Can i ask a question about publishing produced music?

Question

Hi,

Once the music is produced, well we usually want to do something with it. This is very broad, I know. Questions about copyright, lots of legal forms, branding, promotion, sites to advertise on, iTunes, etc.

Is it appropriate? I would argue so. It would also bring more activity to the site.

Best,

(additional edit: since the beta stackexchange site of Area51 has a musician's site coming up and strong with many commited members joining, and their site EXPLICTLY says no discussion about the music industry or publishing etc., it has to be discussed somewhere. And most professionals in AR&R work for publishing companies/studios anyways. They have valuable information. Why need another site for something with such a strong overlap. Good recording means good publishing. Big bands, small ones trying to get up, want to record and publish their music. This topic does not fit into guitars, music/musicians, so why not here. Yes, it may bogg the site down with ego maniacs stressed with contracts and legalities, but then it means that another stackexchange site does not need to be made. And there is quite a bit of overlap between some sites like Ubuntu->Linux/Unix->StackOverflow->SuperUser already.)

Answer 1

Although this has not been discussed between us (mods), I am a bit reluctant with approving it. The subject basically fits within our community, the real issue with this kind of questions is that the right answer is dependent on the country that you're in.

A general rule of thumb if you want to figure out whether a question fits in here, is 'do you expect many people here that know the answer? Or are there communities (especially within SE) that would be more appropriate?'

Last, if you do decide to ask this question on the board, be both complete and general in your question. Include your country / state, the exact music that your question is about etc.

Answer 2

It's not disallowed by the /faq

http://audio.stackexchange.com/faq

However I think the rest of the community should weigh in -- how closely is this related to the general topic of "Audio Recording and Production?"

Answer 3

I think we need to consider the upcoming might-happen merge with the Video proposal; would that mean we'd be allowing question about film distribution? Getting into Sundance? Youtube social marketing? I'd like to cautiously defer this until the fallout from that merge settles, (or until the merge clearly isn't happening.)

Answer 4

I don't see why not. Most people who go to the trouble of making a recording do so with the intention of sharing it with others in some way, so as long as the questions were not "too localized", I think the community would find it interesting to have the occasional question like:

• Where can I host my music online for people to listen to for free?
• Where can I host my music online for people to buy?
• How do I get my song onto iTunes?
• I made a cover of someone else's song, what are the legal implications?

It seems ironic to rule out questions on this aspect of audio recording and production, while at the same time having several proposals trying to broaden the "scope" of this site.