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Hi guys, I recently started using Tunesat and have been impressed with it so far. One question I had, for ASCAP, how long on average does it take from an air date for your cue sheet to show up? So far I have been using Tunesat since Jan and I have about 15 shows that I have no cue sheets for.
Just wondering how long I should wait before bugging my publishers.
Thanks!
For me it’s taken anywhere from two months to three years for them to show up.
I don’t quite understand either how they do this… I got paid last quarter for music used in several episodes of a show on Discovery but only one cue sheet for an episode showed up in my BMI account.
Hi Brian. I compose music for television programs directly as opposed to the licensing/library route, so it may be a different routine than what you’re doing. That said, I don’t expect to see royalties for nine to twelve months after the broadcast performance. My PRO is BMI and that’s a reliable turnaround. I think you’ll find the consensus is that it takes a while to see back end payments no matter how you shake it.
I compose music for television programs directly as opposed to the licensing/library route, so it may be a different routine than what you’re doing.
More or less the same situation. Remember, shows are produced ahead of time. Your track could get placed in a show in June that might not air until the fall. Logging shows and filling out cue sheets is often done by someone farther down the food chain than the editor and may be done long after the show is edited, but before it’s broadcast, but not always.
If I recall, producers have a pretty generous window of time after a show airs to file the cue sheets. So, yes, it takes nine to twelve months, or more to see royalties.
My PRO is BMI and that’s a reliable turnaround.
+1
I left ASCAP after I realized that they missed around 70% of my performances. I’ve also found BMI to be fairly reasonable when it comes to correcting mssing cue sheets and cue sheet errors.
How much of a pain is it to switch to BMI? What does that entail if I have nearly 2000 tracks registered with ASCAP with different libraries?
The most difficult part was the timing, which is based on your date of membership. My situation was complex because I was moving my pubishing company too.
With respect to tracks that I had in libraries, for which I did not own the publishing, I just left them in place.
BTW…you’ve probably read this in other threads, unless they’ve change their policy, ASCAP will not accept tunesat or other third party data, as proof of performances. They also do not accept cue sheets from composers or publishers. The survey rules. AFAIK, only SESAC accepts tunesat data.
So wait, you had cues in ASCAP and BMI at the same time (different songs I know, but you as a composer had cues registered with both BMI and ASCAP?) I didn’t know that was allowed!
You can be a current member of one and a former member of the other and your former PRO will continue to pay for any performances of the tracks that are registered with them. You just start fresh with the new PRO.
It’s very difficult when multiple publishers are involved. They too can only move tracks from ASCAP to BMI based on their original date of membership! So you’d have to cordinate all of that for each publisher. I would imagine that if you’re talking about retitled tracks it could be a nightmare.
Curiously, I found that many of my tracks made their way from ASCAP to BMI without me doing anything and I started getting paid on them. A friend of mine had a similar experience.
Thanks for the info, very helpful! Wish I’d known before I signed up for ASCAP! HA
I was with ASCAP for 34 years. I switched because I was writing for several TV shows and I was told BMI would do a lot better than ASCAP.
That was true for a few years, then BMI changed it’s royalty calculations to include a TV show’s ratings, not just the day of the week, time slot etc. Now, my royalties for the same shows and same number of performances are less than half of what they were.
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