#MusicBusinessMonday: Session Musicians

Session Musicians: Quality music starts with talented musicians. Your mastery of instruments, performance, and sometimes improvisation can make the difference between a recording that’s just Ok and a recording that’s a masterpiece, so your skills should not go unrewarded.

Did you know that session musicians and background vocalists may be entitled to royalties when the recordings on which they’ve performed are played on digital services such as Pandora, SiriusXM, Music Choice, and thousands of Internet webcasters?

Did you know they also earn royalties when playing in a backing band of a live performance, if that performance is recorded and released to digital music services?

Well, now you know.

The American Federation of Musicians (AFM) and SAG-AFTRA have joined resources to collect and distribute royalties to the session musicians and background vocalists who’ve been credited on recordings (studio or live). These royalties are distributed by the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund.

It is very important that you or your manager insists that the artist or record company has properly credited you for your contribution to the recording. TuneRegistry enables artists to keep all production credits in one place — the same place as artist splits in their catalog — and then deliver that information to metadata services. AFM & SAG-AFTRA IPRD Fund looks for published credits to verify your royalty entitlement.