[Alan]

… If you don’t mind me asking, what courses did you take, and how was the quality of teaching?

Hi Keith,
Art likes these threads to stay on topic, so maybe it should move to a new one about Berklee Online, but I’ll answer and let him decide.
I have a “Master Certificate in Music Production and Technology” which is 15 courses. I finished in 2011, so I’m sure there must be improvements since then. Looking back, most all the courses were good. The most helpful courses for me in creating production music were:
-Producing Music with Reason facilitated by Erik Hawkins. He also has great YouTube channel
-Critical Listening (Dan Thompson)
-Audio Mastering Techniques (Jonathan Wyner)
-Sampling and Audio Production (David Doms)

[Alan]

By not getting paid for placements, do you mean the exclusive libraries didnt register them correctly with the PRO?

No, I mean they license them to Scripps, PBS, BTN, etc that pay very little to no back end.

[Alan]

bump! figured it would be nice to hear how the previous posters did last year, and maybe some new “5 year” folks could chime in as well

+1
As a newcomer I find great wisdom and inspiration in this thread… I humbly request all you veterans to update us on your progress in 2018.

Here you go, I guess this is a 9 year report for me, wow!
2018 Total Income – $23.5K (down about 10% from previous year)
PRO Income – $11.7K (up about 11%)
RF Income – about $10K (about the same)
Sync Fees – about $2K (down about 60%, as expected, I had a lucky 2017)

I expect I’ll be leveling off now at $20K-$25K annually.
I only wrote about 25 tracks in 2018, but I’m shooting for higher quality now. I’ve hired session musicians a few times, plus I’m opting to record real instruments over samples as much as possible. That really slows things down, but I’m hoping the better quality will pay off in the long run. I bought a tuba last year, haha!
My catalog is a little over 300 tracks now.
I feel like I still don’t know nearly enough about this business, but I have gotten better at spotting a rotten deal.
My Tunesat Subscription has made me very cynical. Now that I know how often I don’t get paid for my placements, I’m very selective about what goes to exclusive broadcast libraries.
Good luck in 2019 all!

[Alan]

Thanks for that Art. No, I never saw that (and learned it from a BMI guy, how embarrassing 😉
I submitted the ad claim. It had a total of 24 am airings. I’m curious to see what comes of it.

[Alan]

thanks Chris. I can’t imagine ASCAP will take my word for it. The producer will still need to submit a cue sheet before I can get any back end, right? I’m still waiting on that to happen.

[Alan]

search for the commercial, look for the Ad Code and submit that to ASCAP

Thanks Art. ASCAP has an ad claim submission form that asks for the Ad Code so it was pretty easy. The RF site that licensed it reached out to the production company and requested they file a cue sheet. They said they would so we’ll see.
The 30 sec spot has run 15 times so far. I don’t expect to see much back end, but this is new for me and it’s always good to learn.

[Alan]

Tunesat picked up a 30 sec commercial that used a non-ex track of mine. It aired 2 times each on Headline News, Fox Business, Fox News, CNBC and CNN (10 total broadcasts) between 6:30am and 8:00am EST.
Numerator (formerly Competitrack) picked up 8, but charges $50 to make a downloadable report. I don’t see this generating that much in back end, but I could be wrong.
How do I use Numerator’s info with ASCAP?

BTW, Competitrack is now Numerator
https://www.numerator.com/client-login

[Alan]

I got a snail mail letter from them addressed to my publishing “On behalf of SoundCloud Operations, Inc.”
There was a schedule “A” attached so my best guess is SoundCloud is putting a couple of my tracks on their streaming service. I have no idea how they got my info, A.C.E. maybe?
They “strongly recommend” that I submit a W-9.
Any new info on this?

[Alan]

The MMA has nothing to do with Cable TV.

Yeah, I get that. My point was that my inbox was slammed weekly about “Modernization” while my actual income relies on their archaic survey system, which they seem to have no plans to address.

[Alan]

BTN is a sample survey station and a random 6 hour sample is conducted for that station each quarter. Anything that falls into that random sample survey receives royalties. This survey is based on the license fee that BTN pays to ASCAP. While you may have a number of cue sheets for programs on this station, if the program does not fall into the sample survey done for the station, then the performances are not eligible for royalties.

And yet, now 30+ pages of my statement is devoted to internet and streaming royalties that ad up to about $10. ASCAP will boast how they pay us $0.00045 for HULU streams, but uses a 24 hour sample to determine an entire years’s worth of Royalties on a cable channel for ALL ASCAP writers. So much for the “Music Modernization Act.”

