People often ask me what the use of being a member of SAMRO is. My gut response is to tell them about the buckets of royalties they’ll miss out on if they aren’t a member of a Performance rights organization. Today I want to highlight a few of the lesser known reasons for registering with SAMRO. I think it’s also important to note that I’m not a SAMRO employee. I’m a music producer who’s been a SAMRO member since 2008. Earn performance royalties all over the world Sure, you can register with BMI, ASCAP or GEMA because your favorite artist recommended them, but it’s always good to be a part of ..read more

What’s up? Today I wanted to talk about how long you can expect to wait before you get paid by SAMRO. I want to highlight that this information is based on my experience as a composer. Your experience may be different to mine. I completed my registration with SAMRO in 2008. Due to issues with my ID document being too dark (I faxed my membership), my registration wasn’t completed until 2009. I was a bit annoyed that I wasn’t contacted regarding my membership. After this interaction I realized that I’m going to have to be proactive with my communication otherwise nothing would get done. Over the ..read more

Please arm yourself with knowledge. Recently I've been contacted by people who claim to help you put together proposals to get you signed to major labels/large independent labels. I've also seen people who claim to show you how to make money selling beats for a small recurring fee to be part of their mentorship system. I've poked at a few of these schemes and I don't enjoy their business models. With regards to the companies claiming they will get you signed, some ask for an upfront fee for submission and a further fee later. This reminds me so much of some of the network marketing schemes I'v ..read more

2020 has been a weird year for the music industry. Conventional forms of entertainment have slowed to a snail's pace and incomes have dried up everywhere. Lockdown is showing musicians just how vulnerable their incomes are. Now that we're on the mend, something needs to change in case we're in a similar situation again. 1. Hand to mouth Most musicians live from gig to gig. They're occasionally in studio and then it's back to the gigs. Because music income is so erratic, musicians should hold an emergency sum of about 3 months worth of expenses for dry spells. This ensures that you can continue ..read more

As musicians, our income predictable. There are times when things go well and payments come in on time and there are other times when life is just a struggle. I used to find myself waiting for clients to pay for work that I’ve done. This left me frustrated especially when the work was complete. I’ve also been in situations where I landed great placements and I’d wait for a very long time for payment. I’d generally be upset as I would spend that money in my head before I got it and it was never as much as I had hoped. Today I want to give you some practical tips to avoid feeling the way that I ..read more

I want to talk about the importance of dark social media. It sounds scary and illegal, but it really isn’t. It refers to forms of social media that aren’t easily tracked. You can also use the term ‘dark traffic’. Their impact, though difficult to measure, can be huge. Examples of these platforms are telegram, WhatsApp, email, SMS, and Reddit. The opposite to dark social media would be conventional social media platforms like Facebook, Tik Tok and Instagram where traffic can be tracked and things are out in the open. Majority of people try to get noticed on these conventional platforms through ..read more

By Adrian Silas Kusambiza-Kiingi There is a feeling in my community that piracy has become a thing of the past with the introduction of digital service providers like Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal. Music piracy still forms the second most common form of piracy. In a study by Dataprot.net confirms that piracy is still well and alive in a lot of sectors. In a Malaysian study done in 2022, 7 out of 10 people reported engaging in some form of illegal music consumption. In addition to sectors losing revenue, there is a sizeable amount of internet bandwidth lost to people actively pirating content ..read more

I’ve been looking at different ways to monetize my music business and thought I should share the ways I do it in a hope that people will in turn share the methods they use with me. I’m going to get right into it and talk about beat sales. This avenue probably accounts for 80% of my musical income. Given the total saturation of the market, you need a system in place before you think you’ll be able to do this long term. There are beat makers all over the world and chances are that a some of them are better or more advanced than you. With that said, being a good beat maker isn’t going to sell you ..read more

Marketing is an area where most creatives fail. It's difficult getting your work out when there's no real fanbase available to send your music to. My suggestion is reworking your goal for marketing. Instead of giving your music to a non-existent fanbase or trying to make a profit from them, you should be on a mission to collect and cultivate fans at all costs. Help! What do I do once I receive my song back from the engineer? Once you are done making your music you need to set up a strategy to capture people who listen to your song. This may be an email, social handle or number you can reach th ..read more

Hi. I’ve been doing a bit of digging into rights organisations and how they relate to the bigger picture. Naturally, I was led down a long path of google articles and various books. Although I wasn’t able to write a more extensive piece, I’ve tried to condense the most important parts into the next few paragraphs. We all know that it’s in our best interest to register with rights organisations, but I often get asked which companies are the best and whether there are international alternatives that people can try. Before I talk about the various organizations, its important to drive home the co ..read more