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A few years ago, I had one of my Christmas songs on the promo for the Christmas special of American Pickers. It was played constantly. Never got paid for it.
Last summer i had one track getting around 15 Tunesat hits daily on AMC network. I asked the library if this was a commercial. They told me it was an “on-air promo” and unfortunately BMI doesn’t pay royalties on on-air promos from AMC.
From BMI – “AMC is not a station we currently get promo logs from.”Art, you are correct. The library told me AMC doesn’t submit promo logs to BMI and therefore, BMI doesn’t pay royalties to the composer. I wonder how many loopholes a network can find in order to avoid paying royalties to the composers…
Glad to hear at least CMT pays royalties for these promos!
I wonder how many loopholes a network can find in order to avoid paying royalties to the composers…
Not sure it is the network finding a “loophole” to avoid paying. They already paid! TV Networks pay annual blanket license fees to BMI to cover music usage of the BMI catalog in
1. TV shows as themes, background cues, featured cues
2. Jingles, advertising, promos
3. Infomercials
4. Live news and sports bumpers, featured cues, background cuesThe money is already at BMI, but BMI makes the convenient excuse “the network never turned in the Promo logs”. It’s simply an excuse by a PRO to not pay performance royalties for PROMO usage. It’s shameful and wrong. It’s also publishers fault for not pressuring their clients to file copies of these logs on a weekly basis back to them and to the PRO’s. They make writers whole when it comes to cue sheets, but neglect PROMO’s? Why?
I am trying to collect on a Promo that was in heavy rotation in Jan 2020 and into February…I have Tunesat data to back my case. We’ll see how that shakes out. MYPRO requested the Tunesat data too. Art, I’d pass your TUNESAT data on regardless. You have nothing to lose by submitting your proof/ data.
Thanks for opening up this old wound Art! I’ve never been paid for a Promo by ASCAP. One in particular drives me nuts. A track of mine has been used in a 15 second Animal Planet Puppy Bowl promo for 4 consecutive years. I’ve hounded ASCAP, sent them Tunesat audio, but they don’t care one bit, no Ad Code, no royalties. It doesn’t show up on Numerator and I can’t find it on any social media, but I have MANY Tunesat hits. This year I didn’t even bother trying.
You have nothing to lose by submitting your proof/ data.
I’ve lost plenty of time
A good friend of mine is a promo producer. When he used to work for one of the Fox departements, it was the post mix engineer’s responsibility to make and turn in cue sheets to the PROs. My friend was hired as the producer and assigned to this veteran engineer, already working for Fox. That was the whole Promo team, no music supervisor, my friend just picked the music from the pre cleared music suppliers in their system. One day my friend asked the engineer about the cue sheets (because I asked him about it after reading about missing royalties here on MLR), the engineer replied he had NEVER made or turned in any cue sheets in the 15 years he had worked there, in fact the engineer had no clue how to even make a cue sheet!. This was around 2015 so add 5 years to that now. I think this should be criminal! And it seems to be standard procedure. They also had a set non negotiable promo fee which was pre cleared with all the music supplier (including all the big libraries) which was about $250-350. Pretty sad huh?!
What I find so bizarre too is how PROMO’s, which are generally speaking – advertisements, are just looked at as pieces of sheet in the eyes of our industry.
These tracks are extremely important. They PROMOTE and ADVERTISE a TV show just like a trailer advertises a film and a commercial advertises a product. I had one promoting “So You Think You Can Dance” which is a hit Prime Time Disney show. Sorry but to my eyes, and in my ears as I watched it one night on TV (I had no idea it was about to air but it came on), that Big Band track was a BIG TIME, PRIME TIME drop promoting DISNEY, the biggest player in the business. At 8PM on a Thursday with millions of viewers. That PROMO should be worth a $500 performance royalty based on the time of day and the number of eyes on that show. I immediately contacted the publisher who replied “We need to see if the network sends us the PROMO logs.”
I hope to be paid on the 3rd domestic distribution in 2020. We shall see……..
If anyone from the PRO’s and library owners are reading this, please lobby hard to change the Policy and demand that PROMOS be treated like cue sheets.
Yes it is criminal and a breach of copyright to just use a track, and not pay a composer a royalty. It’s sickening!
Oh and while the rant is on….sorry, but our music for media business is kicking out TONS of new ads during this COVID 19 crisis and more people than ever are watching TV. Disney crossed the 50 Million subscribers for their streaming service. NETFLIX’s stock is well above $400 a share and they are crushing it with more subscribers and revenue!
So ASCAP if you need more revenue, you better pick up the phone and shake down:
1. NETFLIX
2. DISNEY
3. GOOGLE
4. NBC UNIVERSALFollow the money and get your head out of your A$$…and quit making excuses about declining revenue. Go get our money from these companies and increase your bottom line.
So, here’s the question in my mind. In your situation, the user pays, the PRO gets paid, and you don’t. General thought is that, at most the composer has a breach of contract claim against the PRO. I have to believe that there is a viable claim for breach of copyright. Either the user violates the copyright because the agreement contemplates non-payment to the composer, or the PRO violates copyright because it creates a scheme to bypass payment to the composer. Either way it is a known use without compensation.
The PRO is only an agent, it is not the owner of the copyright. How can an agent fulfill its duty of loyalty if it purposefully creates a scheme not to pay the principal when the agent gets paid.
My .02.
OMG- I just realized that at least under the BMI agreement, we give away our copyrights to BMI:
From the standard form agreement:
Except as otherwise provided herein, you hereby grant to us for the Period:
(a) All the rights that you own or acquire publicly to perform, and to license others to perform, anywhere in the world, in any and all places and in any and all media, now known or which hereafter may be developed, any part or all of the Works.In consideration of our granting our copyrights to BMI, it will pay us according to its “standard practices”, which can be little or nothing.
I just realized that at least under the BMI agreement, we give away our copyrights to BMI:
This is not correct. Copyright owners have what is commonly referred to as a “bundle of rights,” as set forth below:
17 U.S. Code Section 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works.
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.The grant of rights from composers to their PRO, in this case BMI, is a limited, non-exclusive license. It is not a transfer of copyright ownership. The grant is limited in that it does not give BMI authority to exercise the full bundle of exclusive rights set forth in Section 106. The language below only applies to Section 106(4) and Section 106(6), which cover the right to publicly perform a copyrighted work.
Except as otherwise provided herein, you hereby grant to us for the Period:
(a) All the rights that you own or acquire publicly to perform, and to license others to perform, anywhere in the world, in any and all places and in any and all media, now known or which hereafter may be developed, any part or all of the Works.I hope this clears things up.
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