[Music1234]

Same here. I wonder why I bother registering with them!

I think we just never know. I was asking myself why am I spending a lot of frustrating time prepping spreadsheets for HFA, but boy am I glad I did! Soundexchange pays rights holders and featured artists for all radio including music choice, pandora, sirius

https://www.soundexchange.com/artist-copyright-owner/digital-royalties/

HFA pays Spotify streaming mechanicals, facebook, youtube, and all other digital streaming platforms.

We just never know where our music will end up so it’s always better to be over registered as opposed to not registered at all.

[Music1234]

Yes very informative and it seems like what I take away most is this: It’s better when one person is EVERYTHING: writer, publisher, mixer, label, artist, featured artist, master owner, copyright owner, and so on. Google/ youtube are just getting away with murder IMHO. YOUTUBE (Google) should be paying all the PRO’s $1 Billion each so we can truly be paid fairly from the PROs when our music streams on line. I’m tired of seeing pennies earned from streaming and internet especially in an era where people consume visual media content on youtube as much if not more than cable tv.

[Music1234]

Interesting.. so did they just place their entire non-exclusive catalog with the subscription libraries? Or write new material?!

From my perspective these writers are approaching it from all angles. Some have dumped everything they have in e and ne, some just dumped in the low sales tracks.

Quality? some is good some not so good. Price is a form of communication in regards to quality. Not enough writers think about that though.

[Music1234]

Tbone, I saw statements first hand. Why they joined? Hmmm… great question…some of it is ignorance, some of it is greed and paranoia, some of it is fear of missing out and some stated “I joined because I was invited to join the new model so I did.” Others say “I guess I just have to adapt to the changes”.

They can move their music on and off the model as they please. There is no contract that they must stay for a certain period of time. The music is simply Ubiquitous . There is no information as to who is “licensing” the music nor for what type of project, nothing, just “unlimited action” and never ending downloading activity. A free for all for all customers who subscribe to the service.

There are no download counts on the statements these guys get. These site operators would not dare divulge that information because then maybe composers would wake up to how insane this business model is for writers.

[Music1234]

I am listening too. A random statement without additional supporting evidence is kind of hard to take seriously unless all the facts are presented.
How many tracks are in how many subscription services?

What 3 people told me is this: With 100 to 350 tracks their earnings have been $1500 to $2100 a month. It started a little slow…around $700 to start. These are 3 writers who have been and still are top selling writers in the sync license market. They were making between 4K and 15K a month in the regular sync market typically selling 300 to 800 licenses a month.

They all also have stated to me that they highly doubt their subscription earnings will ever grow to match sync licensing royalties.

Unfortunately it does look like were heading towards another devaluation phase in our business, but only artists themselves are to blame. I don’t know what else to say, but I am not encouraged.

They have no clue as to how many downloads have occurred, but it has to be easily around 5,000 to 10,000 downloads each month. Imagine that. Your music just morphs into a free for all commodity for thousands to download at will.

[Music1234]

There is a possibility, whether we like it or not, that with the growing demand for music for small budget video (youtube, etc), this model *could* take over the RF world

YOUTUBERS who need tracks for their mom and pop channels have dozens of cheap to even free options out there for cookie cutter stock music tracks. In the end, it all comes down to how much value you put on yourself and your works. I really believe that in the context of business to business music licensing ( example a music producer targeting professional post houses, advertising agencies, pro directors and video editors) These people are not concerned with $20 or perhaps even $500. If they hear what they need and it makes their video project pop, they will pay for it.

[Music1234]

5. Sources have told me that the Nashville company was seeking round 1 investor funding. If they are in need of raising money, things can’t be going that well. It’s not like they need to raise money to buy a manufacturing plant or to finance production costs from purchase orders.

6. Since subscription came on to the scene, my revenue still has gone up only from traditional sync fee revenue so sure some customers want cost savings others would rather just seek what they need on a project by project basis and pay a bit more to get what they need.

[Music1234]

There is a possibility, whether we like it or not, that with the growing demand for music for small budget video (youtube, etc), this model *could* take over the RF world.

There a few reasons why I do not believe this will ever be the case:
1. We all know that this model grossly devalues music assets so it is not in our interests to participate. The model can only “take over” if composers actually show a willingness to get on board. Why would we get on board with making less money?

2. Customers do not warm up to this model as much as people think. Not every customer wants their credit card on file and on auto withdraw indefinitely. (Note to self: my daughter keeps reminding me to cancel a photoshop subscription! LOL!)

3.There is no such thing as RF. When customers buy a license we are paid a royalty right then and there. “Royalty Free” is nothing but a bogus marketing term.

4. Even with the rise of subscription, I still feel like they are all scrambling for survival.

[Music1234]

One last thing I want to say is that all of the participants measure their success or failure in subscription in terms of : is the combined revenue , sync licenses sold plus subscription revenue = ing more total revenue. That does seem to be the case for some but please also know that the top seller of all time in RF started with like 250 tracks in a sub model but then after the second pay report came out, he quickly dropped his offering way down to maybe just 45 tracks. I was told that he was quite ticked off because 1. the earnings from the sub model were very poor relative to his expectations and 2. clearly the cheaper option hurt his normal sync license (one at a time sale) business. So that speaks volumes too.

