Should I become a Harry Fox Publishing Affiliate?

[MichaelL]

It may well be that having a publishing “company,” rather than just releasing DIY, content is sufficient. It’s easy enough to just ask.

[ENW1]

I think some of this “Record Label” stuff is just a hold-over from older days. I registered my publishing company with ASCAP. I use that name when people ask about my “Label”. When a Library licenses your track for use on a Compilation Release, doesn’t that qualify as a 3rd party release anyhow? The Bottom Line should be: Is the track getting played somewhere where royalties are collected?

[Music1234]

Anyone can create a “record Label”. I do not see any barriers or red tape to creating a “record label”. In fact it seems to be in all of our interests to create our own record labels for our own music to commercially release whatever we want to streaming platforms. Anyway, releasing music (on CD Baby for example) is one issue, getting the music heard (streamed) is the real battle. There has to be a strategy there too because just releasing music is not good enough.

All this amounts to a lot of work. The strategy needs to be: have a label, be the publisher, be the songwriter, and be the artist. Stream our music everywhere, including pandora, satelite radio, and on music choice (TV radio essentially). There are clever folks out there that figure out how to do this stuff and profit from it, I wish I was one of them but I am not.

Art if you know of a clean payout chart that describes what percentages the parties above take in from HFA please advise. This part of the biz is still very confusing. It’s just not as clean cut as our normal work where we split 50/50 with publishers for film, tv, advertising, and stock music licensing sites. I suppose sometimes we collect 100% as writer and publisher.

I’d like to be in a world where I am collecting all the royalties from Spotify, google play, youtube red, pandora, music choice, apple music, i-tunes, deezer, schazam, beats…or whatever…but I am not in that world because it is a complicated world and always seems to involve middle men who get their hands on the money before the songwriter/ artist/ composer does. It’s a shame, really.

Check these very confusing rate charts out…How can we possibly make any sense out of this?

https://www.harryfox.com/find_out/rate_charts.html

How can we all rid ourselves of “middle men” once and for all in today’s digital age?

[Art Munson]

How can we all rid ourselves of “middle men” once and for all in today’s digital age?

Not sure that is possible after looking at all those charts on HFA. I don’t really mind if there is a middle man at this point. Why? Because it incentivizes them to make sure every penny is being collected (that’s how they make their money). I don’t have the the time or energy to chase every cent down. They will probably always know more than I do about such matters and I can spend time writing. It’s under the heading of “it takes money to make money”.

[MichaelL]

How can we all rid ourselves of “middle men” once and for all in today’s digital age?

If you hire other writers or publish other writers’ works, you are a middle man.

Sell and/or license your music directly to producers, music supervisors, and consumers from only your own website and through your own marketing efforts, which, as Art pointed out, will leave precious little time for composing and producing music

[Music1234]

I just wish there was a way to release albums and collect royalties directly from Spotify, Google Play, YOUTUBE RED, Apple Music, and so on. I do get that HFA has a role: match song titles, stream counts, and IRSC codes with complex spreadsheets and other “Big Data” they collect. They do need 11.5% commission for the streaming mechanical payouts. I just wish I could collect directly from Spotify and apple without a middle man. There is a way, it’s just been tough to figure out. The guys that “know” are not willing to “tell”. There’s that “code of silence” we were talking about.

I do understand that we need middle men for licensing, but I am talking only about the “streaming” royalty opportunity from our personal albums for end consumer personal/ leisure listening. Self releasing through CD baby is just not good enough. Albums need to be promoted.

[Art Munson]

Check out these guys https://distrokid.com/. Costs $20 a year but you keep 100% of royalties. I will be going with them for future releases. Cheaper than CD Baby.

BTW you can uploaded unlimited albums for that price.

[daveydad]

I get royalties each quarter through CD Baby from them. Last time it was a whopping $4.09!!

[abby]

I tried DistroKid too, loved it and easy/cheap. (Although I think cdbaby does more royalty collection for you.) I now am trying AWAL, no fees whatsoever.

This entire thing, trying to figure out how to collect all your royalties is a labyrinth to me. So far this has been the most helpful explanation I’ve found

https://www.royaltyexchange.com/learn/music-royalties

[boinkeee2000]

switched from tunecore to distrokid and glad i did…the unlimited albums is such a big deal, actually started uploading my nonex production music lately with good results (didnt cross my mind with tunecore since you pay per album)…id like to release my excl tracks also but am not sure if its a conflict with the libs im in (is the exclusivity usually for all the rights including sales/streaming?)

…thought about bypassing the middle man before and talked to a few buddies that work at the big record labels here, they said unless you have a strong track record in the biz (while indie), ts hard to go direct without a major backer like the main aggregators, and i would think trying to admin that would be a nightmare…

[NikNak]

Is anyone registered as a HFA NON-affiliate publisher? This is the free joining option, but is it worth it I wonder?

[angopop]

Will HFA be helpful to me if I have my songs primarily with non-exclusive libraries and those libraries act as the publisher?

[Karen]

I’ve found this thread very informative, thank you Music1234, Art, and others. I’m interested in NikNak’s question about being an HFA non-affiliate publisher. If they will allow me to register the songs I self-publish (through my ASCAP-registered LLC), and get paid the mechanical license fees I’m due, then what is the added benefit of paying $100 to become an HFA member?

And are there any alternatives to HFA for collecting mechanical license fees from Spotify and other streaming services?

[Author]

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