If someone,say a music director hears your song and is interested in licensing it this is where they are going to look for it to find the writer and publisher information.If they are legit they are going to do this anyway.They also may do a search in the library of congress or HFA.And your payout is going to be processed through your PRO.With ASCAP you may have to be calling them on the phone to get things straight.Increasingly now because the structure of the biz is changing so much even a small potatoes outfit ought to have a PRO set up with registations.Increasingly also today artists are their own publishers as well and that is the other fifty percent of the income,25% if you are sub-publishing.Therefore you must get a name clearance for your publishing company,an employer tax id number,and a ficticious name statue.Elton John D/B/A Whatnot Music.And this traces back to the first order of the business you need to get together which if you have taken the time and effort to write and record a song you must have a copyright to that song from the Library Of Conress if you are A US artist.You must establish ownership and a date of first use.even if nobody has an interest in your music you MUST have this together.For in the event that you get burned you will be legally represented in court by The United States Attorney.That is nice huh?A judge is going to respect that right off the bat.A lot of folks will sully this and say it is not necessary yet I will tell you that I own my stuff.Lock,stock, and barrel.I paid out a fortune to record it,blood sweat and tears to write and arrange it,the world denied it and stomped on it yet i have a good little feeling in that despite everything,I own it,it is mine and I call of the shots on it.However it is used and perhaps even more importantly how it will NOT be used.You can't prevent somebody from covering your tune,if they send you a letter of intent and pay the mecanical license fee they have the right to cover it as long as they pay you and your publisher royalties.This is a good thing as a song you went nowhere with was covered by another artist and became a huge success.Or on the other side of the coin you as an artist with your original material struggled all of your life until you covered another artist and rose up to fame riding upon their coatails,you can afford to pay them their share of the royalties,publisher and writer,$37.50 us dollars per 500 copies sold.Not too much money and VERY well spent.It will keep your fanny out of a court of law on the receiving end of a nasty lawsuit that is going to shut down your operation.And in my mind to do a great cover is to make that song your own in your own style,not just a copycat version.The cream of the crop here is to take an unknown song from an outside writer and make it YOUR hit.There was a group way back when "Three Dog Night" that did not use any original material but sought out the best unknown writers they could find and racked up quite a few impressive number one songs via Billboard.The sonwriter and the publisher are elated to receive their respective checks,far away from all of the demands of fortune and fame.Possible downsides to this is that you receive desktops full of songwriter demo's or your mailman knocks upon your door holding a guitar and singing his original song.This was the case when I was in charge of the publishing for Wooden Bowl Productions."High Society" one of my staple live numbers for decades came out of that.He used to bring over lunch too.Real "Brill Building Stuff." In the old school days the artists were very rarely the writers.And you did not have to be that,you enjoyed your performance royalty check.So did your publisher..and great songwriters were inspired to write and could, thank God, finally pay up their back rent and were spared of comitting suicide.And then the landlord seeing you being successful says "you know I write and sing songs too....You might as well say "Do you have Bustello coffee? Let me hear one of your songs,do you mind if I smoke a cigar?"