I’m thinking of writing a letter to the ASCAP board of directors complaining about this. Of course it won’t do any good, but I will include a link to this thread so they know we are noticing and talking about their failure. I’ll have to “cool off” before I do it, and I’m not a very good professional writer. Anyone know a music lawyer out there who would draft a letter on our behalf, pro bono? 😉

[Alan]

If it makes you feel any better, I have 90 cue sheets for these types of placements. I sent ASCAP a document listing the Series Title, Series Code, Date, and Program Code from each cue sheet and got the same nonsense from them as you did.

Nah, I don’t feel better, just worse for you and Kubed.
pgbanker, thanks for the great info. Please continue to share this process and your progress.

I probably will not make the change. In my frustration failed to mention that I have hit the survey “lottery” a few times. I have gotten the occasional 3 figure payout from small cable channels for survey hits. Does that make up for lost royalties? Who knows? The NBA channel is using one of my tracks a lot, so my odds are improving. I’ll report back if I get lucky with the survey.

I will say that I was much happier about my royalties before I had a Tunesat account, haha.

[Alan]

Here is an update from my NBA Channel question:
– Tunesat has detected 81 individual placements on the NBA channel for a total of 346 airings. Earliest was April 2017, most recent was last week. Many are 1-2 minutes long.
– About 50 of those placements have cue sheets filed with ASCAP
– I have received ZERO royalties from ASCAP

I spoke with an ASCAP representative over the summer who said I should see some payments on October 2018…..nope.

I called ASCAP today. The representative politely told me he hears this a lot. The NBA channel (and most sports channels) pay very little and are ranked very low on the priority for the ASCAP survey. I “whined” a bit more and he gave me the NBA channel survey list for 2017. Here it is:
1/25/2017 6am – noon
4/11/2017 6am to noon (Tunesat picked up 19 airings on 4/12/2017, ouch!)
5/22/2017 6pm to 11:59:59 pm
8/13/2017 6pm to 11:59:59 pm
That’s it for the year. Tunesat picked up 226 airings in 2017 and it misses about 10%-20% in my experience.

Side note, I also have 20-30 placements on Golf, Fox Sports1 and BTN with the same issue.
I asked him to mark my call as a formal complaint, though I’m not sure if they have that system in place.

How hard would it be to move my catalog to BMI? My 300-ish tracks have over 3000 Title registrations, nearly 1000 cue sheets, plus many publishers and sub-publishers. It seems like an impossible undertaking. Thoughts?

[Alan]

Here’s a follow up (wow, it’s been a year)
– Tunesat has detected 81 individual placements on the NBA channel for a total of 346 airings. Earliest was 4/2017, most recent was last week.
– About 50 of those placements have cue sheets filed with ASCAP
– I have received ZERO royalties from ASCAP

I spoke with an ASCAP representative over the summer who said I should see some payments on October 2018…..nope.

I will vent some more about ASCAP’s response today here:

ASCAP and their inadequate survey system

[Alan]

When I have soft synths in “midi-land” I ALWAYS print them as audio tracks before I start mixing. The only time I use midi automation is if I’m affecting filters or other synth / sampler parameters, or for the very rare volume move. I always automate levels, etc. and mix in PTHD. Never in midi. That may answer your question.

Thanks for that tip LAwriter. I am guilty of keeping my tracks in MIDI for mixing because I am always finding little things to tweak in the MIDI during mixdown. In other words, I tend to mix before my track is finished. I need to work on my self discipline and that little tidbit helped.

Regarding stems, I was asked for stems for a specific placement one time. I bounced out what they wanted from the mix. Then had to decide if I was going to deliver as is or run the stems through my mastering session. Is there a standard practice?

I “assumed” they should ideally be able to combine the stems equally to recreate the original mix. If I run each stem through my mastering session as is, the combined stems would clip. I think I ran the stems through the mastering session at about -3dB to -4dB but I cant remember for sure. What would you have done?

Funny end to the story, the stems were used on “The Marvelous Mrs Maisel” for a whopping 10 seconds, very lo-fi, coming out of a black and white TV viewed from outside the window, under dialog. I would think a simple band pass filter would have been a lot easier and faster. But I guess that’s why they earned those Emmys, ha.

[Alan]

Thanks Michael,
Tunesat picked up a couple in April 2017, but I only found three of my Tunesat detections that have cue sheets filed for 3rd qrt 2017. I’m pretty sure the cue sheets were filed after the deadline for this statement too. I will wait until the July statement before I start any action.

I plan to contact the publisher to find out why only half of the placements still don’t have cue sheets filed, some a year old.

[Author]

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