The XXL magazine freshmen class of 2014 is made up of 12 freshmen, including 2 RnB artists.  If you don’t know, the XXL magazine freshmen edition is  a list of new and upcoming hip-hop artists that are featured on the XXL Magazine cover in early March and the carefully chosen artists are introduced to the world in the April issue.  This has become a big thing among upcoming musicians because being featured in the magazine as a freshman, even when you don’t appear on the cover, is kind of a big thing that many newcomers in the music industry believe can be the shortcut to stardom and success.

If you are looking to make it to be a freshman in the magazine, or make it to the cover, there are quite a number of things you have to know about the magazine and the XXL freshmen class which I will  go over in the first part of this post.  I will also provide you with 3 essential tips that you will find useful to getting into the magazine.  I hope the points covered in this post will help you realize your dream.

What is the XXL Magazine Freshman honor?

The XXL magazine over the years has created a badge of honor that the hip-hop community has come to recognize as valuable.  The magazine’s motto, “Hip Hop on a Higher Level” tells all you need to know about what their focus is on.  Although XXL is a print magazine, it is still very relevant in this age of social media and iTunes and the honor they accord upcoming musicians every year has kept it relevant and very influential.  This is the reason many artists see making it to the magazine cover as the ultimate milestone on the path to global dominance.  Is it?

The truth is that the XXL Magazine, being a physical magazine, is really trying to stay relevant and compete with the online world and social media platforms for the news reel.  A paper magazine that makes news available at the end of the month is no match for online news platforms that break the news by the second, and they are all free.  Even the XXL Magazine, despite its popularity, reaches the stands several months after publication, which is done several weeks after an event is being reported.  In essence, the XXL magazine is no match for the cyberspace.

This brings us to the next point – relevance.  Is the magazine using the Freshmen honors to keep the magazine relevant or does it use the honors to bring relevance to talented musicians?  There’s debate and controversy surrounding this, but I will leave it to you to decide.  Most people today believe that the magazine searches for the hottest, most promising budding artists, with an established fan base, to get their fans to support the magazine.  This could be true, it could be false.

If you are thinking of making it to the XXL Magazine cover, the criteria the magazine uses to select its freshmen goes beyond talent.  The magazine often chooses upcoming musicians who already have a following on social media, YouTube and other areas of life.  These musicians are required to have established themselves and gotten noticed.  This means that if you want to make it to the XXL Magazine freshman class, you have to work hard to win the hearts of the people and get them to like your music.

How to get to the XXL Magazine’s Freshmen Class

Tip 1: Consistency: Just as with any goal you set, if you want to ever appear in the XXL Magazine Freshman class, you must have a plan and stick to it.  Each freshman who has appeared on the magazine cover has demonstrated consistency in their efforts from the time they release their first mixtapes.  This means that if you want to be recognized, you will need to work at producing the best quality mixtapes, having the best mixtape cover, and  demonstrate a positive outlook by working hard even when times are hard and strive to be unique.

 Tip 2: Create a Buzz: As I mentioned in the post above, the XXL magazine works just like any other component of the music industry – they find you, but only if you make yourself found.  You must learn to promote your music and yourself as an artist first, and invest in getting as many followers on Twitter, the largest fan base on Facebook, the highest number of subscribers on YouTube and get people to share your music than everyone else.  It is going to be hard, but the magazine may just be the FIRST to notice your talent.  In most cases, you will be happy with your success such that when you get noticed it will just be a boost and not a lifeline.

 Tip 3: Timing: Finally, timing is very important.  The list of the year’s annual freshman class is often revealed around March.  Yelawolf made it to the freshman class in 2011 with little effort, but it is clear that it was because he had just been signed by Eminem’s Shady Records back in January.  This is a good example of how making the headlines at the right time could land you in a place on the magazine.

Do you believe you have what it takes to be the XXL Magazine’s next featured freshman?  Do you have the heart to chase this dream?I think you can do start branding yourself and promoting your music.

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Learn How to Copyright Your Music.

I should start with a disclaimer that this article talks about the general knowledge information on copywriting music and is not  legal advice.  Whether you are going through or are considering copyrighting your content, it is advisable you talk to a lawyer , or just Google  the specific copyright laws in your state first.

We live in a highly commercialized world today, where sharks and vultures are at every corner waiting.  When you put your efforts into creating something beautiful, you have to protect it by copyrighting it, a process which simply proves when you submitted your original work.  The process of copyrighting your music may seem complicated and unnecessary at first but trust me,  you need to know how it works.

How copyright works

There are people at the copyright office who receive your submission but they don’t listen to it.  In fact, their work is basically to receive your work and file it somewhere, in storage, for when you need to prove it’s your work.  When you copyright your songs, art or music, whatever you call it, you are protecting your creations by putting an immortal stamp and the date of creation is acknowledged by the system.

But you need to know that there are some aspects of your submissions that you cannot be protected, even if copyright is registered to you like a.  These are:

1. The overall concept or the idea of the song

2. Chord progressions

3. Title and short phrases

4. Mixtape cover, itunes, Or album artwork concept.

Simply put, when you copyright your music you copyright your lyrics and melodies.  When you look at it, these are essentially the only things you can create, right?

Steps in Copyrighting your Music

Step 1: Start by making a good quality copy of your music and store it in a CD, computer hard disk, online (cloud storage), mini-disk, LP, MP3 or whatever form you want.  Just make sure you have an actual copy that you need to create a hard copy of your music.  When your music is recorded, it is ready to be copyrighted.  Let’s get it registered.

Step 2: Before we proceed, I should point out that there are two ways that you can choose to register your music, and both start online at the Government’s Copyright website  www.copyright.gov.  On your browser, go to the website and click on the ‘Register a Copyright’ link.  Registering your content online is simple, but note that it takes time to be processed.

Step 3: There are essentially three forms you will have to complete when copyrighting your music but the ones that matter in this case are the Performing Arts (PA) and the Sound Recording (SR) forms.  Which form you complete just depends on what you are copyrighting.  Here is a brief guide to help you know which form to fill:

Musical composition as well as dramatic works recorded on tapes and disks are essentially the works of performing art and are registered on the Performing Arts form or the short version of the PA form.  You will also fill this form when copyrighting only the underlying works such as soundtracks, dramatic work or musical composition even when you do not provide a disk or tape.

When copyrighting unpublished or published sound recordings for particular recorded performances or for particular sounds, you will need to fill the Sound Recordings (SR) form.  You will also be required to use this form when copyrighting sound recording as well as underlying works such as literary works, dramatic and musical composition in one registration.  However, you will only register them separately  only if you created both works.  You cannot copyright someone else’s work and yours in one registration.  The form SR is also filled when copyrighting a multimedia kit such as one that combines different forms of creative works and content with different authorships including sound recordings, books and audio cassettes.

Step 4: Copyrighting your creative work is not an easy task for you, and neither is it for the folks at the copyright office.  This is the reason copyright registration has a small fee attached to it, whether you are filling the Sound Recording (SR) or the Performance Arts (PA) forms.  The current fee for copyrighting your music, book, periodical, art or any other creative work stands at $35 per single work by a single author.  Instead of paying $35 for each song you are copyrighting, it is wiser to compile an album or a mixtape and register it once to save time, money and effort.

When you create a masterpiece work of art or exert your talent into something real, it is very important to protect it.  The US copyright law states that a creative work becomes copyrighted at the moment of creation, and all the rights for that work immediately belong to the creator or creators.  However, this is not enough to protect your work and registration is still necessary to provide an undeniable level of proof as to the ownership of the content and to benefit from statutory damages in case another entity infringes on the registered copyright.