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After working with several non exclusives who do gratis deals and get back end PRO income only from placements, I have tried to branch out to some Exclusives hoping to increase my upfront licensing fee income. But I’m finding that even these exclusives with good track records are saying synch fees are dying out, its pretty much back end only with the occasional icing on the cake license fee. I can’t see how this would benefit me to be in a company like this when I have NE’s who get me placements consistently already? The problem is my PRO income has been extremely low because its mostly cable shows. So unless these EXs sell to much bigger network type shows, I could only lose money by working with companies like this. or am I missing something?
Also, just a note… I have found a few places that I was able to talk in to doing a NE deal even though they are typically EX.
That being said if its a really high tiered PMA type library who get big synch fees then I totally see the benefit in going EX. But that seems to me to now be very rare. And Non exclusive seems to be sticking around as I’m sure a lot of composers have already experienced doing an EX deal only to see their stuff collect dust.
any thoughts or personal experiences?
I’m sure you know this stuff, but just for composers starting out and reading this, I want to clarify:
Libraries that insist on exclusive deals aren’t all the same.
Some, like the ones you’re talking about, focus on performance royalties – usually from reality TV shows. Those libraries don’t bother with fees (competing companies that gave all their music away for free, like JP, long ago drove those down to nothing).
Others are almost entirely focused on licensing, and any performance royalties are a bit of gravy on top of the big ticket fees they charge for needle drop use of their music. The standard is really high for these companies because they deal in the hyper-competitive niches like trailers and commercials.
One way you could weed out the not-so-serious exclusive companies is to focus on those with an upfront fee. I think it’s a bit crazy to give anyone in the reality TV side of things ownership of your music for free, unless there’s a fee (even a small one – like $100 a track), or you know them well and they have a great track record. Even better would be a small fee AND a great track record 🙂
Cable TV can really pay off, and sometimes I’ve seen it make more than network royalties (on a per cue basis), if the library you’re writing for isn’t a massive depository of music, and they’re the main supplier of music for a show. It’s a bit of luck too – you never know if a show is going to make it big and get re-aired constantly.
All in all, i think exclusives are getting less attractive as time goes by. I would rather take my chances on the non ex/RF side. Many more options there. There are some smaller exclusives that are sharing license fees which is not a bad deal. Personally, I would not sign an exclusive deal unless there is decent upfront money ($300 per track at least) or they have a huge presence or reputation, only a few of the PMA libraries have that. The rest are smaller boutique labels. In the future things look like they will change dramatically as people move away from broadcast to streaming. YT and content ID etc will become more relevant for us as time goes by and we should look for ways to exploit that in a sustainable way. Sorry for the digress 🙂