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Thank God Dub Step went away. What an awful genre of music that was.
My thoughts on foreign pro’s based on 15 years of data:
Netherlands and Germany BUMA and GEMA pay very well, UK, Sweden, Denmark, Norway still very disappointing for extremely wealthy countries. Italy Spain, Greece, France, Austria, Belgium….also not too exciting, lots of pennies.
Australia, very rarely do I see a royalty over $10 so nothing great there.
Japan, Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, India, and Latin America – these areas seem to be a non event, very little action at all.
Canada, pretty solid..I do see lots of 2 and 3 figure royalties
Brazil – also quite solid, certainly lots of line item in the $10 to $90 rangeBottom line is that the real meat and potatoes of all statements seem to always come from USA, GEMA, BUMA STEMRA, Canada, and Brazil, This has been a consistent observation of mine for many years now. Some countries are just not in the mood to share advertising revnue the way others do.
Had a great statement. One issue of concern moving forward is the SOUNDMOUSE variable. I received a nice 4 figure royalty from GEMA/ Germany for a track that I personally placed and negotiated the license for, but the title was credited to a non exclusive publisher for the back end prize. This resulted in the NE publisher getting $3500 as opposed to me collecting 7K (I did collect $3500 for the ad as writer) . Not sure I can do anything about this but this is now another battle some of us will have to deal with. Big soundmouse data enters the ring.
When I get my music into big brand TV ads, I want all the back end, especially if I personally negotiate the license. SOUNDMOUSE detection data is getting distributed to PRO’s and I do think the PRO’s are relying on that data more and more. This will just be another one of those issues we all need to deal with, and this fingerprinting warning has been in play for 13 years now.
I did not upload this track into soundmouse, but I am fairly confident my NE publisher did. Maybe it’s time for me to do a major SOUNDMOUSE upload effort. It’s not easy getting the music on that service, but clearly it needs to be done. Anyone have any thoughts on this…..?
It’s just the dumbest investment and waste of time taking place in AI music space right now. The loss of time and money for any and all companies investing into generative AI Music is going to be massive. What thinking and emotional human being will want an AI track supporting their film, video, show, or ad? I tried a couple of keyworded descriptions and the music coming back at me is just a mish mosh of total garbage. There are no dynamics, there is no arrangement, there is no “feel”…I just do not understand why people are investing in this space?
AI works for generating drum grooves, perhaps bass lines, horn sections, string section parts and lines…but wow…
Invest in great search engines. What music users want is to type in a desription and then get great sounding “human made” compositions to consider. Even the $0 budget crowd will not download this garbage. Why invest in a garbage commodity that no one wants, ever asked for, and can not sound as good as a human made track.
If they can not top ACID, and Garage Band….don’t bother investing into this noise. At least with the older AI programs such as ACID and garage band you get some vibe and human feel out of the arrangements that are essentially “drawn” and assembled together.
Well if this is General Mills or Nestle, you should be making a good chunk of change from all areas: the sync fee and the back end BMI PRO performance royalties. Your BMI statement should indicate the title being paid in the TV spot. Are those royalties getting paid to the exact title used in the Pet food TV Spot? If yes, then BMI is tracking the commercial properly for you. Just write an email to the music publisher who placed it and let them know you saw the TV spot on air and you are wondering if a sync fee was collected. There is nothing annoying about asking that question especially when companies like General Mills and Nestle are potentially the client/ advertisor. These companies have deep pockets and do business with integrity.They don’t nickle and dime with their production budgets to produce national TV spots.
It’s that same old con artist story of “We will create new revenue streams for the artists under this new model and …blah blah…” Every time a CEO has written that message, the exact opposite occurrs. Shutterstock and Envato used that same playbook. They preach “new and more revenue streams” (with subscription services)…but the reality for artists is just a pay cut and devaluation. It should be illegal for any and all performing rights organizations to be privately owned and “For Profit” because their very job is to ensure that music writers get paid. It’s an overt conflict of interests. The interest now shifts to “pay the artist less, so we the owners and investors in the company, make more profits.”
The one bright side is a record payout coming up. I guess when record collections come in, the boys at the top say “dang, we are making this happen, so we deserve more.” It’s laughable how Goldman Sachs is “advising” BMI for a potential sale. GS is just doing a massive, easy, money grab. Shameful!
This may need it’s own Thread Art but this is definitely disturbing news. It is just so sickening how Private Equity is just drooling to get their hands on these royalties so they can pay less, and pocket more. It’s a huge disappointment that the BMI board of directors allowed the PRO to convert to “For Profit”.
