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LAWriter, trying to make sense of your numbers…if you tripled your placements, and assuming your getting same placement stats as 3 years go, if my math is correct, then its BMI that has decreased payouts by 1/3?
Hahahaaaa!! Let me know if you can actually figure out BMI’s math. 🙂 :). :). I’m trying to make sense of them as well.
@MichaelL stated part of the reason, but IMO, that’s only part of the reason. Add in streaming diluting the numbers (at least according to the PRO’s), and what you have is a need for far more performances now than you ever needed in years prior. I’m guessing from full network / cable (old days) to full streaming (sometime in the future) it’s about 20X’s more placements that you will need to equal the same $$ you made traditionally. And yeah, I did the math based on some pretty concrete numbers that I could isolate and quantify.[[ BTW, we STILL can’t quantify the biggest “broadcaster” out there – NETFLIX – as either they or BMI will not divulge actual stream numbers. ]]. That in itself is a crime IMO.
Here’s just one little (big) example for ya that I CAN quantify with exact numbers. In recent quarters I’ve been averaging between 13,000,000 and 19,000,000 individual performances on Amazon VOD per quarter. Yeah, those are millions. I didn’t accidentally add a zero or two. I’d be willing to wager that that’s a lot of performances in anyones book.
So what’s BMI’s payout you might ask as you’re picturing me laying on a beach in Maui???? 🙂
Roughly $100 for those quarters. ****!!! I can’t even buy LUNCH on my Maui dream trip.
In what universe, or universes yet to be discovered (a tip of the hat to the mouse) is that acceptable? I’m waiting, waiting, waiting…….for BMI’s answer to my polite, yet focused question regarding the above. I’m guessing I’ll be waiting for a loooooong time, cause how can anyone say with a straight face that the average performance on Amazon only pays out :
$0.000006 cents for a performance. That 6 TEN THOUSANDTHS of a cent. And they can’t use Neilson to obscure the realities. That’s Almost 1700 public performances to equal $0.01. One penny.
Now, for transparency, some of these performances may only be 5 seconds long, but MANY are over a minute, so I figure it all averages out.
So all that said, I’m THRILLED for those of you starting out that are exponentially upping your payouts every quarter. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was seeing 30%, 80%, 60% growth every quarter. Quarter after quarter. I had high hopes. Those days are long gone for me. These days I’m happy for a 10% loss over each previous quarter as a huge portion of my placements move over to streaming services.
Dark times if your placements are in reality TV or even Network that has been siphoned off the air and over to on demand streaming. For those of you with commercials and network promo’s – count your blessings!
Same here Pat.
Same here as well. I’ve hit the BMI glass ceiling. Tripled my content “on air” and virtually no BMI growth in the last 3+ years. The problem is twofold IMO – BMI’s draconian “terms and practices” and the fact that streaming pays 4-8% of what Cable pays, and everything is moving over to streaming…. 🙁
Thank you @MichaelL !! Pretty much as I remembered / expected. BMI are not fools, they have no doubt been down this road many times and know well how to perform (yes, pun intended) a CYA symphony.
I reviewed BMI’s contract. The answers to the questions in this thread and various “HOW CAN THEY GET AWAY WITH THIS?” threads are in their writer agreement. I’ll explain later.
Is there a “you can fight city hall, but you can’t win” clause in it?? Hahaaa! 🙂
Look forward to hearing more Michael. Thanks.
My experience is you can fight City Hall, you just can’t win. ?
Haha!!! :). Yeah, but kind of the same thing, no?
PS – regarding my 3rd paragraph – do you think I’ll get a call back? It’s been a week. I’d be willing to wager good money that I’ll never hear a peep. What are they going to say? Yes LAwriter, we only pay out $0.000005 per performance?
Ha! I can guarantee you that BMI is collecting more than that. you could multiply that by 100 or even 1000 and it still would make a 2 bit cable performance look great.\
Highway robbery I tell ya…..
As sucky as this seems;
As incompetent as this seems;
As corrupt as this seems;
As debilitating as this seems;
As frustrating as this seems;I just consider it a cost of doing business. I know that’s not what you want to hear Art, and I REALLY hope you get some satisfaction in the matter – (and GOOD for you sticking it to them), but my experience over the years is that you can’t “fight city hall”. And unless you have risen to the elite few that get ear service by our beloved PRO, you get nothing. The fact is, many of us would be retired if they paid out as they should. Concentrating on these inequities has left me frustrated, and beat down, and that’s not a good combination for creativity and creating the best music you can. For ME, I just move on and hope for the best next time.
I have a call in right now to BMI asking why I have tens of millions of performances per quarter on Amazon VOD, and barely make $100 for it. TENS OF MILLIONS!!! By THEIR numbers. not mine. Or why Netflix only lists “1” performance per quarter, and we just have to take their word for it.
The whole PRO system is out of control and corrupt, and they move money around to and where they want / need it. “Fairness”, “clarity”, and “accountability” are thrown out the window in exchange for “opaqueness”, “ignoring the client”, and outright lying.
To those coming in,…..you want into the business? Get used to this kind of corrupt and incompetent BS. A missed performance here or there means nothing to me. Hundreds of missed performance do not phase me. It gets me pumped when they turn into thousands, or GASP – MILLIONS (over time) of worldwide performances that get summarily ignored.
And believe it or not, MILLIONS is not out of the realm os possibility in current styles of “broadcast / streaming” paradigms. It’s happening. It’s real. Writers of production music are getting ****** every day. My advice for those coming in is to get used to it, write more, write better, hope for a better future.
I recently hired a “Royalty Recovery” person/company to help me.
It is VERY sad, and very telling unfortunately – that we must resort to this sort of nonsense. BMI / ASCAP should be ashamed.
I’m pretty fresh to the library music game and finishing my first album for delivery to a new library. In the agreement it states that all the tracks I’m to submit will be non-exclusive, but that the publishing and master rights are assigned to the library exclusive for the life of copyright.
Sounds like they are confused to me. Anything that (apparently) conflicting in a contract should be dealt with before signing. Or at the very least, clarified, Personally, if it was that confused, I’d probably look elsewhere. If they can’t deal with their own contracts, how good are they going to be at placing your music.
I could be wrong though…..
When was the last time we had good news?
It’s been awhile, but we had GREAT news today. See other thread…. Discovery has backed down and will continue forward in the future (and past) with a PRO based royalty system. Bye Bye direct licenses.
Or maybe I just need something in my coffee this AM……
Good and Bad quarters come and go. What’s really concerning are the the ongoing trends.
When building a catalog, there is only up. Every quarter is a decent percentage of increase. But after your list of “shows” numbers in the thousands, things tend to level out. SOMEthing is always playing. But BMI has chosen to ignore fairness in favor of their pet projects.
It’s well known that broadcast TV/Cable/Streaming is what is holding them up, yet they can’t seem to manage to get all that money back over to the composers who quite literally pay for their jobs. I’m loosing faith. Maybe it’s time to look elsewhere. As in new industry.
Congrats! Glad BMI’s getting it done for SOMEone. :). After 25+ years it’s pretty mediocre, boarderlining on dismal here from my experience. Maybe it’s just the ebb and flow of things….
Actually, I AM an optimist. How can you be in this biz for 25+ years and continue to stay in it if you’re NOT an optimist. Optimism is mandatory.
Unfortunately (for some), REALISM is also a necessity if you want to continue to survive and prosper. Ignore facts at your own peril.