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I will stay on this and find a way to get paid. I am waiting for responses from my PRO. I have been paid for European spots before and I know one way to do it is to actually find a publisher over there and ask them to register the title as sub publisher. They would then collect on my behalf and send me the money, but I am trying to avoid that because frankly, I should be collecting as both writer and publisher through the reciprocal agreements.
All of this nonsense could be avoided if stock sites would actually take broadcast TV spot licensing more seriously. I am not sure numerator means a damn thing to the UK, France, Germany, and The Netherlands (PRS, SACEM, GEMA, BUMA STERMA) If some European writers who are members of these pros can chime in, that would be ideal. Anyone?
Well numerator can not identify 2 of my spots airing in Europe right now. Tunesat did though. So I am armed with that knowledge. I have 2 TV spots on air in Europe. I found them on youtube. But now what? All I can do is send youtube links of the spots to my USA PRO and hope that they chase the performance royalties down on my behalf and pay me in 2 years through the reciprocal agreements? This approach does not give me any confidence of future payment. Any advice for me? It sure would be nice to get paid in 2020 for 2019 air dates but I doubt that will be the case. We need a “numerator” for Europe I suppose. Does that service exist over there?
Which is EXACTLY how the PRO’s like it. Money to move around to their pet projects (composers / publishers) or wherever they see fit.
Ha Ha Ha! Good one LA Writer! Let’s not forget that wall street really has their hands in our business these days. When “private equity” gets their hands on these institutions clearly they are not motivated to pay writers:
https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2017/01/04/private-equity-firm-buys-sesac/96149874/
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7646930/sesac-blackstone-acquisition-details
Tunesat detects WITHOUT a watermark. I would imagine Numerator is the same.
Numerator is not in the business of charging writers for the data they mine about air dates and “occurrences”. It’s a business designed to help advertisers audit, study, analyze each others media buys and creative work. Example: Burger King’s ad team needs to spy on McDonald’s ads (the amount of spots they are buying and the creative approach) and vice versa…Numerator helps companies with that kind of info. But they help us by showing us how many times a spot airs. PRO’s don’t always get that right either.
https://www.sourceaudio.com/plans-pricing/
https://www.sourceaudio.com/tv-channels/
Not sure if they are quite there yet with monitoring. We need worldwide monitoring not just USA monitoring.
https://www.sourceaudio.com/collect/
They need to explain exactly how the deal works. What royalties , precisely, are they collecting? I am not interested in .0000000000001 royalties. I am very interested in $5, $10, $20, $50, $80 royalties from National TV spots airing all over the world.
My beef is not with the PRO’s. It’s the stock music sites’ total disregard for who is licensing music and for what kind of project. They simply do not want to ask the clients this information for fear that they may lose the purchase. Their goal is to make licensing music as easy and as fast as possible, and it should be for internet only projects, but when a client is creating a national branding campaign or worldwide advertising campaign, they better start asking some questions starting with my list above.
I know exactly what is going on here, they are all pouting and crying that they do not collect the publishing performance royalties so they have no incentive to ask questions about end usage. The attitude is “what’s in it for me?”
PROs will never just pay like magic. We have to prove to the PRO (File a claim) that the music is ours. This has always been the case but I just find it disgusting that some of these stock music sites do not want to help their writer contributors by mining this data at the point of purchase.
We’re literally down to relying on TUNESAT (which does not detect everything) and watching TV to get information as to when our music is being used on TV spots. This is unprecedented and it’s quite pathetic in all honesty. I never thought we’d see the day when big national brands are tapping into stock music sites and getting tracks for just $250 or so, but those days are definitely upon us. I can guarantee you that 9 out of 10 brands and advertisers would be more than willing to serve up the information about 1st air dates and length of time they intend to use the track but the stock sites simply want to be extra nice to everyone and not bother them.
Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of dollars go unclaimed because of this stupidity and reckless approach to licensing music into TV spot campaigns.
