Is there a free alternative to MCPS????

[mojorising]

Wondering if anyone knows of an alternative to collecting mechanical royalties in the UK as an American writer other than spending the 80 bucks with MCPS? If every writer I have on board has to pay that, we will really need to generate a lot of mechanical royalties to make it worth it!

[Tbone]

Hi,

MCPS is to collect mechanical royalties. Normally writers do not join MCPS. Publishers join MCPS and collect all the mechanical royalties for all the writers they represent. The publishers then distribute the writer’s % to the writer after receiving the payment from MCPS.

The above is standard practice as far as I know (e.g. Sony/EMI etc do it this way). If it is an American publisher then standard is to have a UK sub-publisher at MCPS.

Remember that in the UK we do not have 100% writer’s share and 100% publisher’s share adding up to 200%. We just have a total of 100% to be split between writer and publisher.

If you’d like any more info let me know.

[Mojo]

Thanks Tbone. Yeah I was confused why this very large exclusive company would have all of us register for MCPS to collect mechanical royalties. In this case i have found 2 other bands a licensing deal and I’m basically just taking a percentage of their writers share. But there are several writers involved who would each have to pay the 80 bucks to register with MCPS. Maybe I will ask if they can just pay us out like you suggested. And in the case of a standard music licensing deal are there ever really much in the way of mechanical royalties?

[Tbone]

I’ve never heard of a UK exclusive library asking writers to register at MCPS. Which is the company you are talking to? Normally a large company will just have a sub-publisher in each region. I can’t think of any large company that doesn’t have this.

To answer your question: that is very difficult to know. Sometimes in the UK I think mechanicals can be quite substantial, it depends on the use of the tracks. I wouldn’t like to say yes or no since I cannot predict it. But I would think that not having any % of the mechanicals could be a big risk.

[Mojorising]

The company is Sonoton, do you have any thoughts about them? They are exclusive in perpetuity and asking every writer to register with MCPS which might be a deal breaker. But so far I have heard positive things about them as a library.

[Tbone]

I don’t have any personal experience with them, but I’ve heard that Sonoton is pretty big. I think they are represented by APM in the US. It surprises me a lot that they would be asking writers to register at MCPS. The UK is such a big market I’d expect there to be a sub-publisher. I mean what do all the other writers at Sonoton do? And what does Sonoton do in all other countries?

I am a little confused by all this as it seems so unusual for a big company to ask for writers to register at MCPS.

Can’t Sonoton just collect the mechanicals via Germany’s GEMA? I don’t actually know if that works but I’ve seen it before I think. But if so, they could then pay you out that way too once they’ve received the mechanicals.

[mojorising]

Yeah thats a good point, I will ask if thats a possibility. Thank you for the feedback!

[mojorising]

So to follow up on this. Sonoton still wants us all to become MCPS writers, but they will reimburse us for the registration fee. so I can’t really be mad at that. Anyone else have any experience with Sonoton? The only thing everyone has cold feet about is that they “re-release” the music and own the rights to the music 100%. And there is no reversion clause in the contract. Exclusive forever. But maybe it will be a risk/reward situation. They said we would have to take down any songs on streaming or Itunes type sites when they do the re-release.

[Tbone]

Hi again,

In the UK, this kind of deal is normal for big libraries. Exclusive, no-reversion, own all rights type of thing. And yea, no tracks on Itunes etc.

The reimbursing for MCPS registration sounds a bit odd to me but perhaps that’s just how Sonoton does it and it’s fine. I honestly don’t know since I haven’t heard of anyone doing this before and also have not worked with Sonoton myself. They do have a good reputation though from what I’ve heard.

[gion]

no dont

[gion]

Own your own masters and you get additional funds through multiple streams.
join mcps or ask your writers to give you the funds so you can join it on their behalf

[Des Penney]

Hey,

As far as I can remember, prior to the amalgamation of prs/mcps in 2009, only a licensed publisher could legitimately collect from mcps?
Was this so at the beginning of 1990?
I seem to recall this being the case.

[Author]

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