Affiliating with PRO before song published?

[doughnutsrule]

I'd like to set up a publishing company for the songs I write. I was hoping to do this even though I've had no success yet. My reasoning is that I don't want to miss an opportunity to retain publishing on a song just because my company wasn't set up in time.I plan to go with ASCAP, and on their site they ask for the following information from publishers wishing to affiliate:"Information about a work you published (e.g. title, name of the performer or artist, date it was released or performed)"Is it not possible to affiliate as a publisher until you've already published a song? I don't get it.Jeff

[claire]

you can affiliate as a writer - do you have any songs up on Broadjam or Taxi that are available for people to hear online? do you have any songs that have been played out at writers nights where you can provide the date, venue, etc. for the performance? I think either of those will work. BMI used to not require anything, ASCAP still does, but the definition of "published" is pretty broad and I know a cowriter of mine, who really isn't a writer other than on the song we did together, registered with BMI based on Broadjam play. might be that the same information would work to register as a publisher but I think the first step is to affiliate as a writer.Claire

[Casey H]

Jun 30, 2009, 8:48pm, doughnutsrule wrote:I'd like to set up a publishing company for the songs I write. I was hoping to do this even though I've had no success yet. My reasoning is that I don't want to miss an opportunity to retain publishing on a song just because my company wasn't set up in time.I plan to go with ASCAP, and on their site they ask for the following information from publishers wishing to affiliate:"Information about a work you published (e.g. title, name of the performer or artist, date it was released or performed)"Is it not possible to affiliate as a publisher until you've already published a song? I don't get it.Jeff You will not miss any publishing on a song because you didn't set up a publishing company in time. PRO's go back 6 months or more to determine royalties. If an artists was going to release your song on CD and it wasn't signed with another publisher, you would know. "Published" generally means offered for sale but any public performance also qualifies. If you have any public performance of any kind, ASCAP probably would allow that as your reference (as Claire said). I set up my company years back and used the fact that a short snip was played on the radio. I'm not sure about this: If you sign a track with a music library, that might be good enough since your track is being marketed for money.I am told that one of the U.S. PRO's, either ASCAP or BMI, let's you register the publisher's share to your name without a publishing company. I think it's BMI. Check with both.But, I really wouldn't worry about any of this until you have some sort of deal. There is plenty of time and you won't lose out.Best,Casey

[guscave]

When you register a song through BMI it will ask who is the publisher and the writer and what percentage of each is allotted to you. If you sign the song to an Artist or music supervisor directly, you don't need to have a publishing company (with BMI). You will automatically receive both the publishing and writer's share.

[doughnutsrule]

Thanks everyone. Does open mic count? Only thing I have so far.Also, just to clarify, here's a hypothetical:You don't yet have an established publishing company but another publisher is willing to share publishing on a song you wrote. In contracts, how do you know what fictitious name to use if it hasn't been accepted by your PRO yet?Jeff

[matto]

Jul 1, 2009, 7:04am, doughnutsrule wrote:Also, just to clarify, here's a hypothetical:You don't yet have an established publishing company but another publisher is willing to share publishing on a song you wrote. In contracts, how do you know what fictitious name to use if it hasn't been accepted by your PRO yet?IF that situation comes up, then you register your publishing company at that time and use the contract offer to pass the application requirements.No publisher I know would turn down a song they want, or take all the publishing instead of just a share, because of the few days' delay registering a pub co would cause.It's also very rare these days for a serious publisher to offer co-publishing to a writer without any track record.So I really don't think there's any point in jumping the gun at this point, just register as a writer once you have a song recorded and up somewhere "in public".HTH,matto

[doughnutsrule]

Okay. Got it. Thanks matto.