Making Melodiuus Legal

On February 11, 2009 I made Melodiuus Records legal.  First I went down to a local store that does mailing and rents out mail boxes (not the post office kind, but they look similar).  I rented a "personal mail box" that is the physical address of my company.  The owner of that establishment informed me that I could not use this address to register the business because the state would need to know where I am, and that the box is just to receive mail.  This seemed to be a wrinkle in the plan, so I thought perhaps I might have to get permission from our front office at the town homes where we live to register the business using our personal address.  Ah well, on to the next stop.  I can play within the rules, as long as I know what they are.

Contrary to the instructions I found online, the Secretary of State's office told me that they were not the place to go.  They directed me to the County Clerk's office, where I filled out two short forms and soon had DBAs for Melodiuus Records and Melodiuus Publishing Company.  It is interesting to note here that the clerk asked me for both addresses - the one that will be the address of the company (the PMB) and my home address, and didn't require a letter from the apartment community.  The process was really fast because there was one line for legal and criminal matters and a second line for records matters, and the latter was a very short line.  Registering the DBAs was simple and fast and the clerk was helpful.  She told me that to get a business license I should go to the State of Michigan website and sign up for one.  She also said that I could apply for the retail license there, since Melodiuus will be selling some CDs directly to the public.  At the end of my visit to the county clerk's office, the clerk announced that I could advertise and do business in Oakland County, State of Michigan.  I think that it took me fifteen minutes or so for the entire trip - time well spent!

I headed to Chase bank to take care of another transaction, and while I was there, I asked what forms are needed in order to begin a business banking account.  I showed the forms I had with me and apparently that was all I needed in order to get started.  While I was speaking with bankers Tina and Amy, I told them of my business plan to simultaneously release my CD and various forms of sheet music for all the songs.  They were also fascinated to hear about the research I had done about the financials of CD sales and why I chose to start my own record label.  They were so impressed with my business plan that they got special approval to open the accounts and gave me some kind of upgraded account or something.  I have to look at the papers to remember exactly what they did.  The business online banking is so much cooler than I could have imagined!  It can even do payroll and takes care of all the taxes!

So now I have business banking and I put the $5000.00 I budgeted for this project into it.  Some of that will obviously have to go toward the startup costs for the record label, so my project budget will actually be less unless I make an additional investment.  Now I'm going to start filing expense reports and reimbursing myself for expenses I've already paid for that I have receipts for.  Here's another cool thing that the bankers let me know about: their system keeps track of all the expenses by category and can total them at the end of the year.  I know from past experience how many dozens of hours of work that will save me!

Now I have to consider what things to expense.  I don't think that I should count the musical instruments in the cost of this project, because I'll be using them for years and hopefully through many projects.  The instruments are a personal expense, right?  The trip to Olivet should probably count toward this project, and part of the trip to Utah (the last half of the trip).  Luckily Utah was a pretty low-budget trip.

I know that having the CDs pressed through DiscMakers will cost in the neighborhood of $2300.00, so I'm hoping there's some budget left for studio time, or else I'm going to have to become a Garage Band expert or figure out how to expand the budget.