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Sitting back and looking at my PRO royalties, I cannot be sure if I am being cheated. The calculations vary from quarter. Sometimes I do good. Other times I make a fraction of previous quarters. But one component missing is upfront money.
I have music placed on over one hundred shows now. That is something that I thought would be impossible five years ago. Apparently I have a skill set and people actually like what I do. But as of today, I can count on one hand the number of upfront or sync fees received. They appear to be extinct. This has got me to wonder: is it really worth it to create a bunch of new music in order to chase backend royalties?
I have been evaluating my scenario and realize that I have cheated myself by not working with companies that pay upfront money. I have been leaving money on the table for most of my short career in music licensing.
I admit that I am not a full time musician. But it begins to make less and less sense to wait months or years for payouts. Many backend uses generate less than $10 for me. I have only been able to make decent money by the volume of music that I have out there.
Long story short, I am working towards increasing my income by collecting more money upfront. Although it is fun to create music, there really isn’t a great incentive to sign over exclusivity just for backend royalties. The results have spoken.
I don’t want this to sound condescending, as it’s not. It’s just an observation – I think you’re starting to ‘get’ it. 🙂
DI, welcome to the club of “those who have caught on”. We’ve paid a high price for our memberships…
I’m fairly convinced that many of the modern newly exclusive blanket license oriented libraries are glad to see us move on once we start to realize how small the returns are. Their ideal composer is someone who is experienced enough to produce “good enough” results but not experienced enough to realize that the returns aren’t worth the effort. I think we’ll see a lot of people walking away over the next few years.
I agree with Kiwi.
On the subject of reruns, I keep detailed records of all of my income/placements/etc, and I did some math a few weeks ago and realized that after 5 years and almost 800+ placements in TV, the income has not continued to go up like I thought it would when I was starting out. It rose for the first couple of years (as you would expect when starting from zero), but then leveled off, and has even decreased. Basically, even though you might think that the reruns would keep adding up, for every show that re-runs, there are five that drop off the list. In other words, don’t let anyone tell you that the back end royalties endlessly pile up.
Interesting post, D.I. – I think that approaching this entire library thing from Art’s angle is a pretty smart idea. Never put all of your eggs in one basket: write for RF, NE, Exclusives, Custom, etc. It is income from as many different revenue streams as possible while constantly improving writing + production chops. At least this has become my target, right or wrong.
It is unethical in my opinion for a company to not pay a composer for his/her work when the production is a profitable enterprise (such as a cable television program).
On the subject of reruns, I keep detailed records of all of my income/placements/etc, and I did some math a few weeks ago and realized that after 5 years and almost 800+ placements in TV, the income has not continued to go up like I thought it would when I was starting out. It rose for the first couple of years (as you would expect when starting from zero), but then leveled off, and has even decreased. Basically, even though you might think that the reruns would keep adding up, for every show that re-runs, there are five that drop off the list. In other words, don’t let anyone tell you that the back end royalties endlessly pile up.
I’ve been composing library music for 35 years.I’ve tried occasionally, over the past few years, to let you know about what you are now realizing for yourselves. Most often the response that I got was “It’s a new world. Things are different now”….yadda yadda yadda.
Despite what some people will argue, unless you compose music that a friend of mine calls “evergreen, “most library music goes through a life cycle of: 1) waiting to get noticed, 2) getting somme placements, 3) getting more placements, 4) getting some placements, 5) hoping to get noticed.
We would all like to think that our catalogs are a forever thing. That really isn’t the case, especially if you compose trendy music. What is popular today won’t be tomorrow. Current sounds will start to sound old in a few years. In a few years today’s EDM will be as old fashioned as parachute pants and mullets. There’s an art to creating library music that has a long shelf-life.
As far as reruns go: there are reruns and repeats. I would classify reruns as a show that lives forever in syndication, like Seinfeld. I would classify repeats as episodes of show that may air over and over many times during the course of a week for as long as the show lasts. The difference being that reruns of shows like the Kardashians or Honey Boo Boo, are not likely to airing 25 years from now, like the original episodes of Seinfeld. When they’re done, they’re done, and so are your royalties.
IMO, if your going to pursue backend royalties as your bread and butter, you need to be extremely prolific, like 3+ cues per day. If not, I don’t think you will have enough material in the pipeline to reach and/or maintain significant income. Depending upon what you write, it’s like painting your house by yourself. By the time you’re done, you have to start over.
To paraphrase Guy Michelmore (I think). “In this business you’ve got to reinvent yourself every five years, or so.”
_Michael
Many backend uses generate less than $10 for me.
DI, may I ask, how much did you think typical backend royalties would be? If someone told you ahead of time, that you would earn $10 for all your effort, would you have done it anyway?
3 cues a day is nothing for me and I don’t even do this full time.
So, in other words, DI – you STILL don’t get it! :p
Call me greedy, but from now on I want money upfront and backend royalties. Money matters, a lot!
Upfront money is a rare thing these days. You can find libraries that will split sync fees. But, I won’t kid you. You have to be very good. To tell you otherwise would be misleading.
I asked a bunch of times and always got “it depends on the usage” as a response.
It does depend on the usage. But, gratis licensing to cable TV is not the best way to generate higher paying placements. It generates what you’ve experienced.
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