File This

July 30, 2020 by Aaron

5.1 surround, aac, aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, ac-3, aiff, audio, audio file types, cdda, lossless, lossy, m.c. murph, mp3, nquit, ogg, recording magazine, wma

A Brief Discussion of Audio File Types

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

In my article “Keeping Track”, we covered data. We talked about the information you need to keep with your songs in order to sell, license and organize them. We covered metatags; data about data that gets embedded in files. We talked a little about the file types that carry metadata and how to use them, and that brought up a wider topic: audio file types.

There are hundreds of audio formats and an endless variety of settings and options. So, without a whole lot of fanfare, we’ll dive into some of the formats that exist as of now, but first let’s delineate a few traits and categories.

Compression

An audio file (or a video file for that matter) is either compressed or uncompressed. What this means is the file is either whole and complete or it has been squashed down to save space, like using a .zip file; or in physical terms, like using one of those infomercial vacuum bags to suck the air out of your Christmas sweaters. A WAV file is uncompressed; an MP3 is compressed.

Don’t confuse compression or the lack thereof with the terms lossy or lossless. Lossy and lossless are two types of compressed files. If a file is lossy, it means some data has been thrown out because in theory that data isn’t necessary, usually because the human ear can’t hear it. That data cannot be recovered. On the other hand, a lossless file is compressed, but no data has been thrown out. Think of the difference between cutting off the sleeves of your sweater (because it’d be fine as a vest) and sucking it in Mr. Popeil’s vacuum (lossy), and simply sucking it in the vacuum, but leaving it intact (lossless). As you might guess, lossless files are generally bigger. MP3s are lossy. FLAC files are lossless.

File Format and Codec

You may never need to know this, but there is a difference between a file’s format and it’s codec. The format, or file type, is simply the wrapper in which the audio data is kept. The codec is the meat of how it’s encoded. Not all file types support all codecs, but there are some surprising possibilities. A WAV file might not be encoded with PCM, for example. We don’t have room here for a comprehensive list, but it’s likely you’ll only ever need to worry about a few possibilities. We’ll say more on those big ones momentarily.

Sample Rate, Bit Depth and Bit Rate

These are the main measurement of audio quality, and there can be some confusion about what they all mean.

Sample rate is used to refer to an original or uncompressed recording. It’s how many times per second a snapshot of the signal is taken. 44.1k means 44.1 kilohertz, or 44,100 times in a second. You probably know that CD quality is 44.1k, 16 bit.

Bit Depth is how many bits are in each sample. If you record at 44.1k, 16 bit, you’re taking 44,100 16 bit samples every second. Crudely, more bit depth corresponds to more dynamic range.

Bit Rate can be a bit fuzzier. Bit rate simply means the number of bits that are processed over a given amount of time, and it is a measure that can be applied to any file. A CD quality file is 1,411 kbps (kilobits per second), for example. In practice, though, bitrate is more often used to refer to the quality of a compressed, lossy file. To be crude again, it comes down to a measure of how much data we’ve thrown away. The highest bit rate for mp3s is 320 kbps, and the default iTunes rate is 256. A 128k MP3 is noticeably smaller than a 320k file, but in many situations, not all that different sounding. A 32k MP3, however, would sound awful, except in special circumstances (audiobooks, for example, often use low bit rates, because that doesn’t much affect a spoken track).

The Big Ones

While there are actually tons of audio file types and different combinations of format/codec possibilities, there are only a few you’re likely to see very often. In fact, we can narrow that down to three. WAV, AIFF, and MP3.

WAV (Waveform Audio File Format) files are Microsoft’s format, used in PC applications, and based on RIFF (resource interchange file format). Usually WAV files are encoded using PCM (pulse code modulation) encoding, which is uncompressed and the same basic encoding used in CDs, but it is possible to encode a WAV file with other codecs, even compressed ones. A “RIFF Wav” is a normal WAV file, and a “Broadcast WAV” is a WAV file with extended headers, originally used by broadcasters. WAV files have .wav extensions.

AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) files are Apple’s uncompressed format, also based on RIFF, and usually using PCM encoding. The only practical difference between WAV and AIFF files is that AIFF files allow more metadata by default (so you can see stuff like album covers in iTunes), but you will notice that certain DAWs won’t deal with both. That’s not a problem, as you can easily convert between them with something like Sox or FFMPEG, or free software like Audacity. AIFF files typically carry .aif extensions.

MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer III) files are compressed, lossy and very common. MP3 shouldn’t be confused with MPEG-3, which is a video format. MP3 compression is done by throwing away data which isn’t needed, mostly due to a phenomenon in human hearing called auditory masking. That’s a pretty fancy way of saying we don’t hear everything in an uncompressed file anyway, so we might as well throw some away to save space. There’s no shortage of debate there, but it seems to work pretty well. MP3 was a proprietary format, owned and licensed by the The Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Circuits, and that’s why not all software could make an MP3, at least until very recently. The Fraunhofer Institute declared MP3 an obsolete format in May of 2017, and terminated its licensing program. Whether this means the MP3 will die or proliferate further remains to be seen. For now, it’s still the de-facto compressed file format, and typically what you get when you rip a CD with iTunes or other software, or download that free track from your favorite polka band.

Other Major Formats

There are so many audio formats, we’d be hard pressed to talk about them all here, but there are a few you should know about.

CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) is the format for compact discs. It’s just an AIFF file with different headers. If you happen across a .cdda file (probably ripped from a CD), you’ll probably be able to play it in anything that can play a WAV or AIFF.

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is a compressed, lossy format created by Dolby which was designed to be a successor to MP3. Apple subsequently developed a copy protected version that uses DRM (digital rights management) for iTunes, and that’s generally the format of files you buy from iTunes.

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is exactly what it sounds like, a free, lossless, compressed format. Great for archiving files, since it can reduce size up to 60% without losing any quality.

WMA (Windows Media Audio) was originally a compressed, lossy Windows format designed to compete with MP3. It’s been expanded to include a lossless version, a multichannel version, and a lower bit rate version used for voice. You may encounter Windows system files or other similar things in WMA format. WMA files can be copy protected.

AC-3 is a lossy 5.1 surround sound format used by Dolby Digital in DVDs, HDTV and DTV (digital television). Its highest sample rate is 48k. A side note: The “point one” in surround sound refers to a Low Frequency Effect (LFE) channel which has less bandwidth. The LFE is where the shake your boots BOOM in movies comes from.

What To Use?

At this point your question may be why should I care, or what should I use? The truth is, audio is audio, and when it comes to format choice, utility is the main consideration. Your DAW will do what it does, and I recommended letting it do that. When you’re deciding what to export, think about the use at hand. You’ll want to export either WAV or AIFF for mastering, making CDs, importing into a video project, or other continuing full resolution work. They’re really the same thing, so think about the software you’re using next, or what the person on the other end needs, and use that.

When it comes to delivery to the general public, think about the end user rather than entering into an endless debate about the perceptual quality of various algorhythms or codecs. If you’re selling downloads to normal people, you’ll probably want to use MP3s. If you’re delivering files to a digital distributor, you’ll probably be asked for CD quality WAVs, and in some cases, distributors will take AAC files for iTunes. If you want you can also distribute lossless files in FLAC format, or give people access to WAVs, or even distribute OGG/Vorbis files, which is an open source container/codec combination very similar to MP3. Beware, though, that not all players support these less common formats, and your user may end up with no way to listen.

As far as bit rate, I like to give my loving, devoted fans the highest quality MP3s I can, so those are encoded at 320k, but it’s also a good idea to make a 128k version for web-based preview listeners, because the smaller size will load faster and stream better. Some submissions you make (say to internet radio or licensing folk) may have size limits, too, so those smaller MP3s are useful. In the end, this is a judgement call, and if it’s for your own personal listening, then do whatever you like best.

