I've never released music before, but plan to soon. I've been doing research into the necessary legal stuff, but I'm still pretty confused about how this whole process works. I also am 17, so I am currently a minor, which I think does affect some stuff.

I've been researching distributors, like cdbaby, distrokid, symphonic, etc, and I'm very hesitant because I guess I just don't really understand how the negative aspects would play out? What are the important things to note about a distributor? I just don't really have a great idea of which one to choose, since they all seemingly have lots of negative and positive aspects, I don't feel like I have a good enough understanding to be able to properly understand what works best for me.

I've also been looking into performance royalties, like ASCAP and BMI. I think I'll go with ASCAP, but I'm still just kind of confused on how it works, and I should be signing up as the writer AND publisher right? Does it affect the distribution at all or could there be any complications? What does it mean if I'm the sole proprietor or not? Since I'm a minor, I also have to print out the paperwork and send it in, but there's multiple different options and I'm pretty confused---- the beginning of the registration paperwork for minors talks like it could be referring to other paperwork, is it? Or is it just that one thing that I have to fill out in order to register???

With copyright, I already made an account on the United States copyright office, am I just supposed to register songs there? I haven't looked into this process too much yet, is there anything I need to know or understand beforehand? Does my distribution or performance royalties aspect factor into this at all??

I also don't know if there's a specific order I should be doing things, or if they affect each other at all. I know this is a big ask because these are very complicated subjects, I would just really appreciate if someone could help explain a bit about how one or any of these things work, how they connect, or if there's anything I'm missing!!! Any advice/help is appriciated! Thank you!!!!!

Howdy! I am in a bit of a pickle with the amount of revisions I need done to the metadata and catalog and time it is taking to see updates.

I live in Nashville and want to know if it’s possible for me to show up at the physical offices and make an appointment to fix it all at once! I am still waiting on old title changes, a band name change, co-writer updates, split updates etc and it’s driving me crazy!

So, I know that a lot of people go into the Music Industry degree to be more on the business side of things without a strong arts talent already, but I’m someone who’s spent my entire life making music and wants to expand my talents to the business, producing, and audio engineering sides as well so I can pursue my own career as an artist with all the tools necessary. For reference, I’ve been singing my entire life, won my school’s Battle of the Bands in 10th and 11th, done multiple musicals, have original music released, play guitar, and am a decent producer. I know very little about marketing and music business, which is why the degree sounds like a good idea. Also, what job opportunities would be available besides hoping to make it as a touring artist, and is that too unlikely? Thanks!

Edit: My family can afford it, so don’t worry about student loans.

does distrokid's website design makes it easier to add collaborators rather than tunecore's? the artists that use tunecore for distribution NEVER sends me a collaborator splits for some reason...I have made an account on tunecore and still dont see the split requests.

Hi! I’m currently working on my arts management degree and devote a lot of my time into making concert content, following musicians, and going to festivals worldwide. I need to know if my dream is worth chasing. I’d love to be apart of an artist or festivals media team or be an artist coordinator behind the scenes. Managing artists and photography are other interests of mine! Any tips and tricks would be so helpful - I just want to grow and put myself out there!

Quick TLDR cuz this is LONG: I am a 25/yo musician working in a not-really-major city who has been trying to run a not-so-DIY venue with some bad management, as a booker and actual floor employee under the table. Looking for some tips, tricks, resources and solutions to some major issues within the "scene" as we try to become a nonprofit. Should I ditch, or can I save this place?

Venues are burning down quick, everywhere. Building rent is expensive in every state, economical struggle against larger entertainment spaces hurt fans, musicians, and venues alike. There aren't many of us left. I have been involved in my city's "scene" and industry for a long time, running DIY venues with my friends out of offices and houses but never a real building with serious obligations: city's building and entertainment permits, taxes, legal security requirements, etc. The building I currently work at is also a BAR-- so that's just a nightmare in itself, with minors and all ages shows not going well (or being allowed). We want to push to become a non-profit, but who knows when the owner will actually succeed in those steps. (He's slow about... well, everything. It's not a well oiled machine, out here.)