Tunesat, Scott specifically, if you are listening lower your price for your service and you will get a lot more willing users of your technology. Your price of $667 a month for monitoring 500 tracks is way too high. This is 8K a year and that price is way too greedy and unsustainable for an individual writer. I think a reasonable price for individual writers who want to monitor their catalog is $100 a month for 500 tracks
Attention everyone, especially stupid stock music licensing sites that just let clients quickly license music for TV spots with no questions asked. Just roll out the red carpet baby and click BUY! Do not ask any questions ever about who is licensing the music for TV spots. Continue to disrespect our business and cheapen it down. Continue to make sure anyone can get a track for any TV spot project easily with no questions asked.
You see what I am getting at folks? We are now entering very unprecedented times. There once was a time when licensing music for TV spots was an important matter where producers would ask for a quote. they would indicate:
1. The name of the advertiser/ product brand
2. The name of the agency licensing the music
3. The country and region the spot would air in
4. The first air date and the number of weeks/ months/ or years they would rent the composition and sound recording.What the hell is everyone doing now? Just rolling out a cushy red carpet and saying “take it, no questions asked…just click buy and throw that track on your spot and we will leave you alone.”
Yes indeed this is my impression of where things are at and this needs to stop right now.
This is total insanity and 100% unprecedented nonsense. I call on every writer to dial up the pressure on the publishers and stock music licensing site operatoirs to change this garbage approach to music licensing as soon as possible.
I am learning about spots on air more and more these days by just watching TV and also Tunesat. Doesn’t everyone realize that there are thousands upon thousands of dollars to be collected in performance royalties for these tv spot campaigns?
Do some due diligence and start making some noise about this topic. TV spots pay big time royalties. TV spot music licensing needs to be treated with more care now, not later.
I don’t know about you guys but I am really tired of stock music sites just blatantly disregarding the information that should be gathered when they issue a license for a TV spot.I guess I’m just trying to get me head around it and try to understand whether or not this is the accepted practice. If it is, I can’t imagine signing any EX, in perpetuity, contracts. You can kiss those tracks good bye. Unless there’s great up-front money, and/or the promise of great backend.
Remember that nothing in this business is “standard” and there is no such thing as “accepted practice”. everything is negotiable. Signing an exclusive deal in perpetuity where the music library/ publisher takes full control of the compositions and sound recordings (Masters) for $0 compensation up front is typically a terrible deal. The only way I’d ever consider it is if I were guaranteed in writing the the cues were going to get an enormous amount of high profile TV usage generating a substantial amount of back end performance royalties for many years not just hundreds per year, but really…thousands of dollars per year. They also would have to be willing to split every sync fee 50/50
In my opinion, (this is only my opinion) Composers who want to write cues for TV shows should only consider deals that are non-exclusive or exclusive for 2 years, then ask for the right to:
1. renew the deal for another 2 if you had success with solid tv placements and earned decent performance royalties.
2. Just transition to NE (after the 2 year deal is up) which would allow you to keep the cue in the library “as is”, but you then have the right to place the cue in other NE libraries.I’ve said this a lot on this forum but It still holds true here in March 2019, You can not make a livable wage in this business unless your music is earning from multiple revenue sources.
Over the years I have tried many stock licensing sites and many publishers/ music libraries. At this point, I am down to 4 libraries that feed cues to TV shows, and 4 stock music licensing sites.
I have pulled my music out of about 5 or 6 companies that were not generating any revenue. I do not have the exact same music and all tracks with every company.
All 8 sources of revenue are extremely important to creating a livable wage.
All publishers know this, because guess what, publishers (the owners of these companies) are composers too. They know how hard it is, yet they still act as predators towards young writers or newbie folks and strip away control of the compositions and sound recordings so they can control the intellectual property in perpetuity.
Now more than ever, everyone needs TV back end performance royalties, and direct licensing “sync fee” revenue from stock music licensing platforms.
Many of us do own 100% of our catalog (me included) but the reality is trying to roll it all back to only our own servers and hard drives is probably a massive effort.
My music resides on music library servers all over the world via non-exclusive publishing deals, but those non-exclusive publishers then take the music and “sub publish” to libraries in territories and countries around the world. An attempt to unwind that distribution to 15 more countries and territories is nearly impossible.
