Short on music industry contacts? Attend conferences like the New Music Seminar to meet the right people. (image source)

Guest post by Eric Beall, Vice President of A&R at Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. Eric is the author of Making Music Make Money and The Billboard Guide to Writing and Producing Songs That Sell, as well as the designer of the Music Publishing 101 course for Berklee College of Music's berkleemusic.com.

Read part one of this article to learn about how music publishing turns your songs into money, and the first two crucial steps that will get you into the business.

When I said in my first post that music publishing is the invisible man of the music industry, I meant it as a positive statement—the business of music publishing is out there earning money for artists, songwriters and producers while they’re hardly aware of it. Somewhere a song is playing on the radio, or showing up in the background of a video game, or playing in the background at a shopping mall while the songwriter is a thousand miles away. That’s the good news.

But it doesn’t mean that publishers themselves can be invisible. As much as any manager or record executive, a publisher needs to have a profile in the industry of which he or she is a part. Likewise, if you’re going to be effective as a music publisher, you can’t allow any corner of it to be invisible to you. The next three steps in getting your music publishing business off the ground are all about keeping your eyes wide open:

Want your songs to start making money? Here's what you need to do. (image source)

Guest post by Eric Beall, Vice President of A&R at Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. Eric is the author of Making Music Make Money and The Billboard Guide to Writing and Producing Songs That Sell, as well as the designer of the Music Publishing 101 course for Berklee College of Music's berkleemusic.com.

For most young bands on the early road trip to superstardom, the question of how to develop their music publishing business ranks well below “what is that funny grinding sound the van keeps making?” and “can we make it to Subway after the show?” Which is fair enough, given that few young bands understand how music publishing works, or what it can do.

Publishing is the invisible man of the music business, quietly working behind the scenes while the show goes on elsewhere. But if you’re lucky, the invisible man shows up twice a year with some money you didn’t even know you earned, which makes him someone worth getting to know better.