It should be no secret that I release an unusually high volume of cover songs and that’s not about to slow down anytime soon.

Music distributers have slowly begun to address the issue of how to handle cover song releases by indie artists who have otherwise been pretty free to go ahead and do whatever they want at this point.

It’s been important to me since the outset of my various projects that I’m ensuring that the artists I’m choosing to cover are being properly taken care of on the back-end of things, and as the reigns get a little tighter on streaming platforms for this sort of thing, you might be wondering what the best way to protect both your cover release and how to ensure those pesky legal needs are met for your favourite artists.

So, how do I go about getting mechanical licenses for cover songs and what does that cost me?

Enter EasySong.

Easy Song is a quick and painless way of clearing all your covers for your releases, whether you want to put them up on Bandcamp as a free release or you want to send it of off to your favourite streaming services to pitch to playlists, or even if you just want to have them posted to your personal website like mine right here.

On average, each cover song license through EasySong sets me back $13.59, but they’re often running promotional deals (especially around holidays!) where you can save a lot more.

That might seem like a lot of money but it’s really vital in protecting yourself from any legal backlash or from distributors taking down your release without notice once they catch wind that you haven’t done your homework here.

Once you’ve submitted for a license, you’ll be cleared for 100% of the rights you require and you’ll get a proof of licensing sent directly to your e-mail account, which will have all the information popular music distributors like CD Baby require for an official cover song release. This license is also saved securely in your EasySong account in case you ever need to refer to it.

And again I’ll stress, this is really important to ensure the artists you’re celebrating with covers are getting what they’re owed every time someone downloads or streams your song.

The whole process takes no more than 2-business days so even if you’re running on a tight deadline, EasySong will be able to clear it for ya and you can rest easy on release day.

You can use EasySong for all sorts of other services, too, like to copyright your own original compositions or license your music, but I really just wanted to highlight their cover-song license service for you today.

Now, get back to recording those songs!

---

This blog contains a referral link, which means if you use the link provided I’ll get a small kick-back from EasySong to use towards my own future releases. I appreciate you using it if you choose to sign up and use their services but you are under no obligation to do so and can also just jump straight to their website 🙂