Before you so anything you would need to affiliate your company with ASCAP or BMI. The reason you have to do this first is that these societies won’t let you use a name that’s the same or similar to the name of an existing company. They don’t want to accidentally pay the wrong party, and so they’re tough about the name you can use. And you don’t want to have label copy, printed music, copyright registrations, and everything else in the name of a company that can’t collect performance royalties.

You can affiliate and secure your name by completing an application and giving the society three name choices, ranked in order. That way, at least one of the names should clear. If you’re also a songwriter and haven’t yet affiliated , you should affiliate as a writer with one of the two societies at the same time (the won’t let you affiliate with both). You’ll have to affiliate as a publisher with the same society that you affiliate as a songwriter.


The publishing company affiliation forms are pretty straight forward; they as you who owns the company, the address, and similar exciting, provocative questions. You also need to give them information about all songs in your catalogue (writers, publishers, foreign deals, recordings, etc. ), so they can put the info into their system and make sure you’re properly credited (read ’paid’ ). You can get affiliation applications by contacting ASCAP or BMI or if your British, the PRS.

SETTING UP BUSINESS
If your not a corporation using the corporate name, the next step is to file what, in California , is known as a ‘fictitious business-name statement,’
This is a document filed with a country recorder and published in a newspaper, and it has its counterpart in most states. It tells the world that you’re doing business under a name that isn’t your own and make is legal to do so . At least in California, you need this statement to open a bank account and, even more importantly , to cash cheques made out to that name.

COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION

Next, register the songs with the Copyright Office in the name of your publishing entity. If the sons were previously copyrighted in your name, you need to file an assignment transferring them to the publisher’s name.

SOCIETY REGISTRATION
To the extent that you didn’t do so when you originally affiliated, you must register all your songs with the performing rights society. The societies will send you the forms, which are self – explanatory. You only have to register the songs as either the writer or the publisher, not both.

After that, you’re in business. You can begin to issue licenses to record companies and other users, as well as make foreign subpublishing agreements, print deals, nor will anybody be interested in making them, until you have a record released. In fact, unless you’ve got a record coming out (or some other exploitation, like a film or TV show using your songs), the societies won’t even let you affiliate, and frankly, there’s not much point in doing any of this. You’ll just be all dressed up with no place to go.




(Taken from Everything You Need To Know About the Music Business ...by Donald S. Passman)