Simply stated: I don’t even know where a lot of my music is at this point in time, but I do know it sits on servers in Brazil, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, England, The Netherlands, Sweeden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Mexico, Japan, Poland, and so on….This is not a bad thing either. Some nice royalty surprises happen due to worldwide distribution.
Well in my world “Buyout” for a track going into a TV spot simply means the client wants to own the track and use it perpetually without having to pay quarterly residuals under the AFM (American Federation of Musicians) tv commercial contract. It’s really just a tactic to avoid extra paper work and further royalty payments to musicians performing on the sound recording. I am speaking from a USA perspective, and also a big ad agency perspective.
Now that your contract states that you maintain the writers share, I would just go ahead and file the ad and promo claim at your PRO. Also since you found a link to the spot on youtube just go ahead and share the link on your own site if you think it will help. Frankly, I am at a point where I don’t even bother anymore. If the spot looks really nice, I’ll post it to social media, but I don’t get to concerned about having a really clean copy of the spot for my personal web site. I guess what I am saying is that our phones don’t start ringing off the hook for original scoring services just because we have some TV spot credits to showcase on our personal web sites. So just claim your royalties at your PRO, enjoy the achievement, and move onto the next job. I’d stay in good terms with the company that hired you, they may send more spots to write for assuming you brought success to this project.
sleeptlker, a “buy out” probably means that you are selling the composition to the company who is servicing the client. You are most likely a “Ghost writer” that was contracted to demo the spots by the music house. The music house in turn is selling the music to the client.
“Buy out” is also a workaround for the client to avoid AFM union contracts and paying residuals to musicians who performed on the contract. Nowadays we all “perform” every inst most of the time as writers/ music producers.
Before you get all worked up, just relax, you will get paid within 75 to 90 day. As far as collecting royalties from your PRO goes, I would certainly file a claim with your PRO where you take the details found at Numerator and send them to your rep at your PRO with a very nice and professional e-mail.
Also, I would ask the Music house you wrote for if they intend on filing a claim at the PRO on your behalf making them publisher and you writer. But read your contract. If you are a young and new writer to this scene, please use caution. Experienced music houses love to exploit young, not so informed music producers by not filling them in on the PRO performance royalty angle. Read your contract with them to find out who is going to claim the performance royalties.
Really sad times when Yoplait (Genral Mills) is asking for buyouts….just pathetic in fact.
This entire story is a bit “fishy” I’d say.Come back here if you need more advice on the matter. I really hop you did not sign away everything for a work for hire fee only, because you absolutely should collect writers royalties at a minimum, from TV airplays/ performances.
Stems only come into play for very high end TV spots or trailers in my opinion. For background drops onto TV, I sense that video editors just grab the full mix or bed mix and “bam” as you said…just get the episode edited so it’s done. Post audio for high end 30TV spots will often require 4 to 6 hours of studio time doing a mix with music. vo, and sfx, and those jobs often will have revisions the next day. Reality TV show editors will never have that time.
I get e-mailed about 3 to 5 times a year for stems from customers sourcing music on stock sites. Once the client learns that I expect to be paid $200 to $300 to open the session and render out each instrument as a mono stem then wetransfer the files for their mix, suddenly the mix they licensed works just fine!
Michael, I agree that the “exposure” card is always BS, but for 21 year kids making tunes and doing their social media dance “exposure” may very well work for them. Think of a hip hop artist, a 20 year attractive pop vocalist emerging out of nowhere because her obscure instagram video goes viral. It can happen. It will certainly not happen for us older music for film and tv guys. That is not our market at all.
The instagram and snap chat world is a whole other world that teens are incredibly engaged in. All teenagers know how to edit video and create and upload content. They do it relentlessly from their phones and i-pads and macs. I have a couple of teen girls in my house. There are crazy things going on in youtube internet land with teens and they are living their lives on social media. (I suppose we all do these days) I know a 16 year old boy down the street who earned 30K in 2018 buying and re-selling nike shoes on some underground market. The “hobby” grew into a business and his mother had to manage the “shipping” department!
