Hip Hop & Beat Making
Course 19: Performing Rights Organizations and Publishing

Learn how to protect your music and your brand while also creating a positive revenue stream. There are numerous ways you can make money from having a solid project. Some of them require you to embark on a process of discovery while others are long-established, making it easier to understand how things work from the outset.

In this course, you’ll examine the different performing rights organizations, including The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP); Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI); and others. By registering with these bodies, you can publish, and then protect, your music.

The right licensing opportunity can bring your music significant publicity. In order to take advantage of these opportunities, you must first protect your music and have the right people in your corner to shop it around. At the end of the course you’ll be able to identify what performing rights apply to you and the different formats of publishing (and how to protect your materials).

The Listening Library for this course is to listen to the big synths and huge beats on Future’s Monster. The digital field trip will introduce you to a sound-isolation shield for your mic from Maono–take a look at the customer reviews and decide if this is a good option for you when you don’t have access to a studio. You’ll also take a look at SoundCloud and see if it’s a good fit for you.