Subscription Models Must be Destroyed!

[PeteJ]

Nothing to add except to express bafflement as to why anyone would allow a library to sell their music in this way.

[LAwriter]

Nothing to add except to express bafflement as to why anyone would allow a library to sell their music in this way.

IN my case it was an existing library that I had worked for moving music that was already legitimately signed over to them non-exclusively INTO one of these subscription models libraries without permission. It was obvious to me that this was a sleazy move on their part, and that it would definitely hurt my other non-exclusive placements. After discussing our contract, I told them they did not have permission. That ended our relationship – permanently. It seems they are heavily weighting this new subscription model in their business plan.

Luckily, this library has not shown up in the MLR listings, and I don’t even want to mention it’s name as giving it any exposure is dangerous IMO. If it ever shows up here, I will no doubt give it a scathing review. 🙂

[LAwriter]

PS – this particular company sells it’s licenses via subscription for between $0.10 and $0.20 cents a track.

[Music1234]

So what do you know, A company that was licensing my music on a 1 track sold = 1 royalty paid basis that now transformed to Subscription wrote me an e-mail.

“I hope you’re doing well! Attached is your final report for Q3. This is just the remaining standard licenses for Q3. The corresponding payment was sent to your PayPal. Enjoy your summer and let me know if you need anything!”

My statements used to show a lot of $15, $25, $40 kinds of royalties. This recent statement was .96 cents!!!!!!! Every tune licensed paid me a royalty of 96 cents.

Can you all now see how destructive these models are????

WHY WHY WHY Are you participating? Do you like devaluing yourself by 99%

This is from the company that engineered some sort of formula where magically 80% of all subscription revenue remained for the company…20% goes to the “royalty pool”. So I guess in July Aug and September of 2017 (When I had no idea my music was being licensed within this new model) I earned $12.

Under normal licensing circumstances, this would have net me probably $200

13 Licenses paid $12 total revenue. Sickening!

Please everyone, remove your music from companies NOT PAYING YOU, or transitioning to subscription. I guarantee you these crooks will cook up subscription models, devalue the entire industry over night and you will watch your revenue tank. Yes it is the site operators who are launching this destructive devaluation, but complicit and lazy composers (who do not want to order take downs) are to blame too.

[88Keys]

Founder of Soundstripe reports 1,000,000 licenses a year in this podcast:

Also offers tracks for $2 in partnership with https://rocketium.com
https://rocketium.com/academy/soundstripe-integration-in-rocketium/

[Tbone]

I was wondering: what do you do when a library that has some of your tracks exclusively, in perpetuity, decides to change to a subscription model?

Other than not ever submitting anything to them again, I’m really not sure what we can do.

[Music1234]

In my opinion I would think that a shift to a different “pooled royalty” subscription business model would nullify your contract. You would have to opt into new terms of service. Most exclusive deals say:

“Publisher hereby agrees to pay to Licensor, Fifty percent (50%) of the amount of any one-time license use fee (a “Single-Use License Fee”) received by Publisher with respect to any single-use license granted by Publisher for the use of a Master in connection with a motion picture, commercial advertisement broadcast on television , internet, or any other media (ring tones, apps, games, etc) .”

Deals we signed never addressed subscription models. The key word seems to be “Single Use” One ‘Single Use” License Sold = 1 Royalty “Sync Fee” paid to Artist.

I listened to the podcast above. The first 25 minutes is just a story about his “struggle” as a fledgling musician. Then they shift to the business where we learned that they have 8 staff writers and 85 contributors. They emphasize ‘Quality” with their 3000 tracks. They want the broke YOUTUBE film maker as their clients. No where do they get any tough questions like “what is your annual revenue?” “How do you pay Artists?” “Why aren’t you affiliated with PRO’s”? Why are you undercutting the entire industry and yourselves? What would you charge for a world wide advertising campaign?

So who really knows. What I do know is that 3000 tracks divided by 85 = about 35 tracks per artist . When you have 85 artists hoping for some revenue and only 3000 tracks…it does not look that ideal for any artist. This company would have to be printing $3,000,000 a year in revenue so 85 people can make around 30K a year (on average) They’d also have to have around 20,000 to 25,000 subscribers to hit these numbers. I kind of doubt they have that many subscribers, but what do I know?

