Short Changed On Olympics Placement

[Art Munson]

Daniel, don’t be surprised if it shows up a couple of years down the road. Almost every quarter I get a bunch of payments, from BMI, going back a couple of years and sometimes longer.

[NY Composer]

Very possible Art,

Wow. How generous :-)……

[SongLoft]

Just to chime in here:

A few years back I received an “Adjustment Statement” from BMI where I got paid for some music used in the 10′ Olympics.
The payment came in 2014.

It was about $1200 for 30 seconds of music used in the Olympics Closing Ceremony, including $400 for “Super Usage”

I feel like it was just luck this happened to get corrected as I didn’t know about it. Most of the time , composer’s royalty dollars are floating off into the ether of PRO non transparency.

[gdomeier]

So the PRO’s benefit from this or is it someone else enjoying the fruits of our labors?

[Orca]

Hi Guys,

I just found this thread. I’m in the UK and also had a track used on NBC and NBC Sports (Versus) during the Rio Olympics which appeared on my tunesat account. The track was bought from a well known non-exclusive website.

As I’m in the U.K, I’ve been waiting to see it anything turns up on my PRS statement but have had nothing yet. I phoned the PRS today to ask for their help in chasing it up. I was told that they can only do something if I can give them a cue sheet.

Does anyone have any suggestions on who to contact at NBC to try to get a copy of a cue sheet if one was submitted please?

I’ve had quite a lot of tunesat notifications for other tracks on the Outdoor Channel and American Heroes Channel in the US. Do you think it’s worth trying to get cue sheets from these too?

I’m quite new to the library music world but it’s been going pretty well and this website and forum have been invaluable, so thanks for all the help guys!

Dave

[woodsdenis]

I can only speak for Ireland but I assume other PROs do the same. Any unclaimed royalties are put into a pool and after 3 years are paid out to the Irish PRO members pro rata.You can search for unpaid tracks in the Irish PRO. Can you do the same with Ascap/Bmi if you are not a member ? I am nearly sure PRS members can do this in the PRS data base

[Orca]

Hi Dennis, thanks for your input. I’ll see what I can find out

[NY Composer]

Orca,

Any luck contacting NBC?

I just got my last and final email from BMI. They said basically they are sorry, they have no info about the 30 second promo track and that NBC Universal is not giving them any help.

I generally would not be this concerned if it was a 15 second Karsdashians que. It was 4, 30 second Network placements.

[Orca]

Hi Daniel,

No luck as yet. I called the PRS in the UK to ask for their assistance and advice. They told me that they won’t do anything without a cue sheet.

I then contacted the non-exclusive site that sold my track to NBC and they got back to me eventually saying that while the purchasers of the track had a legal obligation to supply them with a cue sheet, they hadn’t received one and weren’t able to pass on any contact information to me.

So I’ve just emailed NBC support to ask for help tracking down whoever might deal with cue sheets for this kind of broadcast and will wait to hear. I’m quite new to this and don’t really know if this is going anywhere but it’s got to be worth a try.

I’ll let you know if I hear anything.

[Author]

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