information about performances that turn into royalty payments. And like I said, there's a bunch of details in that. And we could get deeper into that, but that's not the point of today's episode. Today's episode is about getting signed up. When you get signed up with your PRO, they will assign an IPI number to you. And your IPI is interested party information. It's assigned by your PRO when you get signed up and then when it gets attached to your IP, your intellectual property, when you are submitting your works, when you are registering your works with your PRO. OK, so we talked about getting becoming a member of a PRO. There there is a membership fee for some of that. So you may want to think about budgeting for that or planning ahead. They are not wildly expensive. So just get started, but keep that in mind as kind of an ongoing fee that you'll need to consider. When you are getting signed up, when you're becoming a member of a PRO, you're going to have to be thinking about, am I, if, am I fully administered by someone else or am I self-administered? Right. And this means are you self publishing or are you working with another entity that is publishing for you? There are so many ways to go about this. A lot of people are working with a separate publisher. A lot of people are self publishing. A lot of people do a hybrid model. So really there's just the version that is yours. Please do not worry about this. Just get started if you are self-publishing. Great! If you are working with a traditional publisher, great! Right? So it's really just about making sure that you understand the logistics that are going into those things rather than having some sort of emotional feedback loop about working with a publisher or not. Right? There's just so many things that have changed in that area. So you can come come find me publishers. We can talk about it later. So as you are submitting that, so as an FYI, if you are signing up, if you're becoming a member with ASCAP, they split up royalties for both the creators, the songwriters, the composers, and lyricists, and the publisher. If you are self-administered, if you are self-publishing, you are both the creator and the publisher and you'll want to sign up for for both sides of that. You can just give your publishing side a name and make sure that you're getting all of the royalties that are associated with that. They split it up because in case you are working with a publisher, then your publisher typically gets a certain percentage of the royalties because of that agreement. So if you are self-publishing and signing up for ASCAP, make sure that you're signing up both your creator self and your publishing self. And then that's that's the part where I was talking about. Affiliating with a PRO as a publisher, if you need, if it's separated, then you want to make sure that that's clear. After join the MLC. So the MLC, let's see here, mechanical licensing collective is really important because the MLC collects digital audio mechanical royalties from eligible streaming and download services. So this is when we're talking about like the DSPs and digital streaming platforms, sorts of things like that. Where music is being distributed, it is getting collected by the MLC. So you're going to want to make sure that you sign up for the MLC specifically in addition to your performing rights organization. So, PROs are doing performance royalties for public performance rights. The MLC is doing mechanical royalties for reproduction and distribution rights. So again the PRO, you are getting your royalties for your writer's share and if you're acting as your own publisher you're getting your publisher share. For the MLC, the reproduction and distribution rights, these these are mechanical shares. So this is also coming to publishers and administrators and songwriters and self-publishing songwriters. Okay? We can talk, I think we'll probably do another Microaction Monday episode about sound recordings. So this would be things like record labels, self-releasing as artists, and digital performance rights through sound exchange. If those are things that are interesting to you, just drop me a message on the socials, right? Find me @metzoenan and let me know that those are things that you are thinking about or want to know more information about. Hey there divas. Real quick thing before we get back to the rest of this episode. Do you love Studio Class? You can support it now by joining the Sybaritic Camerata on Patreon. It's just at patreon.com/mezzoihnen. For $10 a month, you can join the listening circle where you get access to bonus episodes, you can make listener requests, and for $20 a month, you can become a masterclass scholar. Do you ever wish you could ask our masterclass episode guests a question? Here's your chance. As a masterclass scholar, you're invited to the recording of the masterclass episodes and you get to ask your questions during an exclusive Q&A after the taping. So come on over, check it out, patreon.com/mezzoihnen. And now we're back to the episode. And we're coming back, focusing right now on PROs. And I just want you to get set up today. That's your microaction. Okay, say you are a composer or songwriter and you are already a member of your PRO. And this microaction, we're just going to do with a second level. The second level of your microaction for this is making sure that you are submitting your programs to your PRO. Do you have a system around this? This is another part that I really don't think that composers are getting a ton of information in their educational institutions about, but we're here together, we're just sharing information. So I want you as a composer or songwriter to be collecting the programs or soliciting programs from your performers so that you can submit them to your PRO. This is how this is the circuit that creates your performance royalties, right? You as the composer are responsible for getting those programs and then turning them into your PRO to demonstrate to your PRO that these performances happened and that you should be getting royalties from those performances. Let's back up a step here just for a second because I think there's some confusion about how royalties work. Royalties, so venues and presenters typically pay a licensing fee to ASCAP or BMI for all of the work that they are presenting or that's happening happening in their venue. And this is important for us to know as performers as well, is that especially if you are doing the work of living composers, you want to make sure that they're able to receive royalties from this