One other consideration is something we addressed in “Keeping Track”, which is metadata. There are many situations where you’ll want some data other than audio in your file. Whether it’s so consumers know who you are, or licensing agents know who to contact, you’ll need some extra info in there, so the file type you use to send to certain people needs to contain that data. That’s what we covered in “Keeping Track”, so if you haven’t seen it, check that article out.

Resources

As with any very technical topic, an exploration of audio file types can go quite deep, and we don’t have room here to cover everything we could think of, so here are some recommendations for further reading:

Principles of Digital Audio by Ken Pohlmann
The Audio Expert (chapter 8 especially) by Ethan Winer
Mastering Audio by Bob Katz
How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt (for a great history of the MP3 format)
Any Wikipedia page about “audio file types” or specific types – google “WAV Wikipedia”, for example.

If you’re new to audio or recording, then hopefully we’ve helped you at least begin to sort out file types in digital audio, and if you’re a veteran, I hope you’ve reminded yourself of a few things here. For the most part, file types are pretty straight forward, but you can run into confusion at times, especially when a DAW or other piece of software gives you a thousand choices. It’s nice to remember a few basic tenets, cut through the noise, and get back to creating. So file this away, and we’ll see you in the studio!

Did you know I have a master’s degree in “Music, Science and Technology” from Stanford University? That means I can go back and forth between Macs and PCs in the studio, and talk at length about debt. Find me on Facebook and Twitter and other various stuff @AaronJTrumm.

Keeping Track

August 12, 2019 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio, metadata, metatagging, metatags, recording magazine

Meta-tagging and the data you need to keep

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

It may not be a glamorous notion, but handling data properly is one of the biggest differences between a professional and an amateur in music production. When it comes to selling music to other professionals or making sure your image is awesome when fans find you, good tagging and tracking of recordings is of the utmost importance. So we’re just going to dive into the where, how and why of keeping your metadata.

Metatags

Simply put, metadata is data about other data. In our case, it’s data about audio data. Metatags are how files embed this metadata into themselves. This could be anything from the title of a song to the format of a file. Audio file formats include various amounts and types of metatags, and you’ll want to fill in this data where appropriate. We’ll talk about what you’ll need in a bit, but let’s start by talking about a couple of file types and their metatags.

WAV

Wav files are our most common uncompressed audio format. Technically these files have metadata in them, but it’s all technical data about the file (more on that in an upcoming article), and nothing you want to touch. From our point of view, WAV files contain no extra data. Don’t confuse this with the metadata that gets amended to a Red Book CDDA file, which is the way CD Players know things like song title and artist name. This data is stored in the Red Book file, not in the .wav itself.

MP3

MP3’s are currently the most common compressed format, which is usually how we deliver downloads to fans and associates. Mp3’s ubiquitous nature may change, but probably not soon, and since Mp3s carry so much useful metadata, they’re good for getting the concept down. There are a couple of different metadata formats associated with Mp3s – ID3v1 and ID3v2 – but we really needn’t concern ourselves with that right now. What’s important right now is what data we need.

Others

Many other audio file formats exist for audio, including AIFF, OGG and Flac. Some carry useful metadata and some don’t. We’ll be diving into file formats in more depth in a later piece, so for now, let’s stick to the basic concepts and use Mp3 as our basic guide.

What You Need And Why

So what data do we want to associate with a song? Obviously the title and artist name would be a good start, but there’s a lot more than that. To start to understand what you really want to embed in a file, you just need to think about the purpose of a recording. There are a few potential purposes. You might be selling the tracks to fans, you might be giving the tracks away for promotion, and you might be using the tracks for business-to-business transactions, such as licensing.

That last scenario is the big one. When you pitch a track to an agent or a music supervisor, there’s a wealth of information they need to make it easy to potentially use a song. Fortunately, some of it is the same stuff you want your fans to have, and all of it also serves the purpose of creating a professional look and feel to your work. So, let’s look at some information from the extended Mp3 standard that we might want.

