Music Licensing Question

[kraigmason]

Not really sure if this is the correct forum for this post, but I think this is the best place to start...here goes...

A good friend of mine works at a major TV network in the promotions dept.
He has included one of my bands' songs (that I recorded myself no less in my old apartment!) in a promo that will likely air for about 12 weeks.
He dug up some licensing contracts and found that the artist gets paid on the recording and the publishing in 2 seperate streams.
Even though I have a record out, I don't officially have a publishing company.
And I certainly don't want to lose out on a portion of the money that I could getting.
(possibly thousands of dollars!)
Does anyone have any input on this?
I am going to have to talk to the licensing people in the next week or so, so any input would be superb!

Thanks,

Kraig

[A.David.MacKinnon]

They'll pay to use the song - this is usually called the synch license - and they'll pay to use the recording of the song - this is usually called the master use license. The terms sometimes vary but it usually breaks down the same way. If you own the recording (ie: if you aren't under contract with a record company) and haven't asigned publishing to any 3rd party then you get both slices of the pie.

[kraigmason]

Great. I own both sides.
Would you reccomend forming a publishing company? (In general and for this specific purpose).
Or is that not needed?

Thanks,

K.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Unless you're going to do lots of licensing it's probably more trouble than it's worth.