And so we come to the end of another year and start to creep towards that post-holiday slowdown time. I thought it would be helpful to put together a year-end checklist of items that artists and writers may want to consider to close up this year and look towards the next.
Register your songs with the U.S. Copyright Office:
In an earlier post, I talked about the 2 copyrights you own as an independent artist. If you haven’t officially registered your songs and recordings with the U.S. Copyright Office, now’s the time! Not only is it the only way to truly protect your copyrights but you can’t take action against someone infringing on them without proper registrations. The copyright office has made it very simple these days to register online. If you are signed with a publisher, they will take care of this for you but it’s worthwhile to do it yourself if you’re unsigned (or follow-up with your publisher to make sure they’ve done it). You lock your door when you leave home so nobody steals your belongings. Do the same with your music.
Make sure your songs are registered with your PRO:
If you think to yourself, I don’t have any songs on radio or TV so why bother with registering my songs yet. Well, all PROs collect performance royalties from internet streaming performances such as Spotify and as paltry as they currently are, a penny (or micro-penny) is still a penny in your pocket. Plus, both ASCAP & BMI also now pay for live performances (ASCAP OnStage and BMI Live, respectively) so you can submit your set lists to them and receive royalties from all your playing out. So register all of your songs with your PRO. It’s just good housekeeping.
Create instrumental mixes of your full mixes if you don’t already have them:
Having instrumental mixes of all the songs on your record has so many benefits. In the placement world, scenes can play your song longer by cutting to the instrumental and working around dialogue. Longer usages equal more performance royalties and who would turn down more money for their music? Instrumental mixes can also have a life of their own separate from the vocal versions. Advertising, as well as film & TV, always use just instrumental sides of songs. Separately, if you have instrumental mixes you can create your own clean, radio-friendly mixes of songs with explicit lyrics if you didn’t create them originally. You can cut to the instrumental mix on the offending word to drop that word from being heard.
Back up all of your master audio files, including a cloud backup:
Yes, I know, we live in a digital age and this should be obvious. But we’ve all heard stories similar to “I can’t get those masters because the drive died. All I have left are MP3s.” Drives do die. And no, MP3s are not equivalents to hi-res masters. So back up all of your audio drives and final mastered stereo audio files. And don’t just back up to an external drive. Wait till that electrical fire on your building’s roof and you have to get out of your apartment in 5 seconds flat, which also means back up to the cloud. Audio sessions and files are big, I know. But there are moderately inexpensive choices such as CrashPlan that will take in all the GBs you throw at it, in the background, while you sleep.
Gather and organize all your receipts from your music biz for tax reporting.
Why wait until April to do this? Grab that shoebox while watching college football bowl games during the break and organize it. Can the government do a better job with your money than you? Hmmmmm…. Anyways, if you are an artist and this is your career, run your business like, well, a business. Talk to your tax advisor as to what documentation you need to write off the cost of you doing business as an artist. You will at the least need the receipts backing up what you spent on your artist career. Gather them up for this year, organize them, and file them. When your tax person says, “Send me your stuff,” you don’t have to take time out from rehearsing or writing to get your tax life together.
Review your 2013 social media health:
Maybe you are the artist who is diligent with maintaining their social media and internet health and….maybe you’re not. Either way, the end of the year is good time to look at your online presence. Make sure all of your images on social media and your website are current. What’s that? You forgot you even had a website? Realize that Google searches many times will have your website, and not social media, at the top of a potential fan’s search results due to SEO (search engine optimization). Give your site a refresh. And if you feel you only have time for social media these days, then point your domain name to your main social media network so any visitor typing in your name as a domain gets redirected. Where was I….oh yeah….look at your Facebook page. Have you maintained an ongoing dialogue with fans, are your images current, does it list your upcoming shows for next year, etc. You know yourself how disconcerting it is to go to the site of an artist you like and see that there hasn’t been activity in months. Turnabout is fair play.
Set your goals for next year:
The key with goal setting is to set them high but make them achievable. Don’t settle for easy goals. Make them difficult but make them realistic. Maybe you want to grow your Twitter followers by 50% from where you’re at today. Maybe there are certain venues that you still haven’t played in your city but want to. Or maybe those venues are in another city. Go for it! As difficult and time consuming they may be, they are achievable. Don’t expect to play Staples Center next year. It’s not achievable. Don’t make it a goal. On the flip side, don’t make playing at the pub next door to you a goal if you did that 16 times this year. Goals are meant to be reached for, to be strived for, to take you out of your comfort zone, all for one simple reason: Make next year a year of growth, both personally and artistically. Success doesn’t come to you, you have to go and get it. Make. It. Happen.
There ya have it. Just a few ideas to make your holiday break productive and worthwhile. No better time than the present to review your accomplishments this year, close that chapter, and begin planning for next year’s awesomeness. Have a great holiday season and an amazing start to the new year!
By Marc Caruso