Title
Artist
Album
Album Artist (could be different than the track artist)
Grouping
Composer
Year
Track number (# of #)
Disc #
Genre
Comment
BPM
ISRC (a unique identifier for a given recording)
Publisher
Copyright
URL
Album Cover
Lyrics

Title, artist and album are pretty self-explanatory. If your song has a featured artist, put that in the TITLE, not the artist. This way, programs like iTunes don’t separate the song from your others, creating organizational havoc for your listeners. Album artist might be different, say if you’re a guest on a compilation or something.

Fill in the year, track number if the song is part of an album, and if the album is some sort of multi-disc set, fill in the disc number. This is kind of an antiquated notion unless you’re also releasing a physical product like CDs.

If you fill in your genre, make it as accurate as possible, and don’t overload it. Use no more than 3 genres (most of the time, it’s a dropdown anyway). Especially when it comes to licensing, your agent or music supervisor or indie film maker needs to be able to find you in a genre search and not be way off.

Grouping was intended originally for movements in classical music, but you could use this for subgenres, or some people use it to identify the companies clearing the mastering and publishing sides of a song, which just means who a person has to deal with to pay for a licensing.

In the composer section, you can list all the composers or the main composers, and if you have writer information, such as writer’s percentage and performing rights identification number. This is also a good place to identify a public domain song, or if it’s a cover, the original writer.

Comment may be the most useful section. Here’s a good place for contact information, which is especially important if you’d like somebody to license your music and pay you! It’s a good idea to put your website in here, writers splits if you don’t put them in composer, the key, time signature, or any songs or artists the song sounds like. Also helpful is any identifying info from your performing rights organization, such as BMI # or ISWC (an international standard song identifier), or even the ISRC, which, if you have one, is a unique identifier connected to a given recording. Another useful thing to do if you’re pitching for licensing is include a link to an instrumental version somewhere on the web. The comment section is limited, so be judicious with your character count.

BPM, or tempo, can be important for anyone looking to use your music in a video production, or for DJs who’d like to work your song into a set. If the song is published, or you have a publishing company, you can enter that info and your copyright info (you can do this even if you have yet to register), and you may find a separate URL tag. Use that, but also put your website in the comment section.

Album cover is super important. Imagine when you open an mp3 from a pro – there’s always an image. Make sure, if your track is for sale or any kind of public consumption, that you get some kind of cover image in there. Square is best. Pro tip: album cover, title and artist are the only things you will see in every mp3 player.

Of course, lyrics are also an option. It’s up to you whether to include lyrics, but if you intend to pitch the song, the lyrics are quite helpful, and it’s a nice thing for fans to have. Not all players will show the lyrics, but iTunes does.

How To Do It

If you’re wondering how to fill in your metatags for, say, an mp3, it’s not difficult. Many software packages do this. Some mastering software will let you create tags right in the software, some audio software such as Audacity have metatag features, and there are dedicated tagging packages such as Mp3Tag, TagScanner (both free), Tag & Rename and MediaMonkey, to name a VERY few. A lot of packages support various formats like AIFF, as well. You can even add metadata when using command line mp3 encoders, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Probably the easiest thing to do is open your song in iTunes, click “info”, and edit the tags to your heart’s content. When you do this, you’ll notice that you can do this to any mp3, which means that anybody can change your tags around. You’ll have to live with this. It’s how people organize their collections.

If you try a few different packages, you’ll see some variation in what tags are available. iTunes doesn’t include the ISRC, URL, publisher or copyright tags for example. This doesn’t mean they aren’t there, but if you were to open the file in a package that does use those tags (TagScanner, for example), you’d see they’re blank.

TagScanner – the Author’s favorite free MetaTag Editor

In any case, you’ll edit your tags, and hit save. The metadata is embedded into the file.

But Wait…

You can keep a lot of the data you need to associate with a track in the metatags embedded in the file, but you may find that you need more data at your fingertips. For example, if you submit your track to a few micro-licensing libraries, you’ll find yourself entering in a description and mood over and over. So, it behooves you to keep some information somewhere connected to your songs, so you don’t have to dig around every time you need it. You can keep a simple spreadsheet, use a database, or there are a number of software packages and online solutions that can help you keep organized.

