Composers and artists themselves destroy the business.

[Michael Nickolas]

Get me the gig that pays more and I’ll take it.

I think his point was that if everybody turned down the less than $100 gig offers, such offers would cease to exist.

[Music1234]

to Michael’s point, it does happen in the voice over business. It is very hard to find good talent willing to do the work for under $100 to $150 an hour. They can be found but the product will be inferior and the person doing the work will be bitter about it. There is over supply in that area of media production too, but those folks keep prices up. VO folks know how to value themselves better than musicians. Everyone reading this, start placing a value on yourself. It all starts there. Stock music licensing sites and Music Publishers do not value writers, they just use writers as a cheap commodity to exploit in high volume for big profits, but writers allow it to happen.

[Tbone]

As sad as it is, I agree with Music1234 that in general, stock music licensing sites do not value or care about writers (whatever they may claim to the contrary) and see them as a cheap commodity to be exploited.

Sometimes there is a company which is an exception to this and they really do care, but what I’ve seen over the years is that they either end up selling to a bigger, impersonal corporation, or they don’t do well because sadly, to compete they have to be as ruthless as the others.

Some of the things which have happened to me in the music library business have been, in my view, pretty deceitful and underhanded.

Something like a music library composers’ union could help, but I don’t see how to set one up when there are so many writers who would take deals we wouldn’t. It’s a difficult situation but the only way I see us all getting somewhere, is joining together and presenting a united front to the libraries.

[Music1234]

A united front to yourself is a good start. Just merely saying – my music is always for sale, and never free, and never part of a scheme where accounting is impossible – is a good start.

[boinkeee2000]

I’ve combed through the database here and never have i seen a deal that bad ($135/yr-unlimited dwnlds)…worst i’ve seen is $89/mnth – 10 downloads max…and thats only for social media/youtube/personal use…..still not appealing, but the former is something i have not come across nor could it ever become the norm….

[Music1234]

boinkeee2000 e-mail Art, I will send him the companies names I know of. By know means is it a “norm”. I personally vetted 2 companies as to how a writer would be paid and the answer was always “we won’t know until all the monthly or quarterly revenue is tallied up, pooled together and…and…hmmm…they really don’t know!…”

Read my earlier posts, one company proposed 80% of the revenue stays with the house then 20% goes to the “royalty pool” to pay writers.

This company also never sent an “opt in” e-mail, nor did they publish terms of service for contributors opening an account or had an account opened. They also conveniently stripped away statement data during the transition to the new model. This was a company where I quickly reached $500 a month in straight up licenses sold in the 50/50 model. Unfortunately, that only lasted 2 months, they changed the model where essentially they were saying “all the music is now 80% ours and we’re only selling subscriptions.” At least that was how I interpreted what they were proposing. Read my my post in the other thread.

The reason I am so angry about this and keep writing about it is because they get away with it! There are still many writers or songwriters that simply do not question the change, do not take the time inquire about royalty payments, and allow their music to be dealt. It’s almost as if they’re saying “well gee I send them my tracks and they are live on the site, let’s just hope for the best…some money is better than no money.”

Really man, this is what is happening.

I have another company who just posted a little subscription plan into his site. This is a PMA library that registers all titles with PRO’s. I immediately wrote to him and said if you move aggressively into this subscription arena delete my music, you can not account to hundreds of writers in this scheme. His response was that it’s an experiment and my music would not be part of the offering. Rubbish! I don’t believe it. If tracks are in the search engine, tracks are in the search engine.

Guys and Gals, we need to get ahead of this immediately. I am sounding the major alarm bells. If we don’t start becoming a loud unified voice, get petitions going, even possibly bringing awareness to lawmakers, we will get crushed by this kind of model.

These models amount to overt intellectual property theft from my perspective. Companies have always sold licenses on 50/50 basis…some 40/60, some 60/40 and even 70/30. 1 track at a time…a royalty paid for every sale.

Clients seemingly are asking “can’t we just pay 1 annual fee and get access to everything?” It’s just absolutely absurd. These companies do not own the copyrights to all the music in some cases!

Take a company like AJ – OK so the client wants a deal..here’s what they need to say “Deposit $3000, you will have a balance, spend away on tracks, each time you license a tune, your balance will decline down, when you hit $0, deposit more money.”

