ABSTRACT

Without a song, there would be nothing to perform or record, so it is logical to begin a closer examination of the three income streams here, with songwriting and music publishing. This income stream is referred to as the music publishing stream and not the songwriting stream because very few people ever made any money from simply writing a song. The money was made from the publication (uses) of that song. Even when songwriters “own their own” songs, the songs are almost always actually owned, in the copyright sense, by a music publisher, even if that publishing company is owned by the writer. Therefore the primary focus of this chapter is music publishing instead of songwriting. However, there are so many aspiring songwriters in bands and as “just plain” songwriters that the development of writers deserves some attention as well. The same has been done for aspiring recording artists later in the book.