One of our readers, Ev, came up with the suggestion to have a section devoted to newbie questions regarding music libraries, music licensing, copyright, music publishing etc. There a lot of experienced people on this site and many are happy to share their wisdom. So, if you are a newbie (or not), and have a question, try leaving it here.
Of course many questions have already been answered here. First try searching in the search bar in the upper right hand corner. Also Google is your friend! I have found one of the best ways to search a site is use site specific criteria at Google’s web site. In other words, to search for a specific keyword, say “contracts”, type it in at Google like this “contracts site:musiclibraryreport.com”. Do not use the quotes.
If you still can’t find your answer then leave a comment here and someone will most likely come to your rescue!
Hey Pat moved your question about Measurement Arts to General Questions and made that a menu option. Also created a listing for Measurement Arts here: https://musiclibraryreport.com/music-libraries-m-to-m/measurement-arts-music/
Thanks for the heads up!
I’ve got a question about PRO royalties. It seems like each morning I wake up with yet another thing I don’t understand about the PRO system. And to think I used to consider college physics hard. This just blows that away.
So if I go and register some of my tracks with my PRO, and these tracks have no publisher because they are in non-exclusive libraries, I would expect to get 100% of the performance royalties right? But when I register the track do I have to put myself in as publisher? If I can’t, then what happens to the publisher’s side of the royalties when my track is broadcast? They would send me the writer’s share… and then what? I hope to god I don’t have to set up my own publishing company just to collect the publisher’s share of royalties on my own tracks.
Does anyone have personal experience of this?
Is it as simple as just registering the tracks myself and if there’s no publisher they send me their share too?
Is there in fact anyone, ANYONE, who understands the mechanisms by which PROs work?! (Specifically the PRS?)
Any help you can give, as usual, is appreciated hugely. At this rate I’m going to go nuts dreaming of all the missed royalties and set backs and convoluted systems, not to mention the nightmare of collecting international royalties.
I had the same question awhile back and had been told in the past that I had to become a publisher in order to receive my publisher’s share if it wasn’t assigned to another publisher but I didn’t want to have to do that at this time so I did some digging and found that this is how it works with BMI at least with BMI. If you haven’t assigned publishing to a publisher, the publishing share is defaulted to you as the first 100% and your writers is the other 100% for the total 200% share according to BMI……
“BMI considers payments to songwriters or composers and to publishers as a single unit equal to 200%. Where there is the usual division of performance royalties between songwriters or composers and publishers, the total writers’ shares will be 100% (half of the available 200%), and the total publishers’ shares will be the remaining 100%.
Hope this helps
“Please note the following rules with respect to the division of the 200% royalty:
The total publishers’ shares may not exceed 100%.
If the agreement between the publishers and songwriters or composers provides for the songwriters or composers to receive more than 100%, the work should be registered with BMI indicating the percentages allocable to all songwriters or composers and all publishers so that the total is not more than 200%.
Where no performing rights (or only partial performing rights) have been assigned to a publisher, the songwriters or composers will receive the entire 200% (or the balance of the entire 200%) in the same ratio as their respective writer shares. However, a songwriter or composer who has assigned to a publisher all or part of his or her proportionate rights in the publisher’s share shall not be entitled to receive any portion of the remainder of the publisher’s share allocable to his or her co-writer(s). ”
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MQbeHfbvh-8J:www.bmi.com/creators/royalty/general_information/+bmi+publisher+share+defaults+to+write+if+not+indicated&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.com
Thanks Pat.
Does anyone have personal experience with the PRS? Or at least, with having actually received the royalties and being able to check? I received some royalties but I can’t even figure out how to check how much % they gave me.
I guess I’ll just have to write to the PRS. Not that that helps very often mind you.
Hi.
If you’re a member of the PRS you should be able to log in to the website.
https://www.prsformusic.com/Pages/default.aspx
There, on your welcome page, they give you the money you receive at each distribution.