You should keep all the data you would put in a metatag handy, plus more – here’s a big list of data you might want to keep, if you were to use a simple spread sheet:

Credits – any players, engineers, studios, etc that should be credited.
Title
Artist/Act Name – you may have more than one, so keep track if you do
Description – a short description of the song that tells people the basic topic, mood, genre and instrumentation
Moods
Release date – you’ll get asked for this a lot
Album – if it’s part of an album, keep track of which
PRO # – the id number assigned when you register the song with BMI, ASCAP or your PRO.
ISWC – the international song identifier used across PRO’s, issued by your PRO.
ISRC – the unique identifier for the recording, issued by the RIAA in the U.S., or your ISRC agency, or your distributor (this is easiest).
Publisher – if you have a publisher, or if it’s your own publishing company, or none if neither
Writers splits – who owns what percentage of writing
Master splits – who wants what percentage of the recording
Genres – a short list of genres
Time – of the track, not the day!
BPM – tempo
Time signature
Key
UPC – if you have a UPC for the track, keep it with the track info. Keep the album UPC with your album info. UPCs are issued by the GS1, or your distributor (this is easiest).
Keywords – a comma separated list of keywords so you can copy/paste when asked for them on a form
Lyrics
Toggles – whether you’ve registered the PRO, copyright, Soundscan or SoundExchange. You can use Y/N, Yes/No,1/0, whatever feels best to you.
Notes – some general notes

There You Have It

There you go! The topic may not have been as sexy as some other things, but metadata is the nuts and bolts of efficient communication, and it makes all the difference when you’re building a business out of music. Keep your data clean, handy and up-to-date and you will find it a lot easier to spread the word, engage your partners, and make money. Even if you don’t plan to build a music business, it’s nice to know where everything is. So, fire up the computer and get organized!

What The Hell Are Master Rights?

February 19, 2018 by Aaron

ari herstand, ascap, bmi, making money, master rights, moses avalon, music, music business, music revenue, publishing, royalties, sesac, socan, songwriting

Master rights – What the hell are they? Several times I’ve seen some form of this question come up on Facebook, and the replies people get are usually hazy, conflated or inaccurate. So here I’m going to attempt to explain this as simply and completely as I can, and at the end, I’ll link you to some other very good explanations and resources. Be warned, even this is super simplified, but I hope it helps.

One way this gets asked a lot is something like “If my friend has master rights on my song how does he/she make backend income from it if it is played publicly or released and sold on iTunes, Spotify, etc.”

(Shortcut answer: YOU pay them…read on for why…)

Most of the time, when people talk about this, they conflate or confuse terms like “backend” and “royalty”, and what things like “master rights holder” or “song” actually mean. So in order to really understand who owes who what, we need to go through a few steps to clear things up.

STEP 1 – Clear up the revenue streams

First let’s make it clear what revenue streams there are in music.

Think of this like a tree with two huge branches:

Branch 1: WRITER income. This could also be called PUBLISHING or SONGWRITING. This is paid to the OWNERS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (songs), aka writers and/or their representatives (aka publishers).
Branch 2: MASTER income. Aka RECORDING, or ARTIST/PERFORMER income. This is paid to the OWNERS OF A RECORDING.

It is vitally important to understand the distinction between those two streams of income. At no point and in no way do these two streams of income cross. If you are both a performer and a writer, you need to separate these identities in your head, because they are not the same. The easiest way to keep this straight is to tell yourself (from a business point of view) that WRITERS DO NOT PERFORM, AND PERFORMERS DO NOT WRITE. Keep those two entities separate in your head forevermore (even though obviously a person might do both, and most of us do).

STEP 2 – Fully define the branches

Let’s go a little deeper into each branch.

Branch 1 – Writing/publishing.

