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“But to answer your question David, I think that writers should be able to do what you way.”
This statement is confusing? Grammar error?Sorry David, multi-tasking here, trying to get my crib on the market in four weeks. I meant to say that I think writers should be able to do what you “say”….in a perfect world.
Yes, getting decent license money is a different kettle of fish, when you are the one doing the contracting. I once got paid 4K and flown to St Louis for a 30 second spot. But, if you listen to recent posts by Maddie Madsen and sarah Gavigan hefty license fees are drying up.
Blind has it exactly right. When WE are uploading our cues to our PRO, and they are fingerprinted, titles will be irrelevant. The audio will be connected to it’s owner. Unless there is a technological shift that allows for fingerprinting AND watermarking, re-titling won’t be possible. It’s not a right vs. wrong moral argument. It’s a matter of technological change which is about efficiency and it is, unfortunately, indifferent to what a subset of composers need.
Again, if you think the PRO’s are concerned about decisions that cause writers to lose money, think about all of the vocal cues that are now getting paid at the same rate as instrumentals.
I agree with Blind. It’s going to be a slow change. A big percentage of re-titled music will simply age-out, before composers even need to worry about it. The issue is how do you prepare for the future? Maybe, like Art said, everybody gets their tracks back unencumbered, or maybe you’ll have to designate a single publisher for each track.@Blind I’m pretty sure it was mentioned somewhwere that it might happen that the PROs wont pay for retitled tracks. Sorry if I misunderstood something. English is not my first language.
Well I’m still not convinced here, but I’m happy to hear your different opinions on this issue. For sure I won’t go ahead and retitle all my tracks first thing tomorrow morning 😉
“A big percentage of re-titled music will simply age-out, before composers even need to worry about it.”
I have to disagree. I’m licensing and selling tracks 7-14 years old. Some of my “best sellers” were recorded in the 1998 to 2006 era. It’s already 2013.
I even placed one of my fathers recordings from 1973…Tape hiss and all….solo acoustic guitar. Orchestral music is here to stay…it does not age or feel out dated, nor does solo acoustic guitar or solo piano. Rock recycles…we seem to be in an “80’s retro” mode now in 2013…or even folk music…I am recording stuff over the last 2 days that sounds like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. This stuff will get used! My family is sitting on 50 tracks by my (deceased) Grandfather’s big band recorded in the 1960’s, but my father is being weird about putting it on the market…is this worthless music?….no way!…Is Miles Davis’ music worthless and dated? no…I just listened to his record on Friday night…
How do you get FUSE to pay up Michael L. That is a major problem for alot of people
Start by asking your PRO if MSG Media pays an annual blanket fee, or if they do not, like Scripps. If they do, then the problem is failure to file cue sheets. The library that placed the music should pursue that, because they aren’t getting paid either. If it was a gratis direct deal, you’re screwed.
@ David…you’re talking about niche stuff….for which there is always a market, under the right circumstances, like Louie Armstrong’s Wonderful World and Jimmy Durante’s Make Someone Happy. Those are iconic tracks.
The things that will age out are the more or less generic, can’t tell one from the next, cues that are based on current pop trends….which flood the market.@ David. What I’m actually saying is that the re-title (the actual words of the title) of a track would “age out” in a fingerprinting scenario. Picture the scenario both MichaelL and I have been imagining out loud here. If the PROs adopt finger-printing (I don’t think that they have any incentive to figure out a watermarking scenario that just allows for a different type of digital age re-titling, but who knows… it would be a nice solution) then all of the retitle libraries (that focus on TV) would let all of their non-exclusive contracts go and purge their databases of re-titled tracks b/c they would have zero interest in keeping all of the non-exclusive tracks in their system for their clients to use and not get paid for them. Everything would go exclusive naturally. Therefore the “re-titles” (again, the actual words), not the musical styles, will die out of neglect – no one would want them or use them anymore because there would be no financial incentive left to do so.
We’re all over thinking this issue….just give your music to those who turn your music into money and don’t worry about anything else, and at the same time, try to sell it independently. Whatever the pros decide to do, I’ll adapt accordingly…and if that means all of my music reverts back to me and only me and I start the process from scratch, I am quite comfortable with that.
@ Blind, I like you’re version of “age out” a lot better. I have noticed over the years, though, that there can be sort of a bell-shaped curve to the life a of cue. Maybe its more of a roller coaster. I’m going to float a few 30-year old cues out there and see what happens. 😉
OK, so if eventually PRO’s will shift to using only fingerprinting, then signing now a track non-exclusively in perpetuity its a suicide mission?
Because when the time will come and we will have to decide which track goes to which publisher exclusively I will have no option with the non-exclusive perpetuity deal right? I will have to assign that track to them exclusively.
And I wonder some more, if I’ve signed the same track to two different publishers non-exclusively in perpetuity and I have to assign the track to only one publisher, what can I do? Its a nightmare!
How the hall the PRO’s are going to do that? Its going to create a chaos even in agreements composers have with their publishers.OK I get it with publishers canceling agreement for non-exclusive tracks because no one will get paid for them, but what about theme songs that are in use in a specific show for years? BMI or ASCAP will just stop paying for re-titled theme songs? That some of them are re-titled even by major exclusive publishers, for example: Major exclusive publisher have a track called “Nice Day” that is in circulation and getting royalties and sync fees here and then, and suddenly a music supervisor for a big new show, lets say “Good Morning Atlanta”, finds “Nice Day” in the publisher catalog and want to have it as a theme, opening and closing segments, then typically the publisher will re-title it and register it with BMI or ASCAP as: “Good Morning Atlanta Theme”, “Good Morning Atlanta Closing” etc, you get the point. Then what?
Sometimes they do this “Theme re-titling” because the network wants a piece of the publisher share for the theme song but of course not for the original title that have nothing to do with the show. So major exclusive publishers using re-titling as well, just for a different reason, but in the end, if PRO’s stop paying for re-titled tracks, its means that lets say NBC will not get paid for a lot of their shows with those kind of deals. I’ve also seen it with SK when they place cues with I think “lets make a deal”, if its for other show, correct me if I am wrong. They give 50% of the publisher share to the network.
I think Blind has got it right. The PROs will phase in the new system, the old will age out and we will be uploading our song files to the PROs.