Yes. Below are 9 HFA Payouts I had last year. I also just received my first royalty distribution of 2019 for $525. This isn’t much based on 27 albums released and around 40 million streams of my songs since 2016. Many tracks were marketed and promoted by a 3rd party label that knows what they are doing inside this space. I can conclude that unless there is a marketing and promotional strategy to actually jack up stream counts, it may not be worth it to spend a lot of valuable time preparing consumer album releases. When you self release you will just get 25 to 100 streams a year per tune (unless you morph into a mega pop star or just by fluke, a “production music cue” tune takes off and gets popular on spotify for some strange reason).
There needs to be a marketing and promotional effort to get the stream counts inflated into the millions which then generate “streaming mechanical” royalty payments like you see below. I would not have been able to accomplish this if I just released through CD baby and did things on my own. You need marketing and promotion of the music and that does cost money. I’m thinking real hard about buying stock in Spotify. They reported a profit for the first time ever 2 weeks back.
$390.05 SPOTIFY USA INC.
$962.96 HFA CONSOLIDATED PAYABLE
$390.08 SPOTIFY USA INC.
$499.15 SPOTIFY USA INC.
$225.60 FACEBOOK INC.
$366.22 SPOTIFY USA, INC.
$91.64 SPOTIFY USA, INC. May 29, 2018
$2.11 HFA CONSOLIDATED PAYABLE Mar 27, 2018
$65.28 SPOTIFY USA, INC. Mar 2, 2018No. The only thing I can think of is that because all my albums are distributed to all digital streaming services (AKA DSP’s) Spotify, Apple, Deezer, YOUTUBE, Google Play, etc….for consumer listening, perhaps a lot of commercially released music is in the facebook deal through Harry Fox. Harry Fox pays streaming mechanical royalties. I really do not know how the facebook scenario is worked into the royalty distribution. No idea which tracks were “used”. The only thing I see on facebook is AI creating 60 second photo memory videos with cute little songs in the background. Maybe I had some cliche happy ukelele cues getting used for those kinds of streams? I certainly do not expect to make a killing from the Facebook deal! But every few hundred bucks matters so I’ll take it.
Maybe some answers are here:
Facebook Is Finally Putting Music Back Into Social Networking
https://www.adweek.com/digital/facebook-users-will-be-able-to-add-licensed-music-to-their-videos/
T Bone, a royalty will be paid by Harry Fox. I received $225.60 from Facebook via Harry Fox. This business just gets more and more overwhelming each year. It’s at a point where we need to spend 60% of our time registering our titles at PRO’s, Harry Fox, Sound Exchange. We need to manage ISRC codes ISWC codes, UPC codes
https://blog.songtrust.com/songwriting-tips/isrc-iswc-whats-the-difference
If we do not release our music onto the digital streaming platforms through distributors, we are not in line to collect these kinds of royalties. Harry fox has been sending me money for Spotify streaming, but the facebook royalties are a bit confusing…I have no idea how they determine the amount to pay or how my music is getting used. I do “opt in” to HFA’s distribution deals if I feel as though it makes sense, but the funny thing is, HFA does not have my music files….I just uploaded spreadsheets of Albums released on streaming platforms.
Indeed, it’s all overwhelming and never eneding and one feels like your always behind with registrations at all these places. One thing for sure though, if we do register and release our works everywhere: PRO’s, HFA, Sound Exchange, ADREV, Tunesat, now I am looking into Soundmouse, money does fall from the sky. There just is not enough time to do all this admin BS. When you have a mountain of admin in front of you and a burning desire to create new music with your time, it does not make a compatible formula for success. The end result is that you have to work non-stop. It really is challenging on the brain. Think of all the logins and passwords we have to manage!
Well now that this rant is over, I better remember to:
– release 2 new albums
– register them all at PRO’s, HFA, Sound Exchange, Sound Mouse
-Write meta data, descriptions, and keywords for all titles
-manage a mountain of spreadsheets for all these places
-upload new music to stock sites
-chase unclaimed performance royalties at foreign PRO’s and file claims for music on spots.
-Manage all this data on my own computerit’s really just overwhelming. But if you don’t do the work, you don’t earn money!