Do any of you involve yourself in the legal aspects of music? For example, do you copyright your bandname or songs?
Ascap or BMI?
What do you think are the pros and cons of taking your stuff a bit more seriously?

legal? kinda i guess? not really.

copyright? no

jav has bmi.

pros = $, having your ass covered, etc.
cons = sometimes if you're too obsessed with doing things "right" you forget to have fun.

I started my own publishing imprint, signed up with ASCAP, and my stuff is administered by Bug Publishing.

I'd be interested in picking your brain a bit, Brightcarver.

Since its tax season and everything, I've been thinking. Do you have to set up a small business with the state if you're in the green? Most of us actually wind up PAYING to play our music due to recording costs, equipment (especially if you have pro-gear) and beer, so there wouldn't be income to pay taxes on. So, if there are any bands that are actually drawing an income from playing music, does your band pay taxes?

the auto-jam is Open Source. i am not worried about trademarks for any band name(s). i have not registered copyright for anything. i do put little c's and a year on all my charts. i have no proper recorded albums.

that said, i will register my works as soon as they pay for themselves. i imagine that will be in the year 2030.

From what I understand it only costs about $30 to register an album thru ASCAP/BMI/that other one. I don't really see any cons in doing it other than the cost, which isn't much. One of the pros is you get paid (ha!) for each aired performance and rerecording of your work. I guess another con is if its a work that was created by the entire band and not just one person in particular, and your band isn't an entity of its own with its own tax ID number, then you have to pick one guy in the group to get the check. What I wonder is if you register a compilation of songs, is each individual song covered or does it have to be the whole? You know what I mean?
And registering with a publisher doesn't mean that your work is copyrighted. That's a different thing. Copyrighting is done through the US Copyright office. That is another $35 or $40.
We've considered becoming an LLC, but that sounds ridiculously tedious. I want to do as little paperwork as possible come tax time. I'd say the biggest con of it all is losing the emotional/spiritual/artistic connection you have with your music. I guess if you can balance it all, good for you. It just sounds like way too much of a headache though.

I don't see the point if a band is just sticking around abq show-wise. But maybe if you're playing more than 150+ shows a year in multiple cities.

I was on CDbaby yesterday and it seems now they do liscensing. It didn't seem like it was through ASCAP or BMI. It seemed like it was on their own. Any way CD baby has been pretty helpful for us. They can work with UPC barcodes and they will assign an ISRC code to each individual song. Its just a part of the 35$ setup fee.

"I'd be interested in picking your brain a bit, Brightcarver"

sure thing--I've definitely been round the block!
contact me over at the Brightcarvers site
http://www.myspace.com/brightcarvers