Everything about Harry Fox.

You may have heard the name Harry Fox.  Like PROs (for songwriting royalty collection on public performances, online streaming or terrestrial radio) or SoundExchange (for only performers royalty collection for having performed --only internet based), the Harry Fox Agency covers a very specific segment of the song writing royalty business.

Whereas PROs like ASCAP and BMI cover performance royalties for usage in things like radio broadcast, and SoundExchange tracks royalties for music used in digital media for recording artists, the Harry Fox Agency works a very specific segment of the market.  The "HFA" represents music publishers for their mechanical and digital licensing needs. 

What are mechanical rights? Basically a mechanical right specifies who can reproduce your music by making their own new recording of it an then distributing that version. Now that's not to be confused with master recording rights which have to do with who reproduce and release a recording you've already made.

So for example, if you wanted to record your version of another artist's song, you'd pay a "compulsory" (or obligatory set fee) licensing fee to Harry Fox which would give you the right to record and reproduce copies of the song. The rate is based on the "estimated number of CDs or digital" downloads you expect to manufacture or sell. If you sell more then the expected number you owe more fees. The current mechanical rate is 9.1 cents per copy for a song that is 5 minutes long or less. So, for example if you intend to press 1,000 CD copies of a Beatles song that you recorded you would owe Harry Fox $91.

If you estimate you'll sell 1,000 digital downloads of the same track, you'll also owe $91.00 for those. In addition to issuing mechanical licenses and collecting and distributing mechanical royalties, HFA also conducts royalty examinations to verify the accuracy of royalty statements reported and payments paid by licensees. 

They also pursue piracy claims from copyright holders and offer rights management solutions for like Slingshot for music providers and Songfile for licensing music. For example, if you want to find out if that Beatles song you want to cover is available through Harry Fox, you use Songfile.

Songfile is an online mechanical licensing tool designed for the do-it-yourself music industry market. It allows anyone to search through a database of over millions of songs and purchase licenses. Once a song is licensed Slingshot can be used to manage the license. Slingshot is a rights management service that helps digital music providers manage their licenses and is designed to eliminate the need for licensees to hire a staff to manage thousands of licensing relationships, develop a rights database, program complex royalty formulas, or handle the royalty payment process.

Clients instead make one payment, and Harry Fox handles the rest. So for example, let's say you want to produce an album of pop cover songs, you would first search Songfile to see if the songs are managed by Harry Fox. You would then need to license each one of those songs individually. But by managing this process through Slingshot you don't have to worry about keeping track of each individual license yourself. Slingshot keeps track of all of the songs you've licensed, the fees you've paid and the royalties due. Now, because Harry Fox is the only agency in the US that handles mechanicals, if someone wants to license a song that's not listed on Songfile it means it's not managed by Harry Fox and that person would have to contact the publisher of the song directly to obtain the mechanical license.

Some publishers and artists chose not to work through the Harry Fox Agency and handle mechanical licensing themselves. If you're an independent artist, you may find it easier to handle mechanical licensing requests yourself. You can find sample mechanical licensing agreements just by googling the term. If you reach a point where you're receiving an endless stream of licensing requests, which isn't a bad problem to have, and you can't handle them yourself, then you can register with Harry Fox and let them do the job for you. So that's a brief rundown of the Harry Fox Agency and how it fits into the elaborate landscape of the songwriting business.  

FYI-It should be noted again, that the Harry Fox Agency is aka "HFA" in the music business world.