And if you were going to choose a band name, say you were going to choose the name The Forks for your band, F, O, R, K, S, if you did that, and you look on Google, you'll see that there's all sorts of other entities called The Forks. There's a town in Canada, there's cutlery companies. There's all sorts of different things called The Forks. So on search engine optimization, you'd be very, very low down the list. However, if you changed the name to F, O, R, C, S, The Forcs, you would be unique, and that would be at the top of search engine optimization. So that's something to bear in mind, a classic example of that, of course, is The Weekend. He wanted to call himself The Weekend, W, E, E, K, E, N, D, but he found out there was another band in Canada called The Weekend, and so he just dropped the E out of the weekend. So it's W, E, E, K, N, D, and he was in the top slot at Search Engine Optimization because it was a unique name, and nobody's going to have that name ever apart from him.

Play wherever you can, do as many shows as you can. Play for your friends and family, at birthday parties, in bars and pubs, in private events, and open mic nights are really good to learn your craft as a live musician. Street busking is also really good. I'm a huge fan of street busking. I think street busking you get music on the streets. You feel happier if you're walking down the street. I do anyway, and you learn your craft, if you're a street busker, you know. If they get someone goes by and they put coins in your guitar case, they liked that song. If you don't get any reaction to a song, maybe that's not the song you should be doing. So you learn so much from street busking.

Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical IndicationsThen you create an EPK. An EPK is an electronic press kit, and that's got interviews on it, videos, biogs, photographs, that's what you send to people, if you want shows or if you want press articles, etc. Create a website. There's plenty of free templates out there. WordPress, for example, Wix is a common one that a lot of artists use. It's very good, and there's many others.

You then need to make a great recording. And you engage a digital distributor who will put your track on 50 digital platforms globally, including the big ones, Spotify, Apple, Amazon, etc. Typical examples of digital distributors on the DIY level are CD Baby, Ditto, Distrokid and for an annual fee of, you know, $30 or so, they will give you 100% of the money. You engage a CRM service for email marketing, such as MailChimp or Fan Bridge, and then that's the way you build a fan base. You create a constant stream of new content for socials, and you understand your fan base and engage with them as much as possible. You join the appropriate CMOs, and we'll talk a bit more about that in a minute.

Fifth Session (Geneva, September 11 to 15, 2000)

As for understanding the fundamentals of copyright and related rights, it's very important right from the start. In the book I talk about, I hope I talk about it in this fairly understandable way, but there are many other sources out there too. But do understand the basis of copyright and related rights. Basically, music has value, and you've got to understand the music has value wherever it's used. It needs to be paid for. So if it's on the radio, it's on the television, it's played in hairdressers, it's played in a sports stadium, it's played live. Wherever that happens, it has value, and every time that value is there, it needs to be paid for.

So that's a really fundamental thing to understand. Many artists and authors and performers have missed out because they didn't understand the basics of copyright and collective management. Artists should get involved with every career decision, and usually the most successful ones do. If Taylor Swift is a great example where she's very involved with the business side of what she does.

Lise McLeod