Recording and registering your music

Thanks again to the influence of the internet and the various options it provides for publicising your music, a recording is more important than ever – even from a very early stage in a band’s lifespan. Traditionally, a band would only make a recording once it had established itself fairly solidly on the live circuit and was looking to land some form of a deal or to exploit its live popularity by selling home-made records. Now that is all gone, with practice leaning more towards recording as soon as humanly possible. There are some excellent reasons for adopting this point of view, as well as some drawbacks.

 

What this means is that the humble demo tape has become a lot more important than ever before. With a well-recorded demo tape you can now start gathering an audience for your work, approach national and international promoters, fans, clubs and record labels directly with your music online, and even use it as a negotiation tool to make sure you get a good deal. Many bands have used internet traffic and statistics to prove to record labels and promoters that they are worth taking a risk on. These artists are then in a far better position to negotiate a fair and equitable deal.

 

As to when one should be recording a demo, it has gotten to the point where a band should be looking to record as soon as it is ready to start gigging. In the past, advice would have been to hold off recording until such time as a more established set and reputation have been established, and the live set of songs debugged. However, with the ease of digital communications in the modern world and the ever-decreasing cost of recording and sound duplication, there is not as much need to hold off. In fact it is so advantageous to have a demo recording from the first show onwards that nowadays you need to make recording a demo part of the strategy for beginning to play live. This is because it is an invaluable promo tool that can be used to whip up support before playing a single note in front of an audience. Once live gigs start, those recordings become an asset to be sold in the form of CDs and downloads to a growing fan base. Everyone wants the first thing their favourite band ever recorded. If there is a change in style slightly later on or you stop playing some of the songs, in a certain sense that’s even better, since the recordings capture a specific moment in time and become more desirable. But then one must also be committed to recording often and allowing this recorded history to show your development.

 

Register your music, earn from your music

 

One of the key components to making sure that you have a future in the music business, whether at home or abroad, is to make sure that you are recognised as the owner of the music you write so that you can profit from its exploitation. The first step of this is to establish yourself as the owner of the copyright on that piece and secondly, to register with an organisation to collect monies owed to you from the performance and reproduction of that music. One way that is still legally recognised is to create a CD or sheet music of your music and mail it to yourself via registered mail. Keep the envelope unopened in a safe place. Its dating will prove exactly when you created it, thus establishing your ownership and date of creation should a dispute arise. But a far easier and beneficial method is to sign up with a local music rights administrator or collection agency such as SAMRO. You MUST assert your ownership of your work as early as possible.

 

Becoming a member of such an organisation is a handy tool. Not only does it assert your right to be recognised as the copyright owner of your work, but it mentally sets the idea in your head that you can earn from your music and that you are a music professional. In this way, you can start to earn from every performance of your music, be it a demo, on the radio, or playing your own songs at gigs. It is an important revenue stream and, more importantly, means that you can assert your ownership of your work in a legally recognised way globally as well as locally.

 

Originally published in David Chislett's One, Two, One, Two: A Step By Step Guide To The South African Music Industry. Download a free copy of the book at www.davidchislett.co.za.