Writing. This branch is for the owners of intellectual property. Songs. A song is defined as lyrics and melody (or just melody), and it exists as a conceptual thing. We can make something physical that represents a song, like a piece of sheet music, or a lead sheet, or a tab sheet with lyrics, or a recording. None of those media of communicating the song are the song. The song is the melody and lyric. Drums are not the song. A bass line is not the song. A recording is not the song.

When you register your song with your Performing Rights Organization (or PRO), (BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, SOCAN, etc), you are registering this intellectual property, NOT THE RECORDING.

When we discuss this branch, we need to understand it as one branch. PUBLISHING simply means that a songwriter has chosen to transfer a piece of that branch (usually half) to another entity in exchange for the service of exposure and representation, and sometimes administration. A publisher may or may not own the copyright to a song, but they are given control, and they become a SECOND entity inserted in this branch. From here on out we will refer to the COMBINATION of songwriter/publisher as “song owners”, because this isn’t really an article about the relationship between songwriters and publishers.

There are several ways song owners can make money, and these are all governed by the copyright law. They can be broken up into two basic categories: Fees paid directly to the song owner by another entity, and fees paid by entities to performing rights organizations, which are then distributed to song owners.

FEES PAID DIRECTLY TO SONG OWNERS:

1. Sync licensing. If a visual content producer uses a song in a video production, they are required to negotiate that use with the owners of that copyright (regardless of who recorded the version of the song they use). This is paid BY THE CONTENT PRODUCER TO THE SONG OWNER, BEFORE THE PRODUCTION AIRS. This is an UP FRONT fee, and ownership of the song in question stays with the song owner.

CONFUSION WARNING:This is NOT THE SAME FEE as is paid to the owners of the recording. Even if you are the owner of the recording and the song, and you license a track, and you get paid a single fee, you NEED TO REMEMBER THAT THAT IS ACTUALLY TWO FEES. If there’s nothing in the license paperwork that defines the two fees, consider them equal. So if you get $1000, $500 of that is master usage, and $500 is for the song. This may affect who YOU owe and how much (more on that below).

1. Work-for-hire composition. An entity (such as a film production or even just a regular person) can hire a songwriter to write a song specifically for them, and pay a (hopefully higher) fee to now own that composition or use it exclusively (or not!). This is paid BY THE CONTENT PRODUCER OR OTHER ENTITY TO THE COMPOSER. This is an UP FRONT fee, and ownership of the song MAY go to the content producer/person/client.
2. Mechanical royalties. This is one that gets people pretty confused, but if you remember that from a business perspective the writer of a song is NOT THE SAME ENTITY as a performer, then it gets much easier. Mechanical rights simply means this: If a business or person wants to RECORD and sell a SONG on some recorded media, they must pay the songwriter a fee, PER UNIT CREATED (NOT per unit sold), and that fee is defined by law. That fee structure varies based on media, but it’s about 9.1 cents per copy in most cases. Go HERE for more detail on those fees.This means that if a performer records a cover song, they owe the song owner mechanicals. This also means that if an performer signs to a label and records a song, the label owes the song owner mechanicals. This ALSO means that if YOU record your FRIEND’S song, YOU OWE YOUR FRIEND MECHANICALS, unless your friend specifically WAVES that right for you, in writing. I suppose this also means that if YOU write a song and record it, you owe yourself mechanicals!

CONFUSION WARNING: Mechanicals are NOT paid to owners of recordings, and they are NOT paid by distributors or radio stations. Spotify, iTunes etc. Mechanical royalties are ONE SPECIFIC thing. They’re a fee owed to SONG OWNERS by RECORDING OWNERS, and they’re paid by the owners of recordings to the owners of songs, or their representatives.

Streaming services like Spotify DO pay mechanical royalties (in theory). This is a source of much contention and confusion and it could change. You see, there’s an ongoing debate about whether or not we can define a stream or a download as a recording being “manufactured” and who, then, might owe a song owner a mechanical royalty. HERE is a resource explaining more about how mechanicals work in the current world, and here is another.

