This is a guest blog post by Caz McChrystal, artist attorney and Assistant Professor of Business Law at University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point.

The musicians that I represent aren’t being offered multi-million dollar record deals that land them on the cover of Rolling Stone or in a mansion atop the Hollywood hills. Quite frankly, I’m not sure those deals exist other than in an idealized memory of what the record industry looked like in its days of excessive hedonism. So where does that leave work-a-day musicians – the ones that actually make music for a living?

On the composition and sound recording side, licensing and distribution deals are getting smaller, each netting less pay than in years past. That is the bad news. The good news is that there are infinitely more opportunities out there. However, as deals get smaller, a musician must both look farther afield to earn her money and make the most of every deal that comes her way by avoiding costly mistakes.

Rather than relying on a record label or large publishing house to distribute and license their music abroad, musicians are increasingly setting up their own distribution networks in foreign territories and handling film, television, and other forms of licensing on their own. That’s where attorneys like me step in.

[Photo:  ”Radio Transmission towers” by FastLizard4 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution]

For decades, commercial radio airplay was considered the silver bullet for success: a form of promotion with sufficient power and reach to generate significant record sales, while also accruing royalties (for songwriters and publishers) and massively raising an artist’s profile.   read more