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Cheers Art.

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Update: So thanks to Rob for helping me with the contract.

I contacted the company concerned – they do not pay a buyout fee, expect you to sign your track/s with them in perpetuity and you only get a half-share of the royalty.

This sucks in my opinion, so I’m going to pass.

The name of the company … [ta-daaa] … Synctracks

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Thanks guys. Fair answers and much food for thought.

DI – wasn’t suggesting a crusade against these companies, just kind of skirting around their rules, playing them at their own game etc.

All the best.

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Hey all – sorry for the delay; I’m on Greenwich Mean Time and expect you’re all on US time.

Rob – thank you for your offer. I’ll send an email after I’ve posted this.

OK I will not post the contract.

I should say that my theory that they keep the sync fee (and I would only get a share of the back-end) is based not on my reading of the contract. In that it’s unclear – hence my need for advice.

Rather it’s based on what I’ve read about said company on this site!

Anyway, I will post Rob the contract now and perhaps once we get to the bottom of it, I’ll re-post the result.

One more thing to add – this is a great resource.

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Yeah. Does anyone mind if I paste the content of the contract they’ve sent across?

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Interesting conundrum here: I attended a PRS meet ‘n’ greet in London a few months ago where they talked us through their new website.

They had a section for unclaimed royalties – where you can scan through their list of uses unclaimed. I browsed through this an found one of the top earners on Soundcloud. He was missing out on some serious cash – multiple thousands of UK £s.I wrote to him through soundcloud.

Turns out he’d sold the music to a Swedish RF company (Epidemic I think). They buy the music from you for an upfront fee. It’s not clear whether they take PRO-registered composers. I read somewhere they don’t – though their website FAQs say the buyer (of the music) does not have to pay PRO but this does not apply for agreements a TV station may have with any domestic PRO.

The piece he’d composed had been used by a UK terrestrial TV station as an ident, hundreds an hundreds of times.

Does anyone know if he could have claimed the cheque (check)?

I asked him to let me know as a finders fee (if he got the money). He’s so far not been in touch.

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With regards to your answer, should I therefore be registering all the tracks I’m uploading onto RF sites with my PRO company?

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Thanks everyone. It’s the performance royalty – my mistake.

Here ’tis.

We pay the composer 50% of the download fee for each track that is used by our clients. Of any performance royalties earned as a result of usage, we share these with you 50/50, so again 50% to you and 50% to us.

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Yes I read those; thanks.

Nothing there really answered my question about scattergun approach vs discerning approach.

My gut is the discerning approach – as in give the exclusives time to reject my music then move on to some others.

Anyone got a view on this?

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