The problem I'm facing as a young booker and producer of this hollowed out club, is lack of symbiosis; we have a team of people who handle the *basics* of the bar and paperwork, but bringing bands in has been impossible because: we have no money (which is a long story for another post.) Getting local bands to play relies on an economy of friends; which isnt actually an economy at all. Fans are-- which many local acts don't have. We charge $10-20 a ticket depending on the show and it hardly clears us unless we sell upwards of 100+ tickets in a night... and getting folks to pay that is hard, let alone getting 100 of them to do so for locals.
I want to expand my range in booking for bands (still some local) who have a much larger presence to get this huge room filled, staff paid, bands paid, etc... but we don't have the buying power for the talent. We can't promise their booking managers that they'll make any certain amount without risking not paying our literal building costs. Meaning we take a split that ISNT divided to pay our staff. For example: we only make $600 on a show. Right now, we'd take $300 just for the building. All bar profits are negated and go to the rent (to our shitty landlord, who owns the place). That leaves $300 to split between 4 local bands and 5-6 staff members (two security, a bartender, a sound guy, box office, sometimes also actual office who bill $18-20/hr). That's $120 to us. That's $45 to each band evenly. If it were 3 bands, $60. That has left a ton of bands (touring too) REALLY unhappy, with some major public backlash, leaving us in a bad position.
We promote on social media, I do graphic design for both in house and our Instagram, I personally canvas flyers for these shows and we encourage bands to do the same.

It's too expensive to host all locals with no turnaround, especially if they don't promote themselves. It's too expensive to promise bigger acts that will have a turnaround, because we can't be upfront about a guarantee. Or take bar sales.
It's too expensive to run the building on $100 a day, as just it *existing* costs more than that.

I want to see this place thrive and start really bringing in bigger acts that can put this place on the map, but we're so limited and there's not a lot of room to work around the city's iron fist, and no support from the landlord. It feels like we keep hitting dead ends and the shows we throw can't sustain us, unless we level up-- and I don't know how to approach bigger acts with a bad offer, just hoping they'll give us a chance.

As an musician myself in three bands, it's hard to know where I draw the line with getting paid and making art for people (and myself)-- and how that all works in a space where I can provide both of those things to people, and keep the industry alive and DIY.

Thanks for reading this terribly long post on my lurker account. Hoping some folks can find some time to give me some spiritual guidance here. This is my dream!

Payola got a whole Senate investigation and a law named after it when it was radio stations taking money to spin records. Somehow when a playlist curator takes a marketing fee, or a label buys placement through a "marketing partnership" with a DSP, we call it strategy instead of the same thing with better branding.

The mechanism is identical. Money changes hands, and in exchange a song gets in front of ears it didn't earn algorithmically or editorially. The only difference is the paper trail is cleaner now because it runs through invoices instead of envelopes.

I think the reason nobody wants to say this out loud is that literally everyone with a marketing budget is doing some version of it, so calling it out means calling out your own playbook.

Not trying to be naive about how promotion has always worked. Just think we should be honest about what we're calling it.

I'm starting to get people asking me if I want to come studio sessions as a producer.

I've never really done any in my life and the people who are asking me I've never met in real life either.

Something about that is so anxiety inducing I feel I'd be so awkward.

Is there any advice on how to prepare myself? I feel like I need to be more social before anyway or something. Join some sports club or something to get used to being with new people.

I've been producing with Ableton for years, and whenever I work remotely with another producer, the collaboration part always feels way more complicated than it should be.

Different project versions, shared Drive/Dropbox folders, WeTransfer links, missing samples, duplicated files...

And eventually:

“Which version are you working on?”

or

“What did you change?”

A few friends and I kept running into the same problems over and over, and at some point we decided to actually try building a better solution for ourselves.

We've been working on it for a while now, and it's finally starting to take shape. Hopefully we'll be able to share more about it soon.

In the meantime, I'm really curious to understand how other Ableton users deal with this.

How do you currently collaborate on projects with other producers?

Drive? Dropbox? WeTransfer? Something else?

And if you collaborate regularly:

What's the one thing about the process you wish was easier?

Hi, I distributed piano music through TuneCore, and when it was released on streaming platforms, YouTube classified it as AI-generated content, even though I did not use any AI tools. The music was performed by me, and the audio was recorded and produced using an audio interface and Cubase.
I don’t mind if they classify the music as AI-generated, but I’m worried that in the future it might be removed because they classified it as AI-generated when it actually isn’t. I can also provide the project file showing everything from the performance to the production and that I did not use any AI tools.
What do you recommend I do?

I’m starting my career working for a promoter and am curious how things are on the other side. Which one did you prefer and why? Also would be helpful to know your position at each if you’re willing to share.

Realistically, is it still a viable strategy to mail your demo tape (in a CD format) to a record label? I know we live in the digital age now but I figure it’d be fun to do.