Distributions occur on the 15th of:
April
July
October
December
However, normally you should receive statements giving a detailed breakdown of earnings, publisher, country, usage type, duration, programme details. These are now emailed automatically as PDFs and Excel files.
If you haven’t had a statement, you should be able to contact them and request one.
I am quite knowledgeable about the PRS and it’s workings, but only from the perspective of exclusive libraries. Therefore I’ve never been involved in the business of registering my own tracks etc. so perhaps this info isn’t relevant to your circumstances or you knew it already!
Good luck though!
p.s. I would just add as a footnote, ringing is much better with the PRS. They aren’t very good as responding to emails. They are even less good at sorting problems once they get around to helping. Queries can frequently take a year or more to resolve.
Thanks Jello. You’re right that I did have most of that info already. After checking my last statement I can see the details but I’m still unsure, simply because not all my tracks are with an exclusive. I’ve got a mix of some with an exclusive and some by myself.
I tried giving the PRS a call a little while ago but the answers were clearly from someone who didn’t understand well enough. Maybe I was unlucky. I will try again!
Actually, I just had a thought: maybe there is something that we could compare and it would really help! In your excel statement, does it say 100% in your share column? Or 50%? If the latter, does it also say 50% in your publisher’s column?
Thanks again.
Hi Anon,
It says 50% in the ‘your share %’ column and that’s the one and only % listed on there.
Cheers.
That’s great Jello! Thank you. Mine all say 100%, even the one which is with the exclusive. I don’t see the publisher being pleased with that, unless of course there is still something I’m missing.
Thanks again for helping with that. Much appreciated.
For clarity and info it might be a good idea to explain how each of our PRO describe publisher/ writer splits. I read with astonishment earlier in the thread how the BMI does it. They go on the premise of a defined publisher share @ 50 % and a writers the same. They then go on to talk about the total of 200 % going to writers without publishers etc. Now I do understand this method, but in this day and age a totally arcane way of doing it. The premise is that a “publishers share” is automatically 50 % and that is treated like a separate entity . For example a deal for 50% of the publishers share is in fact 25% of the total. Pump uses terminology like this. Very confusing.
In Ireland IMRO. It is very simple. If I register a new track I own 100 % of it obviously. I can then assign whatever portion of that ( it actually can’t be more than 50%) to a publisher. There is no ” publishers share ” automatically assigned. The publisher gets whatever deal I agree to. If there is no publisher assigned I receive 100 % of all PRO royalties.
I assume the PRS UK is the same , perhaps Jello can confirm
You are not alone Anon, we should pass a PRO license like a driver’s license, maybe it would be clearer to learn it once and for all!!
I also found out the same that Pat mentioned: if there is no publisher you ‘should’ get the publisher’s share as a self-published artist…. after all Publish means “Making Public”… unfortunately, companies dealing with royalites and rights seem to like to complicate things with nebulous language, long delays and unclear accounting…. so at the end we don’t really know what they pay us.
Nevertheless I can tell you that I followed carefully the mechanicals I had paid as a label (my label) for one of their artists (me) and 4 years later I received around the same amount as performance royalty from my PRO…. minus of ocurse all the inter-agencies fees…
Cheers,
Would somebody please help me? I am in contact with a company in Los Angeles called One Stop Music. They place songs with clients for various show, movies, etc.. They are asking me to sign over all Copyrights, forever, to them and then they will go ahead and submit my songs for various projects. Of course there is no guarantee that the client will want to use my song, and there is no “up front” fee paid to me, and the Royalties to me will be between 25% and 50%.
It seems rather “heavy handed” to me, so I would appreciate any comments, suggestions and help for any of you in regards to this. Also, has anybody else had any dealing with them?
Thank you,
Jimmy Cicero
I believe One Stop Music is part of Transition Music Jimmy. If it is they are exclusive, but you’ll be entitled to 100% of Writer’s PRO royalties. As far as signing over a copyright, I don’t see any difference. When you sign an exclusive contract, they own it. Check your contract. There may be a reversion clause.
