Synchronized Soundworks
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If you are a composer and/or songwriter, please leave your comments and experiences with this company. We want to hear the good as well as the bad! Please rate, from 1 to 10, by clicking on one of the stars. Below is some general information but we make no guarantee of accuracy. Check with the company for all details. Please contact us for any corrections. |
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| URL: | http://www.sspmc.tv/ | |
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| Accepting Submissions: | Yes | |
| Submit Via Uploads: | Yes | |
| Submit Via Mail: | Unknown | |
| Submissions Reviewed: | Yes | |
| Types Accepted: |
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| Charge For Submissions: | No | |
| Up Front Money: | No | |
| Royalty Free: (non-broadcast use) |
Yes | |
| Exclusivity: (Exclusive, Non, Semi) (Semi = Free to place on own but not with another library) |
Exclusive - Reversion Clause | |
| Re-Title: | No | |
| Set Own Price: | No | |
| Contract Length: | 2 Years | |
| Payment Schedule: | Unknown | |
| License Fee Split: (writer/library) |
50/50 | |
| PRO Split Based on 100%: (writer/library writer/library/publisher or writer) |
50/50 | |
| Requires Licensee To File Cue Sheet: | Yes | |
| Notes: | We are both license fees and royalty-based business. We have blanket licenses with Viacom and Comcast, and we also license outside of those blankets. We typically include only the instrumental cues in our blankets, but we have begun signing songs with vocals. These will definitely be license fees, and most likely one-off as opposed to blankets. We have a 2-year exclusive on the material. If we place the material within that time, we keep extending the agreement. If we fail to place, the material reverts back to the composer. Catalog Master fees split 75/25 in favor of composer. |
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Categories: Music Libraries S to S | 
Tags: composers, music libraries, music library, Music Licensing, royalty free music, songwriters | 
21 Comments »
We’ve used sspmc.tv and worked great for our modeling shows. The music is just right for our energetic reality shows. I highly recommend anyone to work with synchronized-soundworks
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Anonymous, June 28th, 2010 at 4:53 pm Reply:
Tony, thank you so much for the review. We are adding lots of new music so please let me know if you’d likes DVD. Abby north
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I am a composer who has submitted music to this site for a while now. SSPMC has been great at finding me contacts and hooking me up with appropriate material to submit for.
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SSPMC is looking for latin, reggaeton, salsa, mariachi, and bossa nova instrumental cues. Please submit via yousendit.com or a similar service to abby@sspmc.tv
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Matt, August 2nd, 2010 at 2:53 pm Reply:
There aren’t any details on the nature of the agreement – is it:
exclusive / non exclusive?
if exclusive, do you pay upfront?
if non exclusive, do you re-title and collect publishing?
are you a license fees, royalties or royalty free based business?
Thanks!
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Art, August 2nd, 2010 at 3:01 pm Reply:
She just e-mailed me to say they are exclusive.
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Matt:
Thanks for the post
1) Exclusive
2) We do not pay upfront
3) Exclusive — no re-titling
4) We are both license fees and royalty-based business. We have blanket licenses with Viacom and Comcast, and we also license outside of those blankets.
We typically include only the instrumental cues in our blankets, but we have begun signing songs with vocals. These will definitely be license fees, and most likely one-off as opposed to blankets.
Best,
Abby North
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Matt, August 3rd, 2010 at 1:05 am Reply:
Thanks for those answers Abby! Frankly, I’m wary of signing away tracks to an exclusive library, particularly if they won’t pay upfront. I still have bad taste in my mouth from early in my career when I handed 100′s of my tracks over to a couple of exclusive libraries, who to this day haven’t done much with them.
Do you share the blanket licenses with your composers? Split the per track licenses?
Thanks!
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Art, August 3rd, 2010 at 7:25 am Reply:
I agree. The couple of times I was signed to an exclusive contract there was money involved. This helped negate the fact they placed very little of my music.
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Abby North, August 4th, 2010 at 10:09 pm Reply:
Hey Matt,
I totally understand you being wary. I am a composer as well, and as such, I would prefer to be non-exclusive. However, as the owner of a catalog, I realize that to be competitive, I have to be exclusive.