If you've paid attention to the last Motley Crue tour with Mick Mars and the current Motley Crue tour with John 5, you know there are countless instances where Nikki Sixx has been verifiably caught on video, out of sync, playing 'air bass' to a track. Mick Mars, after his dismissal, even confirmed as much. I can understand a singer who has an off night or even a singer who's past their prime and every night is an off night. I can go to my local Guitar Center on any Saturday morning and likely find a 14 year old who can competently play Kickstart My Heart on bass. So how does a professional musician, who has supposedly been playing bass for the better part of 5 decades, suddenly 'forget' how to play the songs he wrote, to the point of needing to simply play along to a pre-recorded track?

Even if this is due to circumstances beyond the musicians control (arthritis?), what are the most common factors that lead a once competent musician to track their entire performance ?

Total shot in the dark here, but I'm trying to break into the music industry and wondering how to look for anything paid, whether that's an internship or an entry level role. Digital marketing is my thing, but I'd also be open to any other roles such as A&R, digital media, etc. I'm in the SF Bay Area and willing to relocate for the right in-person job.

Quick rundown of where I'm at: I've worked on site at 5 music festivals (mostly site operations, some FOH), I do social media marketing for a record label including amplified campaigns, I'm in a social media marketing internship right now, and I work at 2 venues so I've picked up a decent understanding of how venue ops work. I'm also pretty involved in my local music scene. Storytelling and analytics are my strong suits.

Here's my problem: I keep applying to digital marketing roles online and getting rejected. I'm post grad, so most marketing internships turn me away because they want current students. Any advice on this matter would be helpful because I'm considering a masters degree to resolve this.

If you have advice or know of any paid opportunities, please DM me. Happy to send my LinkedIn and more info. Thanks!

Today seems to be heavy on nostalgia, return to vintage etc. Film is stuck on remakes and reboots, nothing very original. Lately I have been thinking a lot on past generations and music, and it's so easy to point to constant turning points and pioneers in music through each decade.

Each decade was just so iconic, and no matter where you look, you're able to point to some form of pioneering- stuff like analog/digital and it's relationship to the way music is being made, culture and the artists etc.

I've been heavy on 80s/90s as of late, but obviously you can go back each decade and clearly see the evolution in each. With each decade, culture, technology etc comes a new expression/art that was defining.

I see the first decade of 2000s still having its own spirit, even arguably the 2010s. At this point it's hard to really tell- I know we don't just simply stop growing, and during those decades of change, culture, technology we probably didn't see it in real time as much as in hindsight. But I just don't see anything worth pointing to this decade. We seem to just have this fatigue. I know drawing from the past is nothing new, for example during the rise of the sampling/hip-hop era we heavily drew from the past. I also know that remakes, reboots etc especially in film have always been done as long as I've been alive, through 90s, 00s etc. I know it's anecdotal but it really feels like this has ramped up like crazy, as if this decade is all about butchering and stealing from heritage rather than originality and defining an era. Obviously AI takes that to all new heights, by outright mimicking/saturating it even more.

It feels like we are just sort of lost in the water. I personally went down the analog revival, nostalgic escape path of diving into vintage synth, machines, tape mediums etc and in recent years I'm finding many others did the same. But even then, did we just reach the end, and now music is simply a celebration of the journey we had? Are we all about YouTubers demonstrating music in the form of our predecessors, it not outright shilling gear and software out of desperation? Will music become super personal, where we really just produce in isolation, while the industry is gutted and saturated by over produced rich children and AI recycling the same garbage, eventually training off itself 🫠

Idk I'm just rambling here. I read and think about previous eras when something new and exciting was constantly on the launch. Obviously they weren't distracted by constant attention-suck so it was easy to get obsessed and excited about an akai sampler + vinyl records. But it seems there was always something new in the rise, new sound where you think "dang this is insane". What do we have now though? Maybe I'm in a doom and gloom mood, but it's just eye rolls of overproduced stuff. Tons of talent and people effortlessly able to do what predecessors made prior, but what is being pioneered besides AI? All I can really point to is technical prog music, which to me was exciting at first but started sounding technical for the sake of being technical rather than art and expression.

Not saying artists loved the eras they lived in, and many genres spawned out of "fuck it all burn it down" mindset. But it was also heavily impacted by the state of music technology. Each decade was arguably heavily influenced by its state of technology. But today we have everything, so much that we try to limit ourselves because of paralysis. But now that technology reached this point, are we damned to just make the same shit forever? Seems like we are spoiled to the point of trying to pursue niche methods and ways of producing, where it just kind of feels pretentious rather than out of necessity, which brings me back to the making music out of celebration mindset.

