Is "performance free" really that bad if tiered pricing??

[mojorising]

First of all I still make most of my licensing income from PRO driven models with both gratis deals and ones that have sync fees so I’m a pro PRO person lol. But I came across a library who is performance free, so no potential for any back end income. I know on most RF sites if the song is broadcast you will get performance royalties but does that even out when you are selling songs for only 20-40 bucks on those sites? Vs a performance free site that charges around 80 bucks for anything personal and non broadcast (so there wouldn’t be performance royalties anyway) and then for TV, commercial, film anything else the prices are much higher. More like “sync fee” prices. $150 to $2,000. I know most people say performance free is the final drop to the race to the bottom, but if a library actually charges nice up front prices based on use-age how bad is it?? Especially when there seems to be a market for people who don’t want to have to deal with PROs.

[Art Munson]

In an ever changing world is anything ever off the table?

Interesting idea if the fees are high enough. Then again do those fees race to the bottom?

[music123]

Performance free is very dangerous for U.S. spots at a national level. I earned a huge 5 figure pay check because of a track in a national campaign that ran 10,000 times. It’s also not good for shows that rerun a lot and get exported to overseas TV markets. We need our performance royalties!

[music123]

The pay check was back end performance royalties from my PRO and exceeded the licensing fee by 3 x.

[guscave]

The main problem with performance free is that it’s a one time payment that really doesn’t add up to what a track can make in a lifetime.

I have a track that I wrote 6 years ago and still continues to make me back-end money. So far I’d say I’d made about $10k from that one song.

[mojorising]

true! but the devils advocate here is what if your not giving up your songs performance royalties all together. You are just granting one library the right to sell it under a different title completely royalty and performance free. I know the same concerns of retitling will come up here, but lets say that doesn’t become as much of an issue in the future as people think. I personally think even with water marking technology the retitle libraries will figure out a way to make their version of your song detectable.

The only reason I have considered this with this library is they are based in a different country, and charge fair prices. I hate when one of my JP songs gets picked up for nothing up front and over time I end up collecting sometimes as low as 10-20 bucks over a few years on that particular cue. Others obviously pay more but in this case I get paid every single time, and if its for something bigger its tiered pricing so I get paid more.

[guscave]

One problem with this type of acceptance of “PRO FREE” licensing is that it can quickly become the norm. You may not be giving away your performance royalties now because today you have a choice between different library deals. But as soon as libraries start to see that we are ok with this, you’ll start to see less choices.

Ten years ago it would’ve been unheard of for composers not to get upfront fees as well as back end royalties. Today they’re giving networks like Scripps music where the composer doesn’t see a dime.

IMO we shouldn’t be contemplating any type of model that pays us less, but rather work towards getting as much as we can on every track and every placement.

[mojorising]

thats a good point. Performance free is definitely not something we should make a habit of and I can see how that could become the norm if people do. But the gray area here is that with this model I think you stand to make more money per placement than you would from low end cable back end only shows. But this is only at the higher prices this library is currently charging. If this becomes the norm then those prices will eventually fall.

Our performance royalties are at least always there to protect us, so I probably won’t do this again with songs in the future. But I did it in the spirit of trying everything for experimentation. With the same library I have sold a few songs that were PRO and a few that were performance free. And just to note my sales HAVE NOT sky rocketed since I tried the performance free option. (which is what the library owner kind of had me believing)

[MaLmusic]

The problem I have with this is: clients who buy music don’t have to pay the PROs, the networks do.

If a library has a specific performance-free licence for owners of small public places (restaurant, shop, cafe etc..) who want music to play at their places without worrying about paying the PROs, then I think I would be ok with that. But offering that licence for TV/commercial productions makes no sense, it doesn’t save the client any money, and the composer is losing “free” money too.

[Author]

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