BTW, Welcome!
Hi John,
Thanks for the reply. But if I sign the Contract with One Stop Music, then I will have to take all my music off of sites like Audiosparx, because One Stop Music will actually own my music…….is that right?
Jimmy
> But if I sign the Contract with One Stop Music, then I will have to take all my music off of sites like Audiosparx, because One Stop Music will actually own my music…….is that right?<
Not ALL of your music. Just the tracks that you assign to them.
MichaelL says:
May 28, 2011 at 8:43 pm
> But if I sign the Contract with One Stop Music, then I will have to take all my music off of sites like Audiosparx, because One Stop Music will actually own my music…….is that right?<
Not ALL of your music. Just the tracks that you assign to them.
Of the 46 tracks that I have on Audiosparx, One Stop Music wants me to sign over 36 songs to them. That means that those 36 songs are owned completely by One Stop, so I cannot submit them to Audiosparx or anyone else. I wouldn't mind that if One Stop already had clients interested in using those songs, but at this time they don't. So those songs would just be "sitting" in the One Stop Library until some future time that a client wanted to use some of them. In the meantime, I can't submit them to anyone else. I don't feel comfortable with this……am I being paranoid?…….or foolish?
Thanks,
Jimmy
Get a reversion clause, after a set number of years, if an income threshold isn’t reached. That is if you think it’s worth tying up those songs for any length of time.
Are they paying you a good chunk of change for those songs? If not get a reversion clause after a certain number of years based if an income threshold isn’t reached..
They are not offering to pay anything “up front”, saying that I will get “Royalties” in the future……..if and when a client wants to use a song. I feel that I should be getting something “up front” for signing away all those songs, but they are not agreeing to that. Am I being unrealistic about this? Do all “music placement” companies have the same policy?
Thanks,
Jimmy
I checked out “Transition’s” website and their credits. I didn’t see anything that would have me signing over copyrights.
Check the type of placements “One Stop” is getting, and whether or not those placements come from blanket licenses.
You could be stocking their library for free, with very little benefit to you in the long run.
If they are Transition, look at their credits and ask yourself, how much is that really going to pay? I saw a lot of cable shows — which may be under a blanket deal, which means pennies to you. You would need a lot of air time to equal one Audiosparx sale.
If this is Transistion Music, which I think it is, they generally don’t do reversions. Your only option with them is to sign your tracks over to them for life. They do get placements, but as with any library, there are never any guarantees.
My personal opinion is signing over 36 of your 46 tracks this way is not the best idea. That is, unless you typically create 50-100 good tracks a year and feel like “there’s plenty more where those came from”.
Even with a reversion, which I don’t think you’ll get, one compromise would be to sign a smaller number of tracks with them– maybe 10 at most. This can be part of a “spread them around” marketing approach on your part, not putting too many eggs in any one basket.
Best of luck!
🙂
I agree with Advice. Give them 10-12 tracks to start with. If they start getting you a lot of placements sign more.
I have reason to believe Transition Music is currently trying to build-up their catalog.
Thank you all for your replies and suggestions. I agree and will not be signing over my songs/copyrights to them. I think I would rather take my chances with sites like Audiosparx.
Thanks again,
Jimmy
Im a bit worried about my music becoming involved in the GoDigital program without me knowing about it. Can a client who buys your music from a non exclusive library that has no connection with Go Digital or the Ad Share program somehow get your music involved in it? Or can GoDigital approach anyone about any web video that contains music and do some kind of deal with them?
Forgive me as I am probably quite misinformed as to what they do exactly , but ive been hearing some things I dont like the sound of.
Im starting to worry about every sale I make incase a client somehow gets my music involved in the GoDigital program.
