The sprawling multichannel environment and online social media have made the career of an independent artist more achievable than ever. As an emerging musician, licensing and publishing is an area of the industry that few encounter until a record label or publisher steps in. Realistically though, if your music is of professional quality, then there is a financial incentive for content creators to use underground music instead of billboard pop. Today, there are more productions and channels putting sync revenues within reach of musicians. Without a label, the revenue generated from things like sync goes right into your pocket. These opportunities are still tricky for independent copyright owners to get however, because it takes specialist knowledge, a network of relationships and time. Time that could otherwise be spent playing music.

Assigning and Licensing Rights

The Australian Copyright Council, sister organisation to the Copyright Council of New Zealand have put togehter a brief summary of some of the common aspects of assigning and licensing copyright (note: not music specific). This is a good place to start for someone exploring licensing for the first time.