An extra 5% is a huge amount of money going to a few lucky, greedy a__ holes.
Post a youtube link to the ad here. You should get a sync fee from your publisher because national advertisers do not just slap music on the air on major TV networks by downloading music from subscription models. While I suppose they can behave that way, typically music in heavy rotation on air demands indemnification and that usually comes at a premium price. The sync fee is often paid one to two quarters after the license was issued. Ad agencies typically take 60 days to pay for a sync license. A Major ad agency will often pay $5000 to $20,000 for a big brand national spot, but I do agree with Art that some advertisers will use cheaper stock sites and pay under $500 to license music in a TV spot. Which brands will NOT license for under $500? Think of brands like PG, GM, Ford, McD’s, Verizon, T Mobile, ATT, you get the idea…the big boys on the block. Pet Foods are not necesarily “Huge” but link us to the ad and we should be able to get you better advice after we see the ad.
“The legislation “would allow independent music artists to band together and collectively negotiate with large streaming platforms and AI developers”. What do you imagine that would look like? Who might take the lead, and how might that be organized?”
It should be the PRO’s who take the lead. Composers and Publishers are members of PRO’s. PRO’s collect money from users of music (Lisencors) Lisensor defition: grant a license to (someone or something) to permit the use of something or to allow an activity to take place.
The PRO’s collect from all TV networks, radio stations, concert venues, bars, restaurants, theme parks, companies who play music in stores, on planes, etc. etc…also YOUTUBE, CHAT GPT/ OPEN AI, ADOBE, FACEBOOK, TIK TOK. The PRO’s have all composers, songwriters, and publishers herded up into one place to be a very powerful and loud voice in the effort. PRO’s can establish unions. PRO’s can lobby for legislation to make “Generative AI Music” illegal or deem it as copyright infringement. The AFM, SAG, and AFTRA can also help in the effort.
It’s not as hard as one may think. It’s pretty obvious what has been going on so far: Google/ YOUTUBE, CHAT GPT/ OPEN AI, META/ FACEBOOK, Microsoft, TIK TOK, Nvidia have been scraping the internet for photos, music, vocal performances, human voices, illustrations, videos, etc…to ingest the content into their AI learning models. Not a single original creator ever really granted permission to these companies.
We are witnessing the largest theft of intellectual property by the largest companies in the world happen before our eyes. These companies know what they are doing and they seemingly realize too, that it is wrong and that is why there was a “closed door” private meeting 2 weeks ago with the CEO’s of all of these companies and senators where they all agreed that these activities need to be regulated.
Thanks Art,
I have sent this letter to my congress representatives. Everyone should click on the link and send this letter.
https://www.votervoice.net/ASCAPNYC/Campaigns/107626/Respond?TrackingID=AdvocacyEmail2
The issue will always boil down to who owns the copyright? I remember when “ACID” came out in 1998 as a loop based music production tool. I did make tracks with this software and I even made some where I literally did not play one single note with my own hands. Rather I just “pasted/ assembled” various parts from various instruments together and tweaked and edited and mixed until there was a “composition”. I have those titles registered as my own “composition” at my PRO. Was I the true “Author”? That remains unclear, but I did make the final assembly and arrangement with 4 bar sections of “parts” pre played by musicians in a studio.
These few tracks still get air play to this day and still generate performance royalties.
So if we all start creating tracks with AI tools and can register the sound recordings as our own copyrights and the PRO’s pay us, everything should be fine. Someone has to curate, mix, and decide what is going to be “prime time” and what will sound like crap. So maybe instead of people “composing” we may just be “assembling and mixing”.
Shutterstock may very well have a goal where they own and are credited as “writer” and “Publisher” of all the AI generated content. Maybe their vision is that they can gradually stop paying contributors. Who knows? There still will be a competition for creativity and usefulness of a sound recording, no matter how it is being created and rendered. It’s kind of like a ‘Painter” opening cans of paint and dumping them on a canvas to create “Art” in 10 seconds. Some people have bought those paintings for $20,000 or $50,000…possibly even more.
People think creating a generic corporate track with a C G Am F chord progression, at 120 to 128 BPM is so simple, yet why is that only a few go one and rack up 20,000 units sold while the vast majority just drift a way with 0 or two sales? It’s because the final mix, the selection of sounds, chord voicings and melodic elements stand out to the listening public and captivate them more so than the others.
So I conclude, with or without AI….there still will be a competition to see who can create the best sound recordings that people will want to buy.