Self-Publishing Your Music

If you are trying to get into the music industry but nobody is hearing your music out, there self-publishing your own music would be a great idea. With self-publishing, you would be entitled to the full ownership of the song, plus its rights and income. Self-publishing could actually help you earn more revenues.

Becoming a self-publisher in the music industry is not that easy though, you have to make sure that you have the right attitude, educational background and of course some contact persons that would help in giving you an edge. Self-publishing would need you develop certain personalities like tenacity, staying focused, efficient communication skills and ability to multi-task.

Aside from having these key personalities, education will also play a major role. Going into self-publishing would mean you would have to do all aspects of making, distributing and marketing your songs. You can get somebody to do it for you, but you still have to oversee it. It would help a lot if you would have basic knowledge on marketing, business, advertising and accounting.

Contact building, is not something that you get to do overnight. Good contacts are something you get to build over time, it would also entail you to have good business relationships with these contacts. These three key components are important whenever you are trying to decide into publishing your music.

Self-publishing experts say that there are two stages or phases that a self-publisher undergoes: the period where the self-publisher produces the output and the period when the publisher markets the output.

The production phase involves the recording, editing and designing the CDs. Aside from this you would also need to perform mastering, this is where duplicate copies would ome from. Another aspect that a self-publisher needs to prepare is the cover of the CD. Aside from the cover, the CD label, tray card and a booklet also needs to be prepared.

In the production phase you would also need to prepare the copyright registration of your CD. There are websites that you could check to get help in copyright registrations. Before you duplicate and distribute your CD, you would also need to copyright your music and protect it. There are many companies that could handle CD duplication to about 250 copies or more. They could also handle reproduction of promotional materials that you would include with your CD. You would need to include a CD one-sheet on the press or release kit. This would contain the information about the CD. This could be handy when you distribute the CDs, especially for radio stations.

The second stage would include the marketing and distributing phase. Marketing and promotional materials would not only include posters, catalogues, display items and other similar items. You could also promote your CDs over the internet, like creating a website and having shopping carts on the website so they could buy the CD online.

The best promotional material is yourself. It is important to have a business card that would include your promotional website and at the same time your contact information. During gigs or any events, make sure to hand out your card and promote your CD. It would be even better if you can actually sell your CD’s during gigs.

The biggest problem with having you song published is that producers may no like it beforehand, which is why they would refuse it. But once they have seen that it has built an initial following or have achieved certain level of popularity, even though small, it could help you get the big break that you are looking for. You can even revise your press kit from time to time whenever you get good reviews.

Self-publishing can give you the edge you are looking for, but you would have to be prepared in making sacrifices along the way. Achieving your dreams is always like that.