Making A Living Making Music

Words can mean different things to different people. For instance, to your fans you are a creative genius but to the music industry you are a commodity and to lawyers you are a party with specific rights.

Imagine you run into Rebecca Clarke, viola player extraordinaire and one of the first female professional orchestral musicians in the world.* You love her works and gush to her about her mastery of the violin. She gasps at your gaffe – the viola is not a violin! (They look the same to you.) You cringe at your faux pas, politely apologize, and turn away in embarrassment.

Now, imagine you are negotiating a licensing agreement for the use of your song in a major TV hit. The music supervisor asks if you own all of the rights and you reply that of course you do; you wrote the song. So, you self-publish, she asks. Well no, you say, my label publishes my work. How about the lyrics, she asks, did you write those too? You say that you had some help but you wrote most of them. The music supervisor politely suggests that you come back when you have cleared all the rights to the song. You cringe at your ignorance, thank her for her time, and turn away in embarrassment.

Knowing the industry and legal language that pertain to your rights and royalties is critical in negotiating contracts and agreements. Ignorance could hurt far more than your pride – it could cost you plenty in terms of current and future earnings, as well as damage your reputation.

In this installment we begin at the beginning with definitions for basic terms. We will expand and deepen them in future installments.

Music:  vocal and/or instrumental sounds combined in such a way to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion

Song:  a complete music piece that may contain words with melody and vocals or instrumentals without words

Instrumental cue:  musical moments or pieces of instrumental music, typically played underneath dialogue or in scene transitions

Composer: writes the melody for a song

Songwriter:  writes tunes and/or lyrics for popular songs

The terms songwriter and composer are used interchangeably but composer has historically referred to creators of classical music, film scores, and scores for large musical ensembles while songwriters are typically considered creators of popular music.

Lyricist: writes the words to popular songs

Music Performer:  a musician or singer who brings a composition to life.

*Check out Rebecca Clarke here.