A former student of mine, and the executive director of the Nashville Film Institute Ted Crockett contacted me about appearing on a panel at the Nashville Film Institute’s “Film Festival”. I was interested. When he told me the panel was to discuss royalties and rights ownerships for comedians and performers – I was invested. When he told me it was going to be with a representative from SoundExchange – I was indebted.
When your bits are getting played on Pandora, SiriusXM (or many other streaming services) you are generating income. SoundExchange collects royalty money for you the comedian from digital play and streaming services. In fact, they have hundreds of thousands of dollars in unclaimed money they can’t wait to pay out comedians right now.
Linda Bloss-Baum from SoundExchange heads the panel, which also includes two other former School of Laughs students Brian Bates from episode #029 and Paulina Combow from episode # 041.
I love how entrenched the School Of Laughs is in this episode!
The old stand-up comedy approach was do shows, get paid. If you are only getting paid when you are on stage you will always have to tour. Forward thinking comedians need to be creating content. Digital recordings of your shows in any form (DVD, CD, MP3 downloads) can work for you, while you sleep.
Welcome to the digital age. Where files = financial freedom.
Whether you plan on releasing a CD or DVD for sale or not, you should be recording your shows. You should press at least a handful of CD’s to send to SiriusXM. And rip those files to be uploaded to iTunes, Pandora and anywhere else digital information is consumed.
We will follow up soon with a more detailed post about how to send your materials in to the various services for airplay. A quick explanation can be found on Episode #005.
But if you are already getting played and aren’t collecting royalties, your first step after listening to this episode is to go over to Sound Exchange.com and register as an artist and copyright owner (if you own your master files).
Note:
Thanks again for listening, and thanks to SoundExchange for helping fund my retirement!
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