7. Market Your Songs to Nontraditional Media

Changes in technology have altered the ways in which songs earn money. The source for most music listening hours is neither CDs nor radio but video games.

In addition, advertising agencies, motion picture and TV companies, and Internet websites have all opened up new licensing opportunities. For example, MTV discovered one songwriter at MP3.com and licensed his music for background in its Real World television series, resulting in payments from MTV and later from BMI.

8. Consider Taking a Lower Percentage of Revenue for an Established Publisher

If you create your own music publishing company you'll get 100% of the songwriting revenue. If you sell your song to an existing music publisher you'll probably earn 60-75% of the song revenue. But don't assume that getting a larger percentage of the revenue is always better. An established publisher may be better equipped to get you deals, especially lucrative ones like putting your songs in a movie or an advertisement.

9. Copyright is Automatic

You do not have to register your music with the U.S. Copyright Office in order to get copyright protection. In most countries, including the U.S. and Canada, all that is required for a song to be copyrighted is that it be "original" and "fixed." "Original" means that the song is original to the writer and that it was not copied from another source. A work is "fixed" when it exists in some tangible manner such as sheet music, a tape recording, or saved onto a computer disk.

Even though copyright registration is not necessary to protect your song, it can help protect it from infringement, especially if your song is registered prior to an infringement or within three months of its release (you may be able to recover more money from an infringer in that case). For more information on copyright registration, see Music Law: How to Run Your Band's Business, by Rich Stim (Nolo), or check out the U.S. Copyright Office website at www.copyright.gov.

10. Tax Breaks for Home Office Use

If you regularly use part of your home exclusively to compose and record your songs, and you have no other fixed location where you do such things, you can claim a home office tax deduction. How much you can claim toward your home office deduction depends on how much (what percentage) of your home you use as a home office or studio.

For example, if you use 20% of your home, you can allot 20% of your home office expenses (such as rent, depreciation, mortgage interest, property taxes, electricity, gas, insurance) to the home office deduction.

You may lose the capital gains tax exemption. If you do take the home office deduction and then sell your home, you could lose the capital gains tax exemption on the home office portion of your home. However, this won't happen if you live in the home two out of the five years before you sell it.

For more information on the home office deduction, read IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home, available from www.irs.gov, or Nolo's book Deduct It!, by Steve Fishman.