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This past January’s statement for Q2 2015 (my 4th statement to date) received a surprise placement on the Tennis Channel during the 2016 French Open. BI, 02:46, aired 76 times. Payout was just under 1.2K. My tunesat account never picked it up.
Congrats daveydad! I am with BMI as well and to the best of my knowledge we don’t get to see cue sheets posted to our account like ASCAP members. Occasionally when a production company sends a cue sheet and they don’t have the track title or the correct title spelling as it is registered with BMI then sometimes in your works catalog it will get registered as a new title something like this “Dual Survivor-BG CUES”.
Very productive year. At the start of 2016 I had a catalog of 97 cues. As of today 152 & counting. I hit my goal of creating 50 new cues for the year. Total earnings between PRO & RF just short of 4 figures. Nothing I can Iive off of but a passive income stream I hope to continue to grow. Placement activity has compounded each quarter according to Tunesat which has been highly motivating and helpful when deciding which libraries to focus on. hopefully will translate into a more lucrative 2017. Thankful for the information and connections made here on MLR which have made much of this possible.
Agreed! @daveydad
Don’t our ASCAP friends get more frequent payouts throughout the year? I thought I’ve seen that they break up the domestic and international separately.
Pat,
If I’m not mistaken the regular royalty payment schedule has been the following:
January (Q2 of the prior year)
March (Q3 of the prior year)
June (Q4 of the prior year)
September (Q1 of the current year)Bummer for that 4 month gap between September and January’s distribution however I guess it make up for it since we get two payouts close together at the start of the year.
My 3rd statement overall and it’s been my best quarter to date. 5x more than the last statement. Momentum is building which is a confidence booster. Nice surprises that didn’t show on tunesat. Also surprise payout from SOCAN for a cue that aired in the US Q32015. They actually paid a little more than the domestic.
When I first discovered the site back in 2012 you could submit for opportunities right off the bat. Now you have to pay $10 to musicxray per track to go through their diagnostics program that analyzes what opportunities it could be a match for, # of potentials fans and bunch of other analysis before you can even submit to an opportunity.
You basically have to pay twice to submit a track. I will say that it was my gateway to the world of music licensing when I first started. Some libraries & publishers that accept submissions on their site I ended up contacting directly. I haven’t been on the site in ages but still receive their opportunities e-mail.
Very encouraging guys thanks for sharing. Today’s BMI statement is my very first since I started pursuing tv/film placements a year and a half ago. Only 3 shows that had multiple airings thanks to one of my exclusives.
Each placement was on a different network so it was interesting to see the variation in payout. (i know usage length, time of day, ratings are a factor) No steak dinner here more like two shots at the bar but no complaints I’m in it for the long haul.
That’s great! @daveydad. Let us know how it shakes out.
My understanding is cue sheets won’t always post to your bmi account even when a song is used. Perhaps that one episode that did post a cue sheet when the production company sent the cue sheet to BMI 1) that title was not yet registered by the library or 2) the spelling of the work title on the cue sheet was slightly different from how it is registered on your BMI account. (the latter happened to me)
When this happens BMI registers it as a new work title that looks something like ‘name of show-bg cues’ work title #0. You could have several placements where you wont see these BG registrations because the titles are already registered or the cue sheets match exactly as your registered title.
If your library is telling you they have an account of all the cue sheets then that should suffice as I am sure they don’t want to miss out on any potential payments. If you don’t see payments for those episodes on the March 18th statement then definitely follow up with the library.
Hey Chuck,
Good question. I wonder the same for myself. My situation is not too far off from you. Just over 100 finished tracks (excluding edits) spread out among a few NE, Exclusive & RF.
I have only been at it for about 2 years averaging about 50 tracks per year. I guess that is “doing O.K.”
I think it is difficult to quantify a dollar amount at least this early on. I just started seeing tv placement activity starting in Q3 of 2015 so my first tv royalties will start trickling in this year. RF sales are steadily increasing over time.
There could be composers with half the catalog we have earning more. On the flip side we could potentially be earning more than a composer with double or more the amount of tracks we have. I guess time will tell.
My goal is always to earn more than I did in the previous year and to continue growing the catalog. Hopefully 2016 I can break 4 figures in earnings!
Rookie Question: What does MMMV stand for?
Thanks,
Hello Tim:
1) BMI does not offer an upload feature to fingerprint music.
2) Yes, if a production company submits a cue sheet and the title is either not registered yet or is slightly different from the registered title (spelling, etc.) it is registered as a new work title that looks something like ‘name of show-bg cues’ work title #0.
Welcome to BMI!
Cheers
@TimV maybe wrong choice of wording. An actual cue sheet showing data on tracks used, timings, Data on other songs from other writers, publishers, etc. on the tv show is not what I see on my bmi. I don’t think that’s something any of us with bmi can see on compared to our peers with ASCAP what I saw was an unregistered title for a cue that was on a tv show. It shows up on my works registration. For anyone else familiar with this am I explaining it correctly? Feel free to chime in…
From what I’ve been reading it seems like those of you with ASCAP have much more visibility on cue sheet postings compared to BMI.
Ironically I just saw my first cue sheet posting this weekend on my BMI for a show that aired in Q3. Tunesat never caught the detection so it was a nice surprise. The cue sheet posting looked something like this ‘name of the show’-BG cues, BMI work # 0.
Just a few days before the cue sheet posted I had noticed the publisher that placed the track re-registered a title slightly different from it’s original. I wasn’t sure why but before I had the chance to reach out and ask this cue sheet posting came in and under the details was the same title that the Publisher had re-registered just a few days prior.