There also were no questions about PRO in the podcast. So lots of “fluff” and “buzz” in the interview but no real clues or facts stated about the bottom line: How much revenue are you doing? How many subscribers do you have? What are your Artists getting paid? How do you decide what to pay them when the revenue is pooled together?

It’s real simple: If you do not participate, you do not devalue yourself and the entire industry.
I saw with my own eyes what it did to my royalties. They plummeted to 96 cents, but I’m out. Out of principle, I will not sell my soul so some greedy folks can profit from my music.
Yes – NO MONEY is better than 96 cents in this situation.

[LAwriter]

Most exclusive deals say:

“Publisher hereby agrees to pay to Licensor, Fifty percent (50%) of the amount of any one-time license use fee (a “Single-Use License Fee”) received by Publisher with respect to any single-use license granted by Publisher for the use of a Master in connection with a motion picture, commercial advertisement broadcast on television , internet, or any other media (ring tones, apps, games, etc) .”

Actually Music1234, that’s not my exclusive deal agreement. All my exclusive deals were buyouts up front by PMA libs. They can do whatever they want with my music and I have virtually no say in things.

Yes – NO MONEY is better than 96 cents in this situation.

I couldn’t agree more. There is no way I’m going there voluntarily. I will pull out and go on food stamps or hang out a cardboard sign on a street corner first : “Professional musician. Decimated by downloads. Struggling with streaming. Skewered by Subscriptions. Will write for food.”

[Art Munson]

Just removed mine from a library yesterday and they wanted to know why? Really? As LAWriter said:

There is no way I’m going there voluntarily. I will pull out and go on food stamps or hang out a cardboard sign on a street corner first

[Music1234]

@LA Writer, while it would be a shame to see an exclusive publisher adopt the sub model, at least you can walk away knowing you were paid that work for hire. When you sell a tune, you sell a tune.

This is why I put at least a 3K price tag on tunes where the copyright is transferred. Publishers would never pay 3K a tune to own the copyright in perpetuity. Fine by me, I’d rather own the cue and perpetually collect license fees and earn more than 3K per tune over their life time.

It’s really sad when I hear some writers say “This subscription model just launched, I am going to give this a few months to see what happens.”

What exactly do you think is going to happen? I already know…YOU are devaluing yourself to peanuts, and the owner of the company is giving him or herself a nice juicy raise. Are you cool with that?

[Advice]

Question. Can this model ever be good for a composer? e.g. If the fees are big enough such that what you get per song sale is “real” money?

Getting my first taste of this. I found out that one of my libraries put my songs on a subscription site. In this case, the subscription fees are way too low for the artists to make real money unless they have thousands of tracks. From $8/month for 5 songs per month to $29/month unlimited. I think you have to sign up per year which makes the range $96 to $348 per year. If someone signed up for the cheapest plan and bought my song, what percentage of that $96 would be mine? And if the songs were put there as a sub to another publisher, their split would have to be figured in. I can’t imagine there would be much left for me per sale.

Music1234, I know what your reply would be, LOL 😀 Other comments?

[Art Munson]

Other comments?

Is this library noted in the listings here? If not let me know so I can make that note.

[Advice]

Hi Art
For now, I intentionally left the library name out. I wanted to ask the general question.

Best

[Tbone]

Advice: You said that one of your libraries put your songs on a subscription site. How is this allowed?! It sounds like you give your music to a library and then it can just go and put it on everything like P5, AJ etc etc and take a cut instead of you putting it there yourself. I’d really appreciate it if you named the library to make certain to avoid them!

[Advice]

Many contracts give libraries a lot of authority to sub out to other avenues. In this case, it was very much allowed. My fault for not reading it more carefully. I’ve signed so many non-exclusives that I’ve gotten into the habit of looking mainly to see the split, if it’s non-exc, and can be terminated (not in perpetuity).

I raised the subject, not to blast the library, but to ask if there ever can be positives to being in a subscription model library. We tend to be black and white about these things. That doesn’t mean *I* thing these are good, just asking.

I can identify the library later on.

[Author]

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