performance because the venue where you're performing pays their ASCAP or BMI fees. So this means that if you-- really what we want to keep in mind here is if you are performing in non-traditional venues and it doesn't have a licensing fee from one of these PROs. If it's not paying one of those fees, then it is in your, it is your best practices here as a performer to potentially have your own ASCAP or BMI license, lights where you're paying your fees so that when you do performances, that it is being covered that those royalty payments can get paid out to the creators of those works. Double check that with the places that you are performing, that they have a, that they are paying for licensing fees with PROs. And then that way you know that you can either share your programs with the composers or the composers can share their programs, like submit their programs to their PRO and then get the performance royalties that they deserve from those performances. That's how this works. That's how all of this works. So I want you to keep in mind that these are fees that are typically paid by venues. If you are performing in a school, they have one. If you're performing in a traditional venue, they have one. And composers coming back to you for a second, you are setting up a system for yourself. You want to find out about all of the performances of your music, not just to put it on your website or to let people know about it, but so that you can get the program from that and submit it to your PRO so that you can get the performance royalties for those. Again, there are some details from PROs about what gets covered in performance royalties and what doesn't. Educational performances often do not get covered under these performance royalties, you may not see the performance royalties coming through for those kinds of things. Just an FYI, grand rights is a separate topic from performance royalties. So if you were doing staged work, then you are typically getting grand rights for a performance before you take this project on. Okay. Okay. Let's pause here for a second. So we're talking about becoming a member of a PRO. If you are writing any music whatsoever, I would like for you to become a member of a PRO today and begin to think about your process for submitting programs. Really important to remember, if you are a performer composer, please submit your works to your PRO and then whenever you are performing your own works, you are submitting the program from that so that you can receive performance royalties as well. Actually fun story here, this is actually how Madonna makes, like made most of her money, is that she is the songwriter for all of her music. So when she goes on tour, right, she is submitting all of those set lists from the tour to her PRO and that and she makes more money in performance royalties than she is from the tour itself. Does that make sense? So these are the ways that we start to think about, okay, how does revenue come into our lives, into our business from the work that we do as songwriters and music creators and composers. Okay. So do not sleep on this if you are a performer composer. Please think through things like if I am performing my own music, I can submit that to my PRO and get performance royalties from the work that I'm doing in addition to gig fees. Okay, this is another part of composers. When we're thinking about how does revenue happen as a composer? Yes, there are commission fees. That's an important part of this. But you should also be getting performance royalties so you can get the commission fee for writing the music. And then once that performance has happened, you're submitting that program to your PRO to get performance royalties from that as well. And then the same thing for subsequent performances, right? You might be selling the sheet music for it, or you might be licensing, or you might be renting out the parts for it. So that's another aspect of revenue. And then from those performances, you're also getting performance royalties. That's why I was harping on this idea of, I want you to have a system for being able to solicit programs from the people who are performing your works. If you are selling the music that you write through your own website, can you think about ways where you can automate this process? So if you have sold a score through your website, I would like for that to trigger an automation which throughout the year you reach out via email or an email gets sent to anybody who has bought a score from your score store that says, "Hey, do you have a program from any performances this year? I would love to see it. Will you please send it over?" It's an important part of the business model of being a composer and songwriter and music creator. So does that make sense? What we're trying to do here is obviously you need to become a member of a PRO and then you need to submit the, you need to register your works with your PRO and you need to submit the programs from the performances to your PRO so that you can receive performance royalties from that work. Okay, does that cover, does that cover what we're talking about today? So, okay, I hope there was some introductory information in there, maybe a little bit more intermediate just in case those things aren't part of your practice yet. If you have questions about this, again hit me up on the socials. I'm happy to dive into this further on the podcast or if this is something that you're really stuck on in your own work, sign up for a coaching session with me. It's something we can definitely dive in together on. So lots to consider here but really not a difficult process. You can get started, you could do this today. This is why it's a Microaction Monday episode. So sign up for your PRO and then if you have already done that, think about systematizing your performance royalties process. That's your microaction for today. Divas, get on out there. Think about your revenue models. I want you to be wealthy and blessed. So I also want you to stay sparkly inside and out and I will catch you next time. [MUSIC] Thanks for joining me for Micro Action Monday. Again, I'm Megan Ihnen, and you can find me on all the socials @mezzoihnen. That's I-H-N-E-N. Did you know that Studio Class is part of the Sybaritic Singer? It is. And if you liked this episode, you're gonna love my 29 Days to Diva series. That's on sybariticsinger.com. And if you liked this episode, will you please consider leaving us a review on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast? Thanks. It means a lot to me. [MUSIC - END] --- END OF TRANSCRIPT