[Music1234]

Advice, I have been following this pretty closely and I do have a couple of people who have shared their earnings data from a sub model. What I can conclude is this: If the pool of writers is thin, then there may be a decent amount of money to create, not a livable wage, but certainly an extra revenue stream….say $500 to $2000 a month. That revenue stream is highly dependent on how many tracks you put in the model and also how in demand your music is. Are customers downloading your tracks a lot? If yes, I suppose you are earning more. Granted, I am only following the story at one company. i heard that the Nashville operation has done well for their writers, but again, they limit how many writers are sharing the subscription revenue. If thousands of writers were to pile into this model, everyone’s earnings would collapse hard and fast.

I recently read a post from a stock video seller and he wrote:

“Judging from other similar services, one of which I managed the inventory for for 3 years, artists are probably earning between $0.02 – $0.20 per download. “

So there is a lot of credibility there. He managed the inventory on the stock site, and clearly saw the download data from customers and I assume had access to monthly revenue collected.

Compare that to earning $15 to $40 per download for the current sync license model.

I admit I was pretty fearful of subscription taking off last year, but all in all, my revenue from the normal sync license model is remaining steady and improving gradually.

The message I have to all is simple: resist that model. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. It’s an incredibly non transparent model. Who wants to see prices nose dive to 2 cents a download? I do not write production music for visual media to watch it be traded for spotify like royalties. that is total insanity, but then again, historically speaking, aren’t musicians and composers insane when it comes to fair business practices?

I encourage everyone to keep the bullhorn alive and scream as loud as you can “Subscription SUCKS!!!!!” to every young and new writer you meet.

[Music1234]

Advice, I gave a pretty thorough reply yesterday but I think it’s in the mod cue due to length. I have been asking various participants what kind of money they make in the model and have gotten some pretty reliable data from people over the last 5 months or so. I also had my own experience with this model but only for 2 months because I requested that my catalog be deleted which it was. Hopefully Art can post what I wrote yesterday. I certainly hope more people will chime in, but subscription model participants seem to want to keep things very hush hush. Many are not talking publicly, but some are to me privately at least.

[Music1234]

Hi Jean, I’d be careful about making sweeping statements about how certain businesses “kill” other businesses. While I agree 100% with your comment about not respecting your own self worth, in 2019 and beyond, the business is really about who has the ability to reach the most amount of customers. Certain companies have devised various tactics and strategies to reach the masses on a worldwide playing field. Others stayed focus on their niche and missed out or did not have the right marketing plan.

I never was a fan of “royalty fee”, I absolutely despise subscription models, but at the same time the background TV cue for back end royalties business is not the greatest business model ever either. The good news is that the PRO side of the equation is never going away, ever and in fact is thriving. ASCAP just reported record revenue. The fact of the matter is that individual writers need to be engaged in both sides of the equation: direct licensing and TV background cues that do pay back end.

They never care about you, your family and your art and never will.

There are quite a few “NON royalty free” libraries out there who sell blanket licenses to networks who do not fund the pros. They accept the checks from these networks yet do not share any revenue with any writers who provided music to their catalog. This is overt theft. This is their way of saying “thank for your music submission, we’re going to sell it, but not share any revenue with you because that’s too complicated to figure out.”

Bottom line – there are a lot of shysters out there on all sides of the business and some, not all, do not care about writers nor writers families.

[Music1234]

“Top Tier” is all a matter of perception. I have some reports coming from the NAB show that the so called “top tier” libraries are quite envious of the so called “low tiered” libraries who are more do it yourself upload platforms and seem to be wanting to enter that arena.

I define top tier as the place sending me the most amount of money in an entire year. I am not interested in a 25/ 75 deal just because the so called top tier place may fetch two or three 5 to 15K licenses from higher end clients willing to spend some money.

However, I do agree with your points about chasing after cue sheets, getting google, and apple, and facebook, and netflix, spotify, etc to pay more in the streaming arena, and really just taking broadcast TV spot licensing more seriously. The drawback is that they want the publishing credit in exchange for that info to writers. They do not want to just hand that to us as a courtesy. Just my opinion on this issue.

[Music1234]

In regards to Artificial Intelligence, It basically is already here on so many levels. For example, all search engines in every stock music site are designed, not to artificially compose a new piece of music, but serve the buyer with a track they are searching as fast as possible. Type in “strings, sad, emotional, cinematic”…and the buyer should get a relevant playlist within 2 seconds. Is that not “AI”? The last thing this world needs now is empowering video editors to type keywords and then a software AI based program “composes” something based on those keywords. Why would anyone invest energy in designing such a concept? to avoid back end royalty payments? It’s ridiculous. We’re already there. The world has every piece of music it needs already ( for the visual media business). The main difference is how certain tracks just rise up and cut through and move and entertain people on an emotional level more than others. Those sell more often. Or the bland corporate tracks just hit the sweet spot for a corporate explainer type project and sell over and over.

I don’t think video editors and creative people will ever want to “dance” with artificially created music. The tracks that do best for me are the one’s where every single note in the composition is coming off of my own brain, hands, and fingers. Yes, I use drum loops and percussion loops for convenience on some tracks, but I can not help to notice how my best performing tracks come from real human performances and human brains.

[Music1234]

It’s a terrible deal. Do not take that deal. If they sell a sync license for $1000 why should your cut be $250 and their cut $750? As Mark said you are giving them 75% control and ownership of your music essentially for $0 up front.

Tell them you want (For $0 up front) 60% of all sync fees, 100% writers share, In return they can publish the cues and collect 100% of the publishing performance royalties and keep 40% of the sync fees. If they want exclusive representation, The deal should be a 1 year term renewable each year.

If they want a non-exclusive deal which allows you to sell the cue elsewhere, then 50/50 across the board is fair for both sync and performance royalties.

[Author]

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