Hey ya'll, I hope this message finds you well. I have, what feels like a confusing question, am I still able to register my music with my PRO (ASCAP/BMI) if I don't have the exclusive license for the instrumental? As of right now, I have licensed instrumentals non-exclusively. I've released a few songs this year, but neglected to upload to places like PROs or SoundExchange because I assumed I don't have full rights to the instrumentals so I couldn't. Not 100% sure if that's true and out of my own fears of neglectfully doing some illegal move I refrain.

I’m curious, what got you all into this business? Edit: I didn't expect so many of you guys to drop your stories below, thanks. It's crazy how music can bring together so many people all over the world fr. Well guess its time I add my piece... I got into music at like 11-12 years old, my mom was (and still is) straight old school 90s early 2000s hip hop so that's what I came up around, and It started off same as a couple of you guys, just freestyling in school, that led to the cafeteria battles and you know how that goes, after the Ws I was locked in, now we here a decade later and the skys the limit

Does anyone use bandzoogle to host their domain? If so do you mind if I take a look at your website? I just want to see what they have to offer from a consumer standpoint.

Funny cause I always thought of myself of someone being too cool for school but now I’m excited to be on the skool platform

I’ve recently begun learning how to produce instrumentals. While my goal and hope is to get to a point where I make instrumentals from scratch, I still have a long way to go. In the meantime, I’ve been practicing sampling, which I find easier to make a beat to since I’m practically given the melody/sound. However, I often wonder how would I go about clearing a sample if I truly wanted to make money off of it, meaning uploading to streaming platforms (i.e. Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) I’m only speaking as an artist who would want to use it. From my limited knowledge, I know as a producer if I were to license an instrumental with a sample, the agreement could state that it is up to the licensee to clear samples. In my scenario, I am the artist so it’s up to me. My current plan was to record the songs with the sample and only upload to SoundCloud. Based off my other chat topic, I’m certain that I still don’t, legally, have the right to upload or use because I did not clear sample. I’d like to believe uploading to somewhere like SoundCloud would give me some flexibility on potential penalties given that there is no money/royalties being collected from the instrumental. However, all that aside, I’ve attempted to Google how to clear a sample with no successful results. All I truly find is that typically sample clearing is done by a label, production or publishing company. Does that mean there is no way for an independent artist to clear samples? If there is, how does one go about it?