Maximizing the Online Economy and Making the Most of Your Copyrights (Part 1 – Music)

Ivory Circle performing at CBCA Business for the Arts Awards. Image by Amanda Tipton Photography

This webinar series is intended to help artists make the most of the internet-based economy, leveraging their intellectual property to maximize income during the COVID-19 public health and economic crisis. Each webinar focuses on a different arts discipline. Part 1 is designed for the music industry (musicians and bands).

This webinar introduces artists to the basics of copyright protection and why it’s so vitally important now. Without live performances and in-person interactions and transactions available, artists of all kinds have been forced to take their business almost completely online. Fortunately, there’s already a legal system for protecting your creations and the income derived from your creations that works well in an internet-based economy – as long as artists know how to harness it – and that’s the copyright system. This webinar will cover the basics of what a copyright is, introduce artists to the basics of how to register their copyrights, and discuss income streams that artists can be utilizing now to maintain cash flow. For all artists, it starts with the copyright, so we make sure that artists know how to get theirs registered and protected.

For musicians, this means getting set up with ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and SoundExchange, and exploring publishing-administration services.

Across the board, we emphasize the importance of contracts for larger transactions, to ensure that copyright rights are not inadvertently given away or left unprotected.

This webinar series is led by Max Hass with Hass Law LLC. Max is an entertainment and business attorney, musician, and the founder of Hass Law LLC. He has worked with dozens of musicians, artists, filmmakers, and small businesses in the creative sector, beginning his career in the vibrant Southeast Louisiana region before relocating to Denver in 2019.