Royalty payment management is a vast subject and can be quite intimidating for a newbie.

Payments to musicians, songwriters and the creative bunch is subject to the terms laid down in their contract clauses. And each of attorney is paid to interpret clauses in ways most suitable to them.

This post takes you through the concepts of music royalty payments that you need to know to start and run a radio station.

Most of the artists that demand royalty for their music are registered with  one or the other performance rights organizations called PRO. This saves the broadcasters the time, expense, and burden of entering into contracts with each individual copyright owners. ASCAP, BMI, Sound Exchange ,SESAC are the prominent PROs of the world providing you with the option to explore your choices.

These organizations collect royalty fees from broadcasters and other public performers on behalf of singers, writers and music composers who get them selves registered with these organizations. While there is whole lot of  complexities involved in deciding who receives how much and process for calculating the number of broadcasts its not at all important for a radio station owner to know it.

Lets not get into all that unnecessary knowledge.

The subsequent section lists down the process for you to obtain your  broadcast rights by choosing amongst various royalty payment options -

The performance rights organizations offer several payment options for
licensees (broadcasters to say).

You can either choose to pay in  proportion to revenue earned or pay based on number of times the music is broadcast by your station. In this regard, you have four options to use for your radio station -
1. You can either obtain license on a per performance basis.

2. You can pay annual fees for unlimited public performances.

3. You can use the first strategy for some songs/artists and the second option for other set of songs.

4. You can negotiate individually with the music producer and his team for certain songs.

Most of the radio stations will use a combination of all these four strategies to effectively manage their music libraries.

If you are really interested in knowing all these and  starting a radio station, you can learn all that you need to know with book of mine titled ” A step- by step guide to start a radio station “ which is available for instant download and can be purchased for a just USD 9.97 .

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