Copyright, Pressing, and Promoting

[Unknown03]

I read some of the horror stories which is great learning! But I have a few questions on what your oppinions are..

Lets pretend for a moment that I have finished an album the way I want and i want to publish it to stores, radio, etc..

Im assuming I would want to copyright it, what are some of the best ways to do this? and how much does this cost?

Pressing the cd! ok!
I'm pretty sure I dont want to sit at my computer all day with a 500 pack of blank cd-r's that I got from costco and a sharpie -- whats the best way to go at this? and again, how much would this cost?

And the age old question of promoting! Would it be best to get some tracks on the radio OR just hand out a bunch of cd's to everyone i see that would be my target audience? And lets pretend that I made a 1000 cd's and did this; would it be a good idea to do this with the copyrighted/pressed cd's? ....ugh, my head is spnning

[parkay909]

Read books. All the copyright info you need is free from http://www.loc.gov/index.html and its cheap too. A great book thats an overview of the whole business side of getting paid in this game is "The Recording Industry by: Geoffrey P. Hull" its used at all recording schools and if I remember correctly he won a huge copyright case on fair use in the supreme court. That should get you started.

[Unknown03]

Bump!

[abstract]

We do cd/dvd duplication w/full color thermal print directly on disc at a good price. Check out some samples on myspace.com/abstractproductioninc under pics.

[buddha fingers]

Originally Posted by parkay909

Read books. All the copyright info you need is free from http://www.loc.gov/index.html and its cheap too. A great book thats an overview of the whole business side of getting paid in this game is "The Recording Industry by: Geoffrey P. Hull" its used at all recording schools and if I remember correctly he won a huge copyright case on fair use in the supreme court. That should get you started.

Im sure its a great book but not all schools are using it. i went to Full Sail and have never heard of it.

[buddha fingers]

Originally Posted by Unknown03

I read some of the horror stories which is great learning! But I have a few questions on what your oppinions are..

Lets pretend for a moment that I have finished an album the way I want and i want to publish it to stores, radio, etc..

Im assuming I would want to copyright it, what are some of the best ways to do this? and how much does this cost?

Pressing the cd! ok!
I'm pretty sure I dont want to sit at my computer all day with a 500 pack of blank cd-r's that I got from costco and a sharpie -- whats the best way to go at this? and again, how much would this cost?

And the age old question of promoting! Would it be best to get some tracks on the radio OR just hand out a bunch of cd's to everyone i see that would be my target audience? And lets pretend that I made a 1000 cd's and did this; would it be a good idea to do this with the copyrighted/pressed cd's? ....ugh, my head is spnning

copyrights are cheap. you can do it a couple ways. you can send it the whole album and copyright it as a whole($30), or you can copyright each individual song($30 per song). i would just copyright the whole album for $30. if you want the extra little portection that you probly dont need, copyright each song individually. if you do it that way you can sell and liscence individual songs. for now i would copyright the whole album and if the opportunity comes to sell a song then copyright that song when the time comes.

as far as radio goes, if you can do it then do it. its really hard to get on the radio unless you know somebody. its not impossible though. if your local dj likes the music enough, he willl play it. and of course ya gotta hand out cd's, especially if u gotta song on the radio.

for cd pressing, check out Discmakers. they are pretty reliable and every time they have messed something up in the passed, they fixed the problem quickly.


hope some of this helps. good luck homey