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Duck River Music Group

Music Publishing

Music publishing happens when someone records and distributes the song commercially. The song must be recorded and then made available for sale. Until this happens, the song is unpublished. A Publishing company’s (such as Duck River Music) job is to find users (artists, singers etc.), issue licenses, collect money and pay the writer. When a publisher makes a standard deal with a writer, it takes on the obligation to do these things on behalf of the writer. (The publisher can be the writer if the writer wants to do these things for himself.)

How to submit a song(s):

  1. Read the DRM web site so that you can fully understand us and what you may be choosing to do with your song(s). Feel free to ask questions.
  2. Contact DRM through DRM’s contact page and request a submit sheet.
  3. Decide on three (3) songs that you want us to hear and put these on a CD.
  4. Provide us with a lyric sheet with the chords for each song.
  5. Send the CD; submit sheet and the lyric sheets to the address provided.
  6. We will listen to your songs and if we feel we can help you with your song(s), enter into an agreement with you to pitch the songs. See Single Song Agreement.

The current statutory royalty rate for a song is $.091 per song for each copy sold on a CD. Plus there is money from your Performance Rights Organization: BMI, ASCAP or SESAC, whichever you choose.

Note: When you sign an agreement with a publisher, you give the publisher the exclusive right to pitch your song to an artist. You also give the artist that signs an agreement to record your song, the exclusive right to sing and record your song. This means that there can be no other outlets for selling or promoting these song(s), which include cdbaby, MySpace, YouTube, iTunes, etc. (If you have a song on iTunes you probably do not need me – unless you want DRM to collect the royalty and do the paper work.) For this reason we ask that the writer to remove the song from these sites, when he chooses to enter into a Single Song publishing agreement for that song with DRM.

Copyrights: You have a copyright as soon as you make a tangible copy of a song – tangible meaning something that you can touch. This could be a CD or a tape or the written lyrics and with the notes of the melody on a sheet of paper. This includes all the rewrites that lead to the finished song. The term of the copyright is for the rest of your life plus 70 years. Then it will enter into public domain. The copyright will always belong to the writer. Others may use the song, but the copyright always belongs to you, the writer.

Song Safety – Song Protection: What DRM recommends is that after every significant change made to the song, you take and get it notarized. Continue doing this until you finish the song, put in a safe place and you will have a paper trail that proves the song was in your possession from the very beginning. You can also accomplish this by mailing the developing song at each stage to yourself via registered mail.

Want to know more about Copyrights and how they apply to your music? See:

© 2010 Duck River Music Group