back to the original question.......... masters are the ownership of the record. lets take rapper A. he makes a cd, he owns it. he can give permission to whoever he wants, to do whatever he or they want, whenever, etc. he owns it.
royalties /publishing is what everyone involved gets paid for.. and this is where it gets complicated and people get fukked............
rapper A made a cd. he owns it. but on the cd he has features, and producers. well lets make it even at first. 1 song. the writer gets half the publishing and the producer gets half. now this gets muddy when you have 3-4 writers, 2-3 producers, all getting credits on your album. divide it again by how many songs you have on the cd. so you might have 15 songs, rapper and producer. well he's getting half. or he might have 10 features and 15 producers. well now you splitting all that publishing money up between y'all
that's the short version. but anyways you want to hire a publishing company. ASCAP or BMI are the biggest. what they do is watch the world for your music. radio, clubs, satellite, internet, tv shows, video games.... doesn't matter, they pay the RIAA to play all music. now its up to you to find out how many times and request your money. what the publishing company does, is do this for you. now realistically, they don't know either... but they say they do.. and all companies i listed before are required to turn in play lists so the riaa knows what's being spun. that's how you get "spins"
another thing about publishing.. you get this no matter what. so you charge a guy 10k for a feature. he lists you as co-writer and then the song blows up. well you still get paid off your spins, cause you're a co-writer.
royalties are another way you get paid... another short version.... you sign to a label. they give you 100k advance and say you have to recoup 120k back. then you make 10 cents a record. in other words, until your cd comes out and makes the record label 120k, you don't make shyt. you actually owe them. once you hit 120k, any albums sold after that, you get the 10 cents for each one. these are your royalties.................
ok now that all that shyt is done......................................
what a record company most likely will do is try to lowball you. they will damn sure own your masters. so you don't get to choose if your songs will be on "its now 234823" or if its in "lion king 4" they own it, but you still get publishing and royalties no matter where they sell it. you just have no control.. even features, videos, appearances... they can control all that cause they control all your recordings after you sign to them.. that's why mixtapes are "promotional use" even the rappers don't have rights to sell their own music
until.............. their next move. which will be to get you to sign over your publishing. they want it all. biggie once sold his for 200k. as you can see, his kids would much rather have the publishing with all the plays he gets. now they might offer you money to sell it, they might say sign it over or no deal. but remember. this is your main pay right here with music. you'd hate to do a song with jay-z and it go number 1, and the label gets all the publishing checks
last is royalty. they'll offer you shyt. loan you 1 mil, tell you it'll be 3 cents an album after you make them back 1.5 mil. they want you broke and under their thumb.. they know you ain't paying that shyt back. and if you did, you'd have to go damn near 3 times plat and still only make 3 cents an album
and 360 basically adds in touring, shirts, etc etc. all the non music related money... they say to you, instead of taking all of the big 3, we'll talk half of those 3, plus 20% of everything else... sign it or no deal
THE ONLY WAY to avoid this, is to have a name or a rep or they come to you begging. they gotta outbid each other for you, which means you ain't struggling to sign with someone. then they come at you like, "we'll give you all your pub" "we'll give you pub and 1 dollar a record" "well we'll give you............" and see what you can get.. but other than that, they raping you
