What To Do Before Releasing A Song in regards to ASCAP, BMI, SoundScan, BDS, MediaBase, etc.

Connect With Jimmy, Make Music: https://jimmymakemusic.com

Update: SoundScan is now under the Billboard umbrella! Here are the new links to Register for music sales tracking:

Single: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...

Album: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...

Also DBS encoding has ended. AS of now, songs only need to be uploaded to Mediabase here: https://www2.mediabase.com/mbapp/NewM...

Helpful Links:
ASCAP: https://www.ascap.com/

BMI: https://www.bmi.com/

SESAC: https://www.sesac.com/

SoundScan - Single: https://titlereg.soundscan.com/sounds...

SoundScan - Album: https://titlereg.soundscan.com/sounds...

BDS Encoding: https://media.bdsrealtime.com/ve/

MediaBase: https://www2.mediabase.com/mbapp/NewM...

Copyright Office: https://www.copyright.gov

More about music distribution:    • Music Distribution Breakdown: CD Baby...  

So many people think that once you're done recording a song, you just throw it on to a digital distributor, and everything's gravy. Everything's done. That's all you got to do. But that's not it, man. If you're doing this stuff for yourself as an independent, you got some paperwork to do. There are other means to get paid off your music other than doing live shows. Of course, there are a million ways you can promote your stuff but you got to get your paperwork right otherwise you're promoting your songs and you're not going to get paid. One of the first things you want to do is get your song registered with your PRO, or your Performing Rights Organization. These are organizations like ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC that take care of your radio royalties and your sync licensing royalties. So if you get placements anywhere on a TV show, an app a game, anything like that, they'll collect royalties for you. The one I personally use is ASCAP, or the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, but feel free to research these organizations. There are two major ones in the United States: ASCAP and BMI. They all have their pluses and minuses but all essentially do the same thing. If you don't have an account already. I definitely recommend signing up as a writer and a publisher so that you get full royalties for your songs. There is a one-time application fee for whatever type of account you're signing up for. The writers and publishers account was 100 bucks and you're done. There are no recurring fees, they just pay you now or collect money for you. Anyway, super simple off the bat, you're going to register a new work. I'm not going to go in-depth with this. But you will put all the writers' names, and their ASCAP information or BMI information in these sections here, along with their publishers now if you don't necessarily have a publisher you are the publisher. If you don't have an official publisher, it's not a big deal. Make one up for yourself. I recommend starting an LLC, an S corp, or whatever type of business you want to start. At the very least you want a doing business as "company name" simply so you can set up a business bank account to get your stuff separated from your personal bank account. So you got your song registered with your PRO the next thing you want to do is hit the copyright office [email protected] You're going to make an account. It's called an eCO account or eco account, as they call it. And it's all very simple on this site. There are a lot of tutorials on this site to help you get through the system and learn what applications you need. And music copyright there are two different types of applications one's for the lyrics and the melody and one's for the actual sound recording. Usually, the sound recording copyright will suffice enough for you. But if you want that extra protection for your lyrics and your melody of the song, you're going to want to get that second copyright. The next thing you're going to want to do is set up your song or album with your digital distributor, because they're going to give you the numbers that you need to plug into some other sites like your UPCS and your ISRCS. Let me show you what I mean. Here's the back office of my distributor. Let's look at this instrumental album. that I put out and you'll see a UPC for the album is here. And the ISRC's for the songs are here.
For each song, they'll have their own identifying number. Once you have the UPC numbers and the ISRC numbers, you're going to be good to go so now I'm going to take these numbers and go back to my ASCAP account and go to the song so apart. Inside the information of the song, there are all kinds of data you can put in. The most important is identifying numbers like UPCS and ISRCS.
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