How to release an electronic/dance music compilation album commercially

In commercially releasing a compilation, a series of tasks and expenses have to be executed and incurred. After doing some extensive research, I deduced the process into these steps;

1. Develop a theme and format of the compilation album, envision how you want the album to sound and plan the recording process.

2. Source the individual records (or tracks) you more or less want to include in the compilation. Then after sourcing, work out the order you would like to play the records and the phases the journey has to pass. Once the playlist is finalised, time to get licenses.

3. Because the records featured on the compilation are not original works by the album author, permission has to be obtained from the rights holders of the copyrighted works. And so technically, a master 're-use' license and mechanical licenses (both in the recording and the composition) have to be acquired for every record featured on the album recording. Once the licenses have been cleared,

4. Get into the recording process, it could be one or more sessions to perfect the set depending on the dj’s proficiency. It could be on turntables, cdjs, a dj controller, or computer software – whatever works best and suits the dj. It is not so much the gear, but the performance.

5. Once you have a recording in hand, it is time to mix and master the recording into professional or high-end sound quality.

6. With the recording done and mastered, it is time to share it with the world. As a side note, a precursor to all this is that the album artist (the dj in this case) secures all relevant intellectual property, such trademarks of names, logos and things of that nature.

7. In order to set up an arrangement for royalty collection it is therefore important to register your works with the relevant public performance collection management society/organisation.

8. When starting out and because of resource constraints, it will be best to distribute solely digitally and particularly through the internet medium. Which brings us to the important task of selecting a digital distributor who is also referred to as an aggregator and has the ability to place an artist’s music on up to 150 download and streaming sites around the world.

9. To streamline the process, it would be efficient to deal with an aggregator that also has the capacity to market the musical work globally and thus consolidate the marketing and distribution activities. However it is also incumbent upon the artist to employ additional marketing efforts to reach an effective audience as possible.

10. Finally, if the release and marketing thereof is handled correctly, comes the tasks of monitoring sales which again would be handled by the aggregator but important that (if it is an independent release) the author and rights holder be kept on the same page with regular statements.

11. In conclusion, come the administration duties such as the accounting and bookkeeping entries, declaring of revenue, registering and paying the appropriate tax amount to the relevant tax authorities. This would require the professional assistance of a registered tax practitioner or tax accountant.