Music Business and Management
Course 17: Independently Monetizing Music with Symphonic Distribution 

For the most part, the preceding courses were designed for artists, managers, and others to protect themselves when working with a label. But what if you don’t want to or don’t have to work with a label? With the technology of today–digital audio workstations, distribution platforms, and other internet-based applications–an artist may not need a label.

While signing a carefully crafted deal with a record label may be a good option for an artist depending on their situation, it’s not the only way to get their music heard and generate revenue. There are tools and services available to independent artist teams that can provide the necessary avenues for distribution.

In this course you will be watching a short seminar from Janette Berrios, Director of Marketing at Symphonic Distribution, discussing how to independently distribute and monetize music. However, a songwriter or artist will still want to protect their property, so the other courses will still apply in many cases. Even if their music was produced, distributed, and monetized “in-house,” they still want to be able to direct how it can be used.

For your assignment, you will create a list of publishing houses of varying sizes and then research their catalog of artists. Then choose two publishers that work with similar genres and craft an email for those publishers to ask about publishing the work of your artist. You’ll want to make it as detailed as possible while keeping in mind these are busy people.