On Helping African And Caribbean Artists

A collage of Blackman, a rapper from Congo to whom I provided career advice. Photos from his Facebook fan page.
Thanks to my buddy Mark Adato, and his work with the organization Africa New Day, I got to help two African independent artists from Congo with career advice. This year, through my mentorship work at SXSW and through AND, I’ve been honored to give career advice to artists in the Caribbean and Africa.
Independent artists in the United States take for granted our relatively easy and abundant access to information and resources related to the music business. Many of the artists in Africa and Carribean do not even know how to get their music on iTunes. They want desperately to share their music. I’m proud that I’ve been able to help a few get started on the right path.
I’ve even used my in-store music video network, which plays in all Shiekh Shoes stores across the United States, to showcase artists from Africa and the Caribbean to my 3 million viewers.
Connecting the diaspora through music, demonstrating our similarities through musical storytelling, and showing that entertainment defies boarders has been a humbling experience.
If you are reading this and you are an artist from Africa, reach out to Africori, which describes itself as a Pan-African music company for artists and labels. Their website is http://africori.com. They may be able to help with getting music distributed. Also, learn about copyrighting your music and collecting music royalties in your territory. You can find more information by talking to Music In Africa foundation. Their website is http://musicinafrica.net.
DOJ 100% Licensing Rule: An UnFair Tax on Hip Hop and Works With Samples?
I often use Hip-Hop and Pop songs in my classes and workshops when discussing rights, income participation, publishing splits, and royalties because these two genres tend to have the most writers per song on average. With the recent DOJ ruling to enforce 100% licensing, songwriters have been trying to understand its impact on their careers. In his blog, TheTrichordist.com, David Lowery presents a compelling argument that the 100% licensing ruling is a “tax” on Hip-Hop music creators and rights-holders. He uses a DJ Khaled song as an example to demonstrate how the 100% licensing rule could impose unfair cost, administrative, and time prohibitive requirements on writers and publishers.
Let’s look at the implications of the DOJ 100% rule for the writers of the 5th most popular Hip Hop Song in the US this week.
These are the four samples in For Free, by DJ Khaled featuring Drake. Each of those sampled songs also has multiple writers. Consequently the list of writers for the composite work is quite long. In this case there are 13 Songwriters, 4 BMI publishers and at least 3 non BMI publishers. 6 writers use ASCAP to license performing rights. 6 writers use BMI and one writer is Canadian so they use SOCAN. As is always the case with works composed of samples, these writers have a co-writer agreement to spell out ownership percentages and then an agreement that specifies each party will license and collect it’s own fractional share. “You do your business and collect your money, I do…
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Music Industry Announcements
A few music industry announcements:
1. I am giving a talk and mini-workshop on Saturday, August 13th at 11am at the Indie Entertainment Summit titled “Music Metadata Matters: How Metadata Impacts Your Income & Opportunities” followed by speaking on a panel on YouTube video monetization for DIY indie artists and bands. Get deats and tickets at http://www.IESfest.com.
2. I am organizing and hosting the Southern California Music Industry Professionals’ August Music Industry Mixer on Thursday, August 18th form 6pm to 9pm at The Federal Bar. We have a special guest speaker, Tiamo Vettori De Vettori, Founder/CEO of Musicpreneur Academy and a Music Success Coach (www.TiamoMusic.com), will give a talk “Secret High Paying Gigs: 5 Lucrative Markets for Musicians in the NEW Music Industry.” This event is FREE. Join SCMIP at http://www.meetup.com/SCMIPonline and RSVP for the mixer at http://www.SCMIP-August.eventbrite.com.
3. I have a panel submitted for SXSW 2017 on music rights and metadata in the ever evolving digital music space featuring panelists from Music Reports, BuzzAngle, TuneRegistry, and Crunch Digital. Vote for the panel and leave comments at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/62361.
4. I am now the full-time CEO of TuneRegistry, an easy-to-use music catalog and metadata management platform with built-in music administration tools for the independent music community. TuneRegistry helps music creators and rights-holders organize their music catalog and streamline administrative tasks such as registering with rights organizations. Our goal is to have 1,000 music creators and rights-holders using TuneRegistry by the end of 2016. Please tell your music industry friends and send them to http://www.tuneregistry.com for details.
To stay up-to-date about my projects, work, involvements, and my upcoming appearences subscribe to my blog at http://www.daeboganmusic.com, follow me on Twitter @daeboganmusic, and like my Facebook page Dae Bogan Music.