Just wondering if anyone has recommendations for a simple way to set up a site for libraries to review music compositions at. Something cost effective and easy. Thanks,
Mike
@Mike Bandcamp is pretty good or if you are on a mac iWeb plus a .me account is an effective way to do a pretty good quality website for some one (like me) who has no idea how to do it via html etc
Thanks Denis,
I’d thought of Bandcamp. I didn’t know if the format of a site matters to the evaluating libraries. I figure the whole purpose is to simply have a place where the music can be listened to, but wasn’t sure if it needed to have any kind of portfolio appearance.
Mike
Mike,
I’m using the free soundcloud account. You can upload up to 2 hrs of music (IIRC), and create up to 3 sets. I simply create and delete sets as needed (a set is just a playlist with a single link). The streaming player is quite decent quality, too. If you need more music time, more sets of other features you can pay to upgrade into various levels. I haven’t needed to yet but I will probably do so by the end of this year.
I point libraries to either a set or a selection of individual links. Haven’t any negative feedback yet, and plenty of positive, so it certainly works.
I actually have the SoundCloud premium account. i get to upload over 30 hrs. of music for about $35.00 per month. it has been great to direct people to hear my library without audio watermarks, and low resolution through my website. I upload all my tracks on there as Mp3 files. i do not of course allow any downloads.
I’ve been with them for over a year and have had over 2300 plays, and have my entire library on there.
Hi Gary
Don’t you find Soundcloud does unspeakable things to your files? I had to stop using it as I kept hearing a garbling effect. Maybe it’s just me! My ears are quite messed up after all 🙂
So true Jello. I had someone here point me to one of their tracks on Soundcloud and I heard the same thing. It sounded to me like the MP3 encoding was the problem. When I asked him to send me his wav and MP3 file there was no such “garbling” (I called it warbling). Something Soundcloud is doing is affecting some files.
Yep, that was me Art. I was actually relieved that it was them an not me but at the same time I’ve been using Soundcloud for those libraries that want links. I’m now having to seriously consider using another source for posting links where they don’t do whatever it is Soundcloud is doing.
Could be a deal breaker for some (not all) but I don’t know that I want to take that chance.
Anybody know of a good free alternative to Soundcloud that is secure?
Soundclick is free but it’s the same idea where you’re streaming mp3’s so there’s no saying if there will be problems or not. Yousendit allows you to send single wav. files and there’s a free version. I was recently introduced to Dropbox which allows you to make folders and send several wav. files at once. It was kinda tricky at first b/c both parties have to join but it’s nice for sending a ton of music free.
Thanks Musicman.
You just reminded me that I actually have a Soundclick account but one of the reasons I quit using it was because I read people found ways to hack into it for downloading music so it wasn’t that secure do downloads. I also saw some youtube videos posted on how to do it.
I also have drop boX and yousendit but it’s hard to know if it’s been downloaded in the limited time it has before expiring, Some libraries like to get to submissions when they’re good and ready so I only use those when that is their specific requested so I know they fully intend to review the cues before they expire.
Google Documents seems to be a great alternative to YouSendIt because there is no time limit (unlike the free version of YouSendIt). I have used it before with great success.
No, you are right. I have experienced that with some tracks. Must be a problem with their encoding. For the most part though, the quality is pretty decent for the average listener.
I had problems converting my own wav files to mp3 with a converter program, getting the warbling effect, but then started using Audacity for conversion and chose the 320bps setting since it’s preferred by some libraries anyway. No problem. Maybe Soundcloud has a similar issue.
The other thing is whether it’s desirable to put a beep or message on the song every 30 seconds or so to discourage the illegal download problem on some sites that can be bootlegged. (This wouldn’t work on public sites that let potential customers purchase your music, though I’m not sure if many instrumental songs are being bought. these days) Thanks for all the feedback.
Mike
If you had one instrumental cue to submit to an exclusive ( I’m not considering buyout libraries or work for hire deals at this point), which licensing/library would be a be your first pick of those who are accepting? Starting to think about branching out to include exclusives that have a good chance for placement..
