Navigating the music business can be tricky for creators, especially when dealing with the minute details of rights management and music contracts. Entertainment lawyer/music business professor Karl Fowlkes has a strategy to help explain the four things every artist should consider before signing a music contract. It’s called LOMO, or Length, Obligation, Money, and Ownership.  ..read more

Have you heard the term “sync” or “synchronization” before, but asked yourself “What is music sync”? At a basic level, granting a sync and recording license allows a third party to use the copyright and sound recording of a musical work alongside visual media like TV shows, films, ads, trailers, and video games ..read more

Whether you’re a label, manager, publisher, or distributor, industry leaders should always encourage their artists to have honest and open conversations about split sheets. After all, not having them in place means not being able to confirm a creator’s ownership percentage or collect any related publishing royalties.   ..read more

Lyric sheets may sound relatively simple — a piece of paper capturing a song’s key verses and choruses  — but they’re often a deciding factor in securing major songwriting gigs or sync placements.  ..read more

When TikTok shared its music report at the tail end of 2021, the company was quick to clarify its position on creators: “Music is at the heart of the TikTok experience. It’s the glue that connects TikTok’s disparate threads, providing a throughline between individuals and communities who bring their own spin to the latest trend.”  ..read more

Unless they’re part of the public domain, nearly every song in existence follows the same formula when it comes to copyright law. Namely a split between two distinct halves: a one-of-a-kind recording and the composition at its core, a.k.a. the underlying music and lyrics that power its publishing royalties.  ..read more

Armed with a Gibson guitar and a pastel pink pen, HEATHER LAROSE found inspiration in Westchester, New York right on the edge of Manhattan. Never feeling at home in either world, LaRose began writing about her experiences growing up. In late 2019, she relocated to Los Angeles after college and continued working on her writing and sound. Her latest single “Conan” is a song in response to Conan Gray’s multiplatinum single “Heather”. Gray’s lyrics unfold the story of a hidden love triangle between himself, pining for his best friend and his best friend's girlfriend, Heather. After Gray’s track ..read more

Depending on how you define it, the phrase “royalty-free music” is either slightly misleading or woefully inaccurate. For one thing, there’s a big difference between songs that are exploited via a Creative Commons license or the public domain, and songs that are simply available for paying subscribers via a platform like Soundstripe or Epidemic Sound. As the latter explains in one of its many tutorials, “royalty-free music is NOT free. The word ‘free’ in royalty-free refers to you not having to pay royalties every time you use a piece of music ..read more

According to an encouraging Ampere Analysis report, more than $220 billion was spent on global content in 2021 — a 14% increase (a little over $20 billion) over the previous year. Subscription-based streaming platforms like HBO Max, Peacock and all the pluses (Apple+, Paramount+, Apple TV+ and Disney+) were especially prone to spending their pandemic surplus on exclusive programming; their collective investment of nearly $50 billion signified a spike of more than 50% when compared to 2019.  ..read more

When Congress passed the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) in 1992, “digital recordings” didn’t mean Spotify downloads or bitcrushed MP3s. Back then — a decade before Napster’s shutdown, and Apple’s first iPod rollout — the music industry was far more concerned with the clear and present danger of Digital Audio Tapes (better known as DATs), and to a lesser extent, Digital Compact Cassettes and MiniDiscs.  ..read more