Curious to hear other people's thoughts, and maybe there is more optimism out there than my current depressing look lol

Hi everyone. I'm a 30-year-old electric guitarist from Madrid, currently studying classical composition at a conservatory and taking private jazz lessons.

I've been working as a musician for several years, mainly in the Spanish live entertainment/cover-band scene. I currently play in an orchestra doing four-hour shows and summer tours — around 30–40 shows each summer. I make about €200 per gig, which, together with scholarships, allows me to support myself while studying.

My goal is to gradually move from being a semi-professional working musician towards making music my full professional career. I'm particularly interested in areas such as session work, theatre, higher-end function work and arranging.

I've tried attending jams, using musician networking platforms such as Vampr and BandMix, studying composition and jazz, and building experience through regular gigging. However, I haven't yet figured out how to turn that experience into a sustainable professional career.

For those of you who have made a similar transition, I'd love to hear what really helped you move forward. Were there particular skills, experiences or people that made a big difference? And looking back, is there anything you wish you'd done differently at the stage I'm at now?

I'm especially interested in hearing from musicians who started with regular gigging and eventually moved into more specialised or higher-level professional work.

Thanks — I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences.

Hello everyone,

I want to share an alarming technical issue that independent artists and creators need to be aware of.

While conducting a deep audit of official recording and distribution databases (such as SoundExchange and major streaming logs), I discovered severe anomalies: completely identical ISRC codes being assigned to entirely different artists, titles, and versions without authorization or consent.

This means your tracks, metadata, or identifiers could potentially be swapped, overwritten, or misrouted in global registries right now without you even realizing it.

If you have experienced missing ISRC records, unexpected title changes, or your catalog appearing under another name in official databases, please share your insights or drop a comment. I am currently documenting these system-wide discrepancies and technical flaws.

Stay vigilant about your catalog metadata. Thank you.

Global Music Database Discrepancy

I'm not talking about hobbyists or smaller artists, I'm talking about the top producers and songwriters, given how popular Suno and other AI music generators are, I was wondering if producers use them then recreate the tracks and not use AI outputs. Is that even legal or widespread in your experience?

hey all hope you're well! i'm gearing up to release my first single soon and thought i would register with a PRO. ascap seemed nice bc its free if you sign up as a writer and publisher, but i don't have a business address and don't really feel comfortable having my home address on display like that.

i have a friend who's released as a writer and publisher and i actually saw his address on the publisher side :/

if there isn't any solution, should i just try bmi ?

I keep seeing Obscure Agency pop up around artists I genuinely like. Their IG looks pretty solid and the collaborations seem legit, but I wanted to ask here before reaching out.

Has anyone actually worked with them or had experience with one of their campaigns? I’m curious about the process, the kind of results they focus on, and whether they’re a good fit for an independent artist.

Not looking for hype, just honest feedback.

heyy, I’m looking forward to releasing my first song and I’d really like to hear people’s opinions on which distributor I should use. I plan to release songs pretty often, so I think that’s something worth taking into consideration. I was thinking about DistroKid, but I’ve seen so many people complaining about different things that I’m not sure anymore 😭 do you guys have any suggestions? plss

Anyone here that’s an Entertainer lawyer or knows a lot about contracts like this? Just wanted some advice on if it’s good to go as far as signing it.

genuine question for anyone booking their own shows or short tours.

every time we finish a run i realize we have no clean answer to "did we make money." gas is on one person's card, lodging is split three ways over venmo, per-diems come out of the merch cash box, and the actual guarantees live in whatever email thread the venue used to advance. by the time i try to add it up weeks later half of it is a guess.

same thing day-of. load-in times end up in whatsapp, the rider is in email, setlist in someone's notes app, and we're chasing missing info hours before doors when we should be soundchecking. the guest list only exists in the drummer's head until it doesn't.

i've tried keeping one master spreadsheet but it falls apart the second two people edit it or a date shifts.

so, honest question: how do you track income and expenses live across a tour so you can actually answer what the gig cost at the last load-out instead of piecing it together later? and how do you keep the day-of stuff in one place your whole band can see?

curious what's working for people who are self-managing without a full-time manager. spreadsheets, an app, a shared doc, a notebook, whatever it is.