Co-writing a hit song with one of your bandmates feels great at the time and is all well and good, until down the road it suddenly turns out the two of you have differing opinions on who contributed what, at which point the royalties argument is bound to turn nasty….
Category archives: Songwriting
Music Copyright 101: Guide To Copyrighting Your Music As An Artist, Songwriter, Or Producer
As an independent artist, the songs you write and the recordings you make are your intellectual property, meaning you own the copyright. Here we walk you through the technical steps of copyrighting your work via the official channels, as well as making money off your music once the copyrights are…
Jury Rules That Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ Copied Christian Rap Song ‘Joyful Noise’
A jury found Katy Perry liable for copying the underlying beat of Marcus Gray’s 2008 Christian rap song “Joyful Noise” for her hit single “Dark Horse” in a unanimous decision handed down this week in Los Angeles federal court. Also found liable were Perry’s “Dark Horse” collaborators Lukasz Gottwald (Dr….
What Every Songwriter Needs To Know About The Music Licensing Collective
A major component of the recently passed Music Modernization Act is a new entity known as the Music Licensing Collective (or MLC), designed to manage blanket licensing, gather money from streaming platforms, and payout revenue to copyright owner. Here we review some key things songwriters should know before the MLC…
How to Structure a Song: Part 2
In our previous post, How to Structure a Song: Part 1, we looked at the different types of building blocks featured in many classic tunes heard on the radio or in a club. This time around we’re going to take a look at the practicalities of putting those building blocks together to create a tune. If […]
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Music Think Tank Weekly Recap: Nostalgia • Staying Healthy On Tour • Making The Industry Safer For Women • More
This week on MusicThinkTank, our contributors shared articles on how music engages the brain to evoke nostalgia, what musicians can do to stay healthy on the road, how the music industry can, and should, be made safer for women, and more. Gideon Waxman | How Does Music Engage The Brain,…
How to Structure a Song: Part 1
Structure is a way of describing how something is put together. Everything has structure, from a tree: roots, trunk branches, leaves, to a house: foundations, walls, roof. Every romantic Hollywood movie you’ve seen follows a structure: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again. In films, this is known as rising action, climax […]
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Collect All The Revenue Your Recorded Music Can Earn: Pt. I
For a long time, many traditional music industry revenue sources were closed off to the independent artists, but these channels are starting to open up, providing some exciting new income sources for the DIY artists out there – as long as you know how to get them. ___________________________ Guest post…
When We Sleep Where Do Our Royalties Go? [VIDEO]
Despite numerous advancements in payment tech, it can still take ages for songwriters to see a penny of their earned revenue, and so AWAL, AMRA and Kobalt are teaming up to do something about it. _________________________ Guest post from AWAL You can Venmo your friend money before you finish this…
What Is It That Makes A Song Catchy?
Sleuthing out what it is that makes a song "catchy" has been a goal of songwriters since time immemorial. Here Hunter Farris meshes the worlds of music theory and psychology to determine just what it is that gives some music the ability to grab at our brains and not let…