[composer]

Here’s what’s puzzling to me about this correction: In some cases, the timing was wrong (always too short) on the original statement, it was corrected on the new statement, and the payment increased. That makes sense. In other cases, in the same situation, the payment decreased. This even happened a couple times for episodes where I had two placements on the same episode. Both timings increased, one payment increased, the other payment decreased. Why would this happen?

I’ll ask BMI. Thought I’d ask here also in case I missed something obvious and someone can help solve my mystery.

Thanks.

[composer]

I attended a one-day PMA event in LA and I would do it again. Very educational.

[composer]

It was emailed yesterday. It also now appears as a note when I log in to my BMI account, so you could try that.

[composer]

Yes, I got it also. I checked my statement and sure enough, many of the times for blanket and superstation are way off, all too short.

[composer]

I looked at a couple statements. Most payments from Belgium are under $10, except for movies.

[composer]

Keep in mind that the PRO payment is lower. From BMI:
“Copyrighted arrangements of works in the public domain (classical and popular) will be credited at 20% of the otherwise applicable rate of payment for popular songs for all performances, with the exception of the Live Classical Concert distribution, where no payment is made for performances of arrangements of public domain works.”
Can be profitable anyway, and of course not all licensing involves PRO payments.

[composer]

I agree that it’s a difficult question because there are so many variables. But I think it is very important in this work to try to get a sense of what to expect financially so you don’t have unrealistic expectations.

So, if I had to throw a very broad range out for the 115 tracks you described, I’d say somewhere in the 4 figures annually, eventually.

But… I have a lot more tracks than that. I could pull out a subset of 115 tracks that do better than that, and I could pull out another subset of 115 that has made $0!

Also, those royalties grow slowly. So it can be difficult to tell if they’re growing slowly, or just not growing. Either could be true.

[composer]

If you look at each of the library profiles on this site, there is a yes/no/info field for upfront fees.

[composer]

That’s correct. That’s my portion. And those are from the last couple of statements, so maybe they’ll have a longer life in reruns, maybe not.

[composer]

1:00, $17 (3)
1:00, $22 (?)
:19, $3 (1)

Others mostly in that range.

[composer]

Amazon VOD was new. Several pages of very small payments. I wish Netflix could show the number of streams/downloads like Hulu and Amazon.

My international royalties were pretty good. This is what I would go back and tell myself 5 years ago about international: Many placements generate nothing internationally. For other placements it takes a while for the international royalties to show up, but then some placements generate international royalties quarter after quarter for years. Sometimes the payments are very small, sometimes not.

[composer]

If you have many detections on many shows on one network in quick succession, it could be a network promo.

[composer]

Here’s an explanation of the review from the DOJ website: http://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-consent-decree-review-ascap-and-bmi-2015

From that information: The Antitrust Division previously solicited public comments regarding several potential modifications to the Consent Decrees (http://www.justice.gov/atr/ascap-bmi-decree-review). In the course of this process, industry stakeholders recommended additional modifications regarding ASCAP’s and BMI’s licensing practices related to jointly owned works.

I understand the potential problems, as explained on the BMI website (and in a Billboard article, et. al.), but I’m not sure I understand why the DOJ is proposing these changes. What’s the upside?

[composer]

As long as each model truly is selling primarily to different clients, and big Networks don’t start shopping RF, that would hurt us all, but I hope there will be some laws in place to protect that? I wouldn’t want to undercut my NE libraries who get both sync fees and back end.

I don’t know whether network music supervisors shop RF or not. However, I can’t imagine there are any laws preventing this. (If anyone is aware of this, please inform.) As composers, I think all we can do is to sell our tracks through sites that charge what we believe to be an appropriate amount for network use.

[composer]

I attended the one-day PMA event last fall and thought it was great. Recommended.

[Author]

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