Hi Pat, I think any of the following are good places to start!
KPM
Extreme
Universal
West One
De Wolfe
Carlin
Loads more obviously.
Good luck!
Hi Jello
Thanks for that. That’s a great starting point and like you said there are many out there.
I’ve already been checking some out some listed here but thought it be an even better idea to get feedback from those who might have off had experience with them good or bad.
Yes, thanks Jello. Been meaning to do that myself and that’s a great start.
One kind of tip as regards which are the best Exclusives…
When I was first getting into this I spent along time (and still do) researching the PRS database. On there it is quite plain to see who gets used alot and on what shows. You have actual, tangible evidence. Very helpful, because alot of libraries don’t get used that much – there’s really just a handful that do. I would say that recently the landscape has changed somewhat because of Audio Network’s influence (I myself have nothing against ANW but I know alot of people who do).
I’d say the list I gave is about as good as it gets at this moment in time and almost all of them will meet you face to face and let you play them your album (best to go to them with a finished, themed project that covers genres/styles they havent got).
Dumb question but where’s the rest of the Newbie comments? Just looking for more stuff to read and learn.
Click o the link at the bottom of the page for “Older Comments”.
ok Thanks
Dumb question – asked here before I’m sure – but I can’t seem to find the answer. What is the difference between a music library and a music licensing company? I received an offer from Audio Fount to license music for me, saying I retain all rights. Is that the difference? With libraries you sell your rights?
THANK YOU!
The way I see it, a music licensing company IS a music library. They just use ‘licensing’ as a way to emphasize their business model, which is probably higher priced needle-drop licensing.
Thank you Matt!! I Googled everything I could think of without even getting close to an answer!
I guess Audio Fount counts as a music library and should be listed here, but they are not. I presume I should initiate that? All indications suggest that they are new.
BTW they sent me a 7 page legalese statement. Any resources to help decipher music contracts that you know of? Do you experienced folks rely on your own knowledge/research to interpret these or do you find a lawyer? THANKS!
Yep, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it Is! They are now listed here at: https://musiclibraryreport.com/music-libraries-a-to-a/audio-fount/
Thanks Art!!!
I had interest in tracks I submitted, and was told the below. I declined their offer. I saw no need for them to own all rights and was totally insulted they would take a percentage of writer’s share!! To me, anyone asking for a portion of writer’s share that didn’t contribute to writing is to be ignored.
, thanks for submitting the ” ” trax for consideration thru Independent Media pros. Before we proceed further, you should know and understand the deal we make for traks such as these: they are created on a work for hire basis or if pre-existing we acquire all rights in in the composition and master, so we are the owner of all rights, your compensation will be either (your election): $500 for 10 trax and 50% of the writer’s share of public performance income;or no front money and 75% of the writer’s share.
Unbelievable!
Well thanks for the reply. It just confirms what I suspected. I don’t even know why I am disappointed. I have a difficult time trusting these types of sites. I guess it’s that “one” legit one that came around that keeps me going back – I got picked up with HD Music Now over there but I get a sick feeling in my stomach whenever I submit there.
I reported one to the admin at the site. We’ll see what happens. In the meantime, I am staying away (and removing the track I uploaded at IMP (how ironic the acronym is, eh?)
I have music with Jody over at HD Music. Didn’t submit through Xray though. No placements, but legit as you say…
Inquiry:
So I had a few tracks picked up on some listings over at Musicxray (I know, I know, but I have actually had some success over there). I was wondering if anyone knows anything (other than we can be Googled) about Jim Hughes (Independent Media Pros) or Mike Puskas (who is collaborating with producer Joey Ayoub).
I am treading cautiously with each because I received an email from one who intends to pitch the material, however no paperwork has been exchanged, and an auto reply from the other with an infected attachment.
Thanks in advance