While we are a relatively small and new catalog, we were able to land licenses with cable companies right away. These cable companies have given us a presence and made many music supervisors aware of us. We are now working very hard to leverage this into deals with the non-cable broadcasters, film producers, etc.
When the blanket licenses are not gratis, I do split the license fees among the composers. Once we receive cue sheets, I determine the total number of cues used, and divide the license fee by number of cues.
Best,
Abby
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Matt, August 4th, 2010 at 11:23 pm Reply:
Thanks for your answers Abby.
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What is the big deal of signing with an exclusive library? Composers act like if they hand over a few tracks they become a slave to the library. If a person is a prolific composer handing over a few tunes is not going to be the end of the world. Unless you’re some big name composer with credits out the yin yang why should a library pay up front and how much do you expect to receive up front? If any thing, submit a couple of tunes and see if they get placed. If you happen to get placed then that puts you in position to possibly negotiate a better deal. Now SSPMC has made a specific request for a certain type of track and you mean to tell me that some of you won’t submit because they’re exclusive….that’s crazy.
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John (the other John), August 5th, 2010 at 5:56 am Reply:
No problem here. As long as there’s a reversion clause in the contract. And no more than 2-3 years for the reversion.
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Abby North, August 5th, 2010 at 8:05 am Reply:
Yes, we have a 2-year exclusive on the material. If we place the material within that time, we keep extending the agreement. If we fail to place, the material reverts back to the composer.
FYI, the reason I started this catalog was that we mix television series. All our series are wall-to-wall music, and being a composer with lots of composer friends, I wanted a piece of the action.
We started with 500 cues, and we now have roughly 2800. My goal is 10,000.
I always planned for the catalog to be a way for composers with cues lying around to be able to generate passive income.
I want composers’ “A-level” material when we have custom, WFH projects. For the catalog, I look for solid production and composition, and I like to be able to immediately visualize the types of scenes and programming for which the music fits.
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oontz oontz, August 5th, 2010 at 9:32 am Reply:
Harold,
“why should a library pay up front and how much do you expect to receive up front?”
Libraries should pay up front because they have a need for music, and you can fill that need. In turn, if libraries pay money up front, they’ll be more likely to ask their TV shows for money up front in the form up blanket or per-use licenses.
It’s a fact that many libraries that pay up front (Megatrax, Manhattan Production Music, KPM etc..) regularly demand and receive higher quotes and better placements from broadcasters. MOST (not all) libraries that pay nothing up front receive no sync fees from broadcasters.
All well-regarding libraries do their homework on composers they’d like to sign. If they find that you work with exclusive companies for no money up front, why would they ever want to pay you for something?
Many libraries pay between $75 – $1000 per cue up front, depending on the type of music requested. Some libraries also subsidize studio time and session musicians.
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Andrew Aversa, August 5th, 2010 at 12:25 pm Reply:
But there is a difference in placing music exclusively with a library for a short period of time – something that may not even affect your mechanical rights to sell the music on albums – and literally SELLING your copyright permanently. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with exclusive libraries that don’t offer upfront money – you’re really just leasing your tracks for a few years and getting them back later.
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Matt, August 9th, 2010 at 12:52 am Reply:
Wow I didn’t even know there were libraries with that kind of reversion clause. Perhaps this site needs to differentiate between ‘exclusive – permanent’, and ‘exclusive – with rev. clause’.
Oh how I wish the exclusives I signed tracks to, for no money upfront (when I was newer to this business and naive) had those clauses! I have around 700+ tracks sitting in several exclusive libraries. Admittedly I do get a little bit of royalties from those deals, but nothing to write home about. I make way more from 300 tracks in a few non exclusive libraries than I do from the 700+ tracks in exclusives.
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Art, August 9th, 2010 at 8:15 am Reply:
I’ve never liked exclusive contracts without some sort of reversion clause. It’s nice to see a library offering that. Good point about making that distinction in the listing and will do so.
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Abby North, August 9th, 2010 at 8:31 am Reply:
Art – thanks for making that distinction.
And here are other details:
Synch fees split 50/50 between composer and catalog
Master fees split 75/25 in favor of composer
PRO publisher share split 50/50
PRO writer share goes entirely to writer
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Harry, August 9th, 2010 at 8:41 pm Reply:
Abby…that sounds like a pretty fair deal…
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Thanks Abby, got it updated.
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