FEES PAID TO PROs AND THEN DISTRIBUTED TO SONGWRITERS:

1. Radio, television or venue performance. If a business, such as a radio station, online radio station, television show or other entity (like an ice rink or a bar) uses a song by playing it on a show, broadcasting it in their store, using it on their boombox while they massage people, etc, they owe the songwriter PERFORMANCE ROYALTIES. The rates are dictated by law, and these royalties are paid BY THE BUSINESS TO PERFORMING RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS. Performing rights organizations (PROs) police the usage of SONGS (NOT RECORDINGS), collect money, and pay money to songwriters.

CONFUSION WARNING: This is another a place where many people conflate or confuse things. Notice above that there is a crossover. If a video content producer (for example a television show) wants to use a song, they must FIRST NEGOTIATE PERMISSION AND FEE FROM THE SONGWRITER. That is income stream 1 above. Then, AFTER BROADCAST, THEY MUST TRACK USAGE, REPORT TO AND PAY THE PERFORMING RIGHTS ORGANIZATION. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME REVENUE STREAMS. In other words, visual content producers pay twice.

CONFUSION WARNING: “Backend”. The PRO revenue mentioned before is often referred to as “backend royalties”. This is accurate, but it shouldn’t be confused with another POTENTIAL revenue stream and that is “backend” profit sharing that COULD happen if you struck a deal with a content producer that says “you must also pay a portion of your revenue from the production”. This kind of deal is rare in TV, rare in big movies, but it’s something you might see, say on a smaller movie production that doesn’t have a big up front budget. Neither of these should be confused with “backend” money you might pay to a fellow master rights holder or a fellow songwriter, after you’re paid for something. The only thing “backend” actually means is that there’s something owed AFTER money is made by a thing. If you were to make me a burger that I intend to resell, and I don’t pay you for it, but instead share the money I make by reselling it, you’d be making your money on the “backend”.

Live performance. If a band, performing artist, symphony or other performing entity performs a song in a live setting, they owe the songwriter a fee that’s defined by law. This fee is paid BY THE PERFORMING ENTITY (BAND) TO A PERFORMING RIGHTS ORGANIZATION.

NOTE: This is a simplified list, and the basic structure that I use to understand how to do business. It is by no means complete and thorough. The actual royalty structure PROs use is incredibly complex, for one, and there are other possible streams like sheet music publication, etc.

Branch 2 – Recording/master rights

This is the branch for owners of recordings. If you are an independent musician making recordings in your house or a studio, you own those recordings. If you’re an artist on a label, your label owns the recordings. The rights given to the owners of recordings (“master rights”) and the ways they can get paid are vastly different than for the owners of songs.

CONFUSION WARNING: “Master rights holders” are not the owners of songs. They are the owners of RECORDINGS. RECORDINGS ARE NOT SONGS. Similarly, the MEDIA used to STORE a recording is not a recording.

Here are the ways recording owners get paid:

1. Sales. A customer can buy a copy of the recording. Money is paid directly to the recording owner or their representative (like a retail store or a distributor). Included in this are CD sales, vinyl record sales (or any other physical medium), or download sales. If a customer buys a downloadable mp3 from your website, this is a record sale. If a customer buys a download from iTunes, this is a record sale. Something important to note here is that whoever makes a sale now owes every other “master rights holder” a piece of that money. So by way of example:If Mike and I decide to make a recording of a song, and sign a piece of paper that says Mike has 50% of the master rights and I have 50% of the master rights, and I sell a CD for $10 to Brenda, Brenda pays me $10. Then I owe Mike $5. Brenda does NOT have to find Mike and pay him $5.Similarly, if I send the song to a digital distributor such as CD Baby, and they deliver the song to Spotify, iTunes, etc., I will receive payments from CD Baby for streams and downloads, which they have collected from the digital retailers.*I* owe Mike 50% of that money. It’s up to ME to pay Mike, not CD Baby, and NOT SPOTIFY, ITUNES, ETC. *ME*. If I have more than just that song out there, I will receive relatively complex statements detailing which songs made money and how much. IT’S MY RESPONSIBILITY TO TRACK THAT AND PAY MIKE.And remember, we owe the song owners their mechanical royalties if we plan to sell CDs or downloads, unless they’ve waived that right.

