so yeah, my meeting was last week – just forgot to update until now. sorry about that. won’t happen again. i mean it probably will. i’m forgetful, you know.
the meeting was pretty informative. i probably didn’t need to drive down there to talk to them in person, but it was a bit nicer than talking on the phone would have been. the lady there was nice – she answered all my questions and gave me good advice about what to do.
ASCAP and organizations like it basically exist to pay artists royalties where they’re due, mainly from radio play. so there’s really no urgency for me to register with them, but she did say it takes 4-6 weeks to process applications, so you might as well do it sooner rather than later. there’s two sides to registering – as a writer and a publisher. if you’re an independent music type like myself, she actually recommended i register as both sides – basically there are twice as many royalties to be had that way if they ever exist. you pretty much publish yourself if you’re not signed, and you can change it whenever. so i just have to come up with publishing names, which should be sort of challenging. i still need to ask if the publishing name has to be a registered organization or anything.
i also asked about internet radio – which is apparently covered by a separate organization or two, the main one seems to be one called Sound Exchange. registration with them is free, so i’ll definitely do that. internet radio, mainly pandora, is something that seems very worth looking into. they have a lot of hoops you have to jump through just to be considered though – having physical cds for sale on Amazon (no idea why) and having a barcode. all of that costs money. it’s pretty amazing how much money this stuff costs…it’s like a never-ending flow of expenses the more exposure you want.
she also mentioned this other new website that is launching soon which i went to visit called musiconlinealive.com. it’s supposed to launch in a week or so at some big ASCAP expo in L.A. the basic idea is that they’re trying to do web-based versions of albums – virtual albums. you can edit them however you want, add images, and change them on the fly. will it be the next cool thing? i don’t know. but registering is free so i’m probably going to try that out too.
anyway, still working at some other ideas and places to play. the red cross benefit thing got canceled for scheduling reasons – they might try to reschedule it later on, so we’ll see. there’s stuff coming up this summer that might bring some new playing possibilities.