Yes it’s time to organize, take action, get petitions going and inform lawmakers. This needs to be stopped. Any company that owns 100% of the copyrights and has total control over the assets has every right to do this, but not with NE music that is simply brokered for a commission on stock licensing site.

[LAwriter]

Yes! I have not seen any subscription model that is even remotely fair to the composers. They ALL benefit the publisher / library. In addition, it becomes quite difficult to do accounting.

The deal the westar / stockmusic.com / audiohero tried to slide me into (see the other thread) was 0% to composers. 100% to publisher. And they did NOT ask my permission, and they violated my original contract in hopes that I would just say “OK boys – that sounds good”. I was supposed to be happy about the back end possibilities. (which IME were going to be next to nothing)

All the Subscription plans up to this point that I’ve seen are evil. They will kill what little of this business is left. If you sign up willing into one, or if you allow them to “move you over” with their experiments or change to your contract, you are complicit with signing your own death warrant. Be advised.

Thanks Music1234 for sounding the alarms!!!

[Art Munson]

Sometime, hopefully this weekend, I will be adding a check box to the library metadata that will indicate the ones who offer subscription plans. I will also add a warning, to composers, to be beware of the implications.

[Composer Of Notes]

Of course. However, the bottom will always be there, weather we participate or not.
Don’t get me wrong, I won’t leave the house for less than $100, but if you want to help people, then help them. Telling them not to do something so you will profit from it is not helping.

[Music1234]

The point of this discussion is not about “bottom” and “cheap” (even though some of these subscription offerings are too cheap). It’s about companies basically stealing intellectual property, offering a way to sell “subscriptions” for access to massive catalogs made up of hundreds of artists’ works and basically selling a collection of works as if it’s “their property”.

It is impossible to implement fair accounting to writers under this model. I have been studying it daily and it will never be fair. Why?
Some writers have more tracks than others. I may have 400 another guy may have 67, another may have 873 etc.

Some tracks are better than others and “in demand”.

How do you distribute subscription revenue to 500 to 2000 different writers? You can’t! plain and simple. There is no logical formula to distribute revenue fairly unless it’s on a license by license basis. 1 sale = 1 royalty paid to 1 writer.

A company like epidemic sound can do whatever they want. They bought all the music from willing composers. They own the content.

aj and p5 do not own any content. They are brokers, and that is that. How music bed is pulling this off is beyond me. If anyone has the news please pass it on.

[boinkeee2000]

you guys brought up a good point for concern besides the low rates…the lack of accounting transparency and fair distribution to writers on this new subscription business model…i went through a similar issue a while back with spotify as an artist. may not be a direct correlation or you may know this already, but heres a long video that explains the problem & loopholes with spotify’s royalty allocation on their subscription model that may relate to the issue at hand (royaltywise)

[TechNoiZ]

Just discovered that my Exclusive library is also offering a “monthly subscription” blanket license …

… Get unlimited access to our music library; download as many tracks as you like to use in as many vlogs as you like. Search through thousands of moods, genres and styles of music to find that perfect track for your video.

This is either for $12/month or $25/month depending on whether you monetise your video – MINIMUM TERM – 3 MONTHS.

The fact they have an reversion clause is totally borked due to tracks turning up on statements generating pennies in blanket revenues thus fulfilling the number of downloads criteria which keeps them in the library….

All of this change in marketing strategy without so much as an email giving us notice … even now – I found this out by contacting them as a potential client …

[Art Munson]

Just discovered that my Exclusive library is also offering a “monthly subscription” blanket license …

TechNoize, PM me the name if you don’t want to make public and I will designate that fact in their listing here.

[Music1234]

Certain folks in the business simply do not have a moral compass guiding them. All they can see is fast, short term profits and micro royalty opportunities in heavy volume.

Everyone needs to revisit written contracts to see how streaming and subscriptions are addressed. I’d think that “opting In” would be a legal requirement. If the publisher pushes forward without informing writers, it would seem to me that this could be grounds for nullifying the contract, and requesting removal of one’s catalog.

[LAwriter]

Art – perhaps a sticky or sub forum or some place where people can go find libraries doing this and report libraries doing this?

[Author]

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