CONFUSION WARNING: Streaming is not the same thing as downloading. This is still a confusing and contested area for everyone, because streaming didn’t exist when the laws that govern music were written. However, streaming is sometimes considered “performance”, which means that song owners may be paid money for, say, Spotify streams, by PROs. This has NOTHING TO DO WITH MASTER RIGHTS. Now that we’re in branch 2, we really don’t care about this. If you’re paid something by your distributor, you owe your fellow MASTER RIGHTS HOLDERS their share, and if you look at your statement, you’ll see that this will include streams as well as downloads.

Master Use Fees. This is the counterpart to sync licensing, and is sometimes referred to with that same term. This is separate and distinct from sync fees owed to song owners for licensing. When a content producer wishes to use a recording, they must negotiate and pay a fee to BOTH the song owner AND the owner of the recording. As I mentioned above, if you are both, be SURE to think of this as TWO SEPARATE FEES. Similar to record sales, if you have partners who own a percentage of your master rights, YOU owe THEM when you’re paid a license fee. Here’s another example:If I meet with Warner Brothers and they want to use Mike’s and my song for a big movie, and they pay me $1000 dollars for the MASTER USE FEE, I now owe Mike $500. They may insist on having Mike in the room, in which case maybe they’ll pay him directly. But if only I collect, I owe him. Remember that if Mike and I ALSO wrote and own the SONG, that there is another fee for that to be negotiated. So if Warner Brothers says “$1000 is all you get, both for the song and the recording”, that’s actually TWO FEES. Now I actually got paid $500 for the song and $500 for the recording. Now I owe Mike $250 for the song license, and $250 for the recording.Why does this matter? Because Mike might not have written the song. *I* might not have written the song. The song sync fee may not be the same as the master use fee. On and on. It could look more like this:George, Linda and I write a song. We decide to split that 3 ways. Mike and I record the song. We split the master 2 ways. Warner Brothers decides the song itself is worth $1500 and the master is worth $500. They pay me for everything. I receive $2000. Now I owe George and Linda each $500 ($1500 split three ways), I owe Mike $250 ($500 split two ways), and I keep $750 ($500 for writing and $250 for master use). If I were to (wrongly) divide the whole pot in 4, I would pay Mike too much, and myself too little! How generous! But in another scenario I might end up paying someone too LITTLE. Then there’s trouble.

Notice that the list here is short. There are basically two ways to make money from a recording: master use fees and sales. Until very recently, there was no mechanism for the owners of recordings to collect money based on things like radio or online performance. Now one organization, SoundExchange, tracks and collects on behalf of the owners of recordings (EDIT: and now, some full service companies like CD Baby will interface with SoundExchange on your behalf).

Branch — 3??

Well, there really is no branch three. But there are of course many new ways to make money with music, both directly and indirectly. Merch sales are not new, but Patreon is, as are other subscription services where fans pay for special access, YouTube revenue, video downloads, etc. These are all streams which really aren’t part of song OR recording revenue, but they’re related to your career, and you’d be wise make it clear in writing who gets what from THESE potential sources as well.

Resources

Books – I recommend all of these highly, and I wish you would read them cover to cover

How To Make It In The New Music Business, by Ari Herstand

The Musician’s Guide To Licensing Music, by Darren Wilsey and Daylle Deanna Schwartz

Confessions Of A Record Producer, by Moses Avalon

Web Links – for another take or deeper information

Ari’s Take – Ari is very thorough – Click here for his “what is Sound Exchange…” article. It’s similar in topic to this one, and really good.

Here is another pretty good post about this topic from Digital Music News.

The Harry Fox Agency, if you’d like to dig even deeper on mechanicals.

An article by Ari Herstand on legally releasing cover tunes.

BMI’s royalty explanation. Read this thoroughly to really dig down into how BMI pays. The other PROs have similar documents and play by similar rules.