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Not assuming anything Lupo. Here’s what the LA times articles says:
Scott Schreer, the composer behind the “NFL on Fox” theme, has written scores of instrumental pieces that people use for free in their videos. With Audiam, he now can collect money from videos that use any of his 2,000 songs, such as the slide guitar-fueled rock piece “Misfit.” In his first four weeks using Audiam, he said, the service collected about $40,000 from YouTube videos using his music.
Here’s what the BusinessWeek,com article says:
A May Audiam search for just one of his 1,700 songs, a two-minute, saxophone-heavy acid-jazz instrumental called Love Doctor, revealed 100,000 video plays using the song without paying for it over a period of 11 days. That search netted Schreer $120 in licensing fees from YouTube, he says. He’s collecting about $30,000 a month overall from his music catalog.
I highlighted the important points. If you read closely, you’ll see that, yes, he is making $30,000 to $40,000 per month, but not from just one song. He makes that from his entire 1,700 to 2,000 cue catalog. He made $120 in 11 days from 100,000 views of a video using “Love Doctor.” So, that would be $360 in a month, for one song. Mr. Schreer has 1,700 to 2,000 songs, some of which are well known. That’s where the 30 to 40K is coming from.
Both of these articles are examples of the kind of press release that record label publicists do. I know, I owned a label. Mr. Schreer is not a starving composer, who has new found riches, thanks to Audiam. He is one of the owners of Audiam, and the purpose of the articles is to attract composers to Audiam, by implying that they will have similar success. While you may possibly see some benefit, it is analogous to suggesting that by wearing Nike sneakers, you’ll be as successful as Michael Jordan. In the realm of production music, Mr. Schreer is a Michael Jordan.
Would I, or will I, use their service? … quite possibly for TV themes that I own that might be getting unauthorized uses. But, with respect to the RF part of my catalog, I’m steering clear of content ID, unless those cues are exclusive (in accordance with YT’s TOS).
_Michael
@lupo
I think this would be the more appropriate quote to pull from the article you pointed to:
“Robert Levine, a former executive editor at Billboard who wrote the book “Free Ride,” said most artists who use Audiam will generate only a handful of cash, but it could be a successful business for Audiam if it gets a lot of customers”Since Audiam is an exclusive deal I really do not understand the confusion. I guess if you want to pull all of your music from all non-exclusive music libraries and solely depend on possible earnings from Audiam then that is a risk you would have to take.
I think you might have trouble convincing many of the composers in this forum who are actually making a living with their production music catalogs to jump ship and bet the farm on youtube “royalties”.PS- if you think you are getting millions and millions of plays of your music on youtube that you can monetize why not simply sign up for the youtube contentID system yourself instead of splitting the earnings with Audiam?
That is the part of this situation that is really confusing to me.-Mark
@Lupo, unless the stats have changed, about 30% of YT videos get 99% of the views. About half the videos get less than 500 views, and many get less than 100 views.
At about $.012 per view, the vast majority of people will make very little money, even if everyone on the planet is watching YT.
Probably a great tool for promoting your band. Not so much, right now, if you write production music.
BTW..RF is not a new business model. I produced over 20 RF collections in the 1980’s. It’s been around a long time.
From a legal perspective, the only thing that will change copyright law, as we know it (in the US), will be legislation or litigation. How do you envision YT changing copyright law? We’ll have to accomodate piracy becuase so many people are doing it? I don’t see SCOTUS or the US Congress going down tha road.
_Michael
Now my take on contentID is a different matter altogether.
My gut feeling is that is something that could be crucial to redefine copyright as we know it.I think you need to do some more research on what the youtube contentID system actually is.
Good luck.What Mark said.
Sometimes I wonder if I have entirely forgotten how to communicate in english…
I don’t think that you’ve forgotten how to communicate. I, for one, need to remind myself that this is an international forum, and that language differences may give rise to different interpretations and meanings of the same subject.
Cheers,
Michael@DP…very few of us would not want to participate in content ID, but are between a rock and a hard place.
I am the exclusive rights holder of my music, not any library through which I market my music. In theory, I should be able to participate in content ID.
The issue, if you’ve read this thread and all of the others, is that content ID creates problems for royalty free libraries and their customers, e.g. competitor’s ads placed on their videos and copyright violation notices etc. If you figure out how to work around that, we’ll all be on the bandwagon.
Until then, writers’ options are to 1) not participate in content ID, or
2) to market through one RF library exclsuively.Most writers don’t have “thousands of cues.” Until internet royalties become substantial, option 2 is not viable for those with small or modest RF catalogs, who rely on income from numerous libraries.
If non-content-ID writers are interested in policing their catalogs, perhaps tunesat, or Audible Magic are options. At least then, they could detect the kind of theft/infringement that you describe.
_Michael
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