The knowledge behind your manager.

Distribution is not registration, and this is where most independent income quietly dies. Registration one: your PRO (BMI, ASCAP, SESAC) as both writer AND publisher — most artists register as writer only and forfeit the publisher's half of performance royalties on their own song. Registration two: the sound recording copyright, separate from the composition. Registration three: mechanical royalties via the MLC in the US, which is a separate claim your distributor generally does not make for you. Every released song should be checked against all three. Older releases are worth auditing first — unclaimed royalties have deadlines.

Supervisors reject on logistics before they ever reject on taste. Three things get you binned instantly: unclear ownership, no instrumental version, and a 4-minute intro. Before you pitch anything: confirm you can clear it in one email (one owner or signed splits), bounce an instrumental and a 30-second edit, and name the file ArtistName_SongTitle_BPM_Key_Mood.wav. In the email itself, two sentences maximum, one link, no press release, no story about your journey. Say what the cue does emotionally — 'builds under dialogue, no vocals until 1:10' — because that's the language of the edit bay. Follow up once, after three weeks, with a different song. Never with the same one.

The blockage is almost never laziness — it's that the remaining task has no sensory reward. Two mechanisms work reliably. First, shrink the unit until it's absurd: not 'finish the verse' but 'write four bad lines, timer on, twenty minutes, no editing.' Bad output is the goal, because a bad verse is editable and a blank one is not. Second, never let admin be the first task of a session — always sandwich it between two creative acts, so the nervous system associates it with momentum rather than dread. And crucially: externalise every decision. A brain that has to remember where the song lives has no capacity left to finish it.

Splits are easy when nothing has happened and brutal once money exists. Have the conversation in the room, the day it's written, before anyone knows if it's good. Keep it to four questions: who wrote what, what's the percentage, who owns the master, who administers publishing. Write it in a message thread if that's all you can manage — a dated text where both parties state agreement is worth vastly more than a verbal deal and a good memory. The most common disaster is not a dispute over a hit; it's a great song that can never be licensed because a co-writer stopped answering their phone three years ago.

You do not need to be charismatic online. You need lead time and three assets. Four weeks out: submit to editorial via your distributor and pitch 10 small playlists that actually match, by name, with a personal line each. Three weeks out: one piece of process content — the room, the take, the mistake. Two weeks out: pre-save link to the people who already know you, direct message not broadcast. Release week: one thing to buy. That's it. Artists who feel drained by promotion are almost always trying to be interesting; the ones who sustain it are simply being specific about the work.