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Pay attention publishers who are reading this post. Remember that the internet makes the world very small. Analyze your conscience and make sure you keep your accounting in order. A composer colleague of mine put it perfectly this morning:
“As far as trust goes. I don’t have too much trust for any company when it comes down to $$$. There is a reason that the saying ‘money is the root of all evil’ has stuck around for eons. Where there is big money, there is corruption. PERIOD! End of story. It’s so easy to do when there are no checks and balances in this music game. Especially in commercial composing. You start asking too many questions and you spook everybody. It’s flucked up. The composer has NO window into what is really going on. In order to take a peek he has to play the Ultimate card: ‘audit’. And then that cuts off the hand that feeds. It’s a sick negative feedback loop that keeps us in line. I mean look at the story of Sly Stone that just came out today. It’s crazy! He missed out on DECADES of cash during his younger days when he could have enjoyed a nice life. Now he is just an old man with a bunch of money. Those people should be put in jail.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/sly-stone-awarded-5-million-in-royalty-lawsuit-20150128
So I’d like to ask established, full time composers in this forum: Are you afraid to audit? What would it take for you to play the audit card? This is something we all really need to examine. The last 7 years have brought incredible change to the ways music is distributed. Most of us are literally entrusting folks we’ve never met in person across the globe to deal our intellectual property and actually be honest about what they collect on those assetts and what they pay us. At some point in time, someone needs to look under the covers, what are your thoughts?
How much does an audit typically cost?
I am guessing this is record royalties rather than PRO ? Is PRO money not sent directly to the writer in the US ? There are always shady ways around this I suppose, I am guessing the lawyers involved knew they were on to something and were employed on a no win no fee basis, as Sly had nothing.
The only time I would audit is if there was some very good evidence/signs that u were owed some serious $$$$. I was part of an audit once in which a composer felt he was due money. The library had distributed some money from blanket licenses etc. to it’s composers based on how many tracks they had in the library and he was given appx $20-40. I guess his ego told him that that couldn’t be right so he went ahead with an audit. Our accountant had to spend lots of time which was of course was paid for by the library owner. In the end it turned out the Composer’s music hadn’t even been used for anything not even in any blanket license deal so the $20-30 he got was actually “free” money. On top of this he kept calling library staff on their cell phones on Saturdays which meant they weren’t even getting paid for the time they spent talking to him. Needless to say he was dropped off the rooster immediately and I think anyone involved would warn any future companies they might work for about this guy. The library owner probably spent well over $1000 in salaries dealing with this audit plus the salaries he paid his staff to process/pitch and host the composer’s music which never made the library a penny.
The truth is that most composers are completely delusional over the what kind of profits the average library has.
So that’s my experience but I would love to hear an audit success story related to the music library industry. (The Sly story is not related in my opinion.)
The truth is that most composers are completely delusional over the what kind of profits the average library has.
Thank you.