HOW TO SEND SCORES TO ACA FOR PUBLICATION

(updated June 2023)

General Introduction

ACA publishes music under the name American Composers Edition (BMI) and also American Concert Editions (ASCAP).

ACA is a composers’ collective, with publication and distribution at the heart of our activities.

We seek to encourage music sales and performances by maintaining an informative, and attractive website, by responding to inquiries from interested parties quickly, and by providing our purchasers with materials prepared to high professional standards.

Scores are printed professionally from a Digital collection of PDFs. We also sell secure PDF downloads with licensing options on request.

ACA is administered by a board of directors elected by its composers. It has a long and distinguished history in 20th and 21st century American concert music.

Details in this document will ensure the best possible success for your ACE-published work. This can be summarized as follows:

  1. Register and Deposit your new pieces (or new editions of older works). Fill out the required online registration request form. Send your materials to ACA as email attachments to [email protected]. ACA completes your BMI or ASCAP registration.
  2. Prepare your scores at a high professional level: clean and readable, proper layout, standard page sizes, adequate margins, standard page numbers, proper title pages, standard front matter. For detailed information on how to prepare scores within ACA's publishing guidelines, please read the Score Preparation Guide.
  3. On the bottom of the first page of music, your notice should be:  ©20XX [Your Name]; Publishing license granted to American Composers Edition (BMI) or American Concert Editions (ASCAP)
  4. Convert your score to a high-quality PDF. Obtain necessary permissions for anything copyrighted by others.

Webpage for Your Listings

Each ACA composer has a personal webpage on composers.com. Your address is most likely https://composers.com/composers/firstname-lastname.

Be sure ACA has your updated biography, photo, and email address. Please also send detailed information about upcoming performances, recording releases, and YouTube videos featuring your ACE-published music to [email protected] and [email protected].

Score Deposit Guidelines

  • All incoming materials must be provided in clean digital files such as PDF, Finale, Sibelius, MP3.
     
  • ACA may reformat pages but will not alter any musical elements of scores submitted for consideration.  ACA might ask the composer for corrections and delay distribution for works that are not submitted in professional, ready-to-print master files.
  • ACA can receive  PDF scores and parts as well as uncompressed audio files for works that require audio for performance, so long as the materials are for works that are registered and published by ACA. There may be an extra fee annually if your electronic storage of audio and video at ACA exceeds 10 GB of total disk space.
     
  • If submitting files as part of the registration of a new work, materials may be submitted as an upload within the New Work Registration webform. You must be signed into your composers.com account to access this page.
     
  • We also can accept MP3 listening files for promoting your ACA music. You will be assigned a private secure storage folder online where you can upload any files for safekeeping or transferring to ACA. 
     
  • Paper scores and parts, or audio in CD, cassette, LP, or reels, are no longer accepted for deposit at ACA. We can suggest scanning or transfer services. Be sure you keep single side masters of your scores and parts for reproduction and scanning, not bound copies, which are not useful for ACA.
     
  • If you submit PDF scans of scores, we accept only high-resolution files. Some home-scans are not acceptable and do not reproduce well.  Customers expect professional-looking scores and parts from ACA. Send a page or two test (if you are scanning pages) for ACA review before scanning or uploading loads of files.

 

Text and Other Copyrighted Material

Every use of a text or translation or other copyrighted material written OR FIRST PUBLISHED prior to Jan. 1, 1926 is in public domain in the U.S. If not, you may need to obtain permission from the copyright holder PRIOR to your use of the material in your music score. Permission must be in writing from copyright owner (e.g., the author, estate, or publisher).

Composers should obtain permission for use, BOTH to perform in public AND to distribute sheet music.

At the time you submit a score to ACA for registration, you are required to provide evidence that rights to any other author's work that appears in your piece have been cleared for public performance and print distribution.

This includes any texts sung or spoken, music tunes embedded, audio samples, etc.  You may request guidelines/template for requesting text clearances ([email protected]). If needed, ACA can direct you to people you may hire for assistance with this. You can increase the sales and longevity of your music by using materials that can be cleared for the uses related to publishing, performing, and recording music. 

ACA provides media files to customers as links for download.  Audio files, MaxMSP files, video, and other formats customers need to retrieve are placed on the ACA secure server and a link is provided inside the score for the customer to access the files.

Naming Your Files

Start the file name with your surname, followed by the title. The full legal title of the work is preferred, but you may truncate as needed to keep the file name to a useable length of 12 to 15 characters. 

Do not use special characters or symbols in a PDF file name, regardless of whether or not they are in the actual title. This includes commas, accents, foreign characters, symbols < > : " / \ | ? * & 

The file names should begin with the surname of the composer followed by the underscore and then title.

Be consistent with the title everywhere.

If you have more than 8 part files, please number them in score order 01, 02, 03  etc. 

any foreign character symbols such as è.  None can be used within the computer file name.  Spell out ordinals such as ThreeSongsforTenorPf, or TwentyFourItalianSongs, etc.  not 24ItalianSongs.

Here are examples of files named correctly. 

Howe_Prism.pdf
Sacco_SonataBsTbnPf_Score.pdf
Sacco_SonataBsTbnPf_BsTbn.pdf

If there are  more than 5 parts in a work, please put a number on each of them within the file name so they fall into score order. This way we (and you) can easily see when something is missing.  Print jobs will be done in the right order for delivery to the customer. 

Howe_1Fl1.pdf
Howe_2Fl2.pdf
Howe_3Ob1.pdf
Howe_4Ob2.pdf
Howe_5Cl1.pdf
Howe_6Cl2.pdf
etc.

 

Checklist for Submitting

  1. Fill out online form: https://composers.com/webform/aca-new-work-request-register

Then, send the items below as email attachments (up to 10mb per email).

 PLEASE PUT THE TITLE OF THE WORK IN THE SUBJECT LINE OF THE EMAIL.
Send to [email protected]. Or, use box.com or your own file transfer service.

Send performing materials as PDF, prepared and with file names according to specifications.

  1. Sound recording of performance as mp3, if available.
  2. Written permissions granted to you for use of other authors’ work (texts, embedded tunes, etc.).

Revisions: If you revise a score, please email it to [email protected].

Excessive revisions to works that have been printed and sold may incur fees.

ACA will create the Cover file for your works. It helps if you create your own title page and a page with program note, and/or texts, translations, instrumentation. 

If you choose to send out your scores on your own, the following information is required at the bottom of the first page:

American Composers Edition (BMI) 
www.composers.com
New York, NY

or

American Concert Editions (ASCAP)
www.composers.com
New York, NY

 

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