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I have never done any admin work as discussed above other than registering my songs with BMI. To be honest, I wouldn’t know where to start. Most of the libraries I work for do this for me. It’s their money too….
If I am watching TV and hear my music on a TV spot I will certainly reach out to the publisher / library to make sure they are aware that the spot is running and ask/confirm if they placed it. At this point in my career, almost all of my music is NE or E deals have expired allowing me to try other markets for my music. I would never sit back and hope the library is taking care of the administrative portion of the project. In fact, I have learned that it is in my very best interests to file ad and promo claims myself even if the publisher did so too. I want the PRO to know for sure that I am the writer of the music.
Last thought – we do live in a world where commercials are made with stock music from the cheaper sites. Someone just licensed one of mine on the cheap to make a car commercial. It’s 100% on me to file the claim to collect back end performance royalties. I will also e-mail a link to the spot and provide competitrack ad codes data. Sometimes a cheap $75 to $500 license can yield an extra $1000 or so if you do your admin work right.
Which P.R.O. do you feel is best for TV commercials and trailers?
SESAC for sure from my experience. They pay more for spots based on statement comparisons, and I have seen some high profile tv commercial writers switch to that PRO and I can only assume they are doing so for the money.
@Dougie….ASCAP does do just as good a job as anyone for TV show royalties from my perspective. If TV commercials are your sweet spot, get an account with SESAC immediately.
I also walked away with the realization that royalties are very complex and I probably need to hire someone to help with registering tracks and making claims.
No sir, if you want to make money, you better do all the administrative work. There is no such thing as “others” miraculously handling your administrative work. So you better make spreadsheets and metadata your best friend today. If you like money in the bank, you better register your titles, chase down cue sheets, file claims for advertising and promos you have on the air, and follow up. There are no short cuts.
Have you filed advertising and Promo claims? Sent competitrack data, spot codes etc?
And e-mail follow up communications with ASCAP?
Folks, you can not just sit and hope to collect royalties for commercials from ANY PRO. You have to do some paper work and follow up. Switching PRO’s is not the solution. You still need to do the paperwork to file what essentially amounts to a claim. You are CLAIMING that your music was used in a tv commercial and therefore you are entitled to performance royalties. Did you send links to YOUTUBE videos of the spots or trailers as further proof? and send an mp3 of your track?
FranklinV, Just a quick note – My comment did not use threatening language nor profanity. i simply stated my opinion similarly to the way you did.
All true Michael…but some companies have definitely sent out exploratory questionaires getting a feel for how composers would welcome such models. I tell them point blank: if you introduce a subscription model, I will pull my catalog. I told a company that today in an e-mail. People think that their singular voice can not make a difference. I disagree. Certainly a few dozen voices from some key stakeholders with large catalogs and good quality can make a difference. I think many of us are right here on this site can make a difference. If 10 20 30 40 writers (hypothetically) pull out thousands of high quality tracks, a difference will be made.
I did comment on their NAB video and they deleted it. Only positive comments allowed I suppose. Ditto for aio.
For the record, I don’t enjoy these silly games at all. I just want an industry and business that is healthy and fair and allows for long term survival for all music writers and publishers. The Blockchain may be the only answer. I just don’t know. This is not “old news’…all of these changes have been happening in the last 3 to 9 months and we all need to be aware of the ramifications. Strange time for sure. I am a big supporter of the fair sytem of 1 license sold = 1 royalty paid to the writer.
I do not see the post as an “accusation”. I see it as a “story I heard” and I made the disclaimer “I can not back this up as 100% fact”. The part about account suspension and name change are facts. Art can delete my post if he wants to. Michael, the “self-buying” issue on that market has been around a long time. Many know it happens. Just like buying streams on spotify happens and it’s often hard for aj to find someone guilty of the self buying behavior. That is a huge problem when a site is built around “popular sales” stats.
I am continuing the discussion with Dennis about “gaming tactics” that happens on these markets. It really is an issue. This topic is “Subscription Survival” I think that also means – how do you survive the next business model that opens up the door for yet even more corruption, unfair accounting, and more ways to game a system put in place. It all ties together in my opinion, but certainly Art can do as he wishes. I’d also like to say that if anyone ever were to pump the sales to make a tune chart, they better make sure it’s a super solid track with “popular and on trend quality” that can hang onto a chart position. Otherwise your self buy strategy will just result in 1 week of promotion, then a fall off the chart result.
Here is Artlists YT channel. Jeremiah is something else! he’s on a mission to undercut the world. LOL!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXNK0IHTX0BoktdtKjqIWoA
[Removed by moderator for potentially slanderous statement.]
I just want to say that several composers did question the facebook advertising campaign of Artlist IO. They were aggressively advertising their subscription service on facebook and simultaneously trying to recruit contributors a few months back. The owner of the company immediately deleted any negative comments or challenging questions and has since blocked all comments. The only comments allowed are the very fake positive endorsements like “AWESOME!” “Great music” “Amazing idea” “This is Great”.
Soundstripe is doing the same phony YT campaign so yes its a fantastic idea for every composer to shame them on youtube and facebook . See here:
Great idea Franklin.
It definitely comes across as a completely disorganized mess. I have several records streaming on spotify, google play, deezer, pandora, etc for about 18 months now. I do make decent money from the streaming seen only because there has been investment in promoting the music. Uploading spreadsheet data to HFA was not at all a smooth and easy process. I affiliated with them to collect streaming mechanicals. So far all I have recouped is my affiliation fee. HFA also has not paid me for several tunes that have more than 200,000 streams. I guess bad IRSC codes was the culprit.
Here is my advice: you certainly have nothing to lose but time when trying to stream your records, just make sure you have your spreadsheets in squeaky clean shape so that everything is in order to enable you to collect from HFA. Getting you music “distributed” through CD Baby, Tunecore, Distro Kid or any other service that does this is not enough. You have to find ways to promote the music and gain an audience. That my friends is the very hard part.
Needless to say, I have to believe there is a lot incorrect reporting, mistakes, and a bit of corruption going on in these markets. Favoritism will always be granted to those who have the most clout: Universal Music Group and their mega artists.
As an independent artist, you can make some money here, it just takes time to figure it all out. I still am figuring this out (when I actually have time for it)
You do not have permission to view this content.Well I’ve actually have heard professional media clients make comments about how ridiculously cheap music is. I’ve had customers write privately and offer a lot more money. “Excuse me, but we need to upgrade this.”
Goodbye to all those “how to make sweaters from dryer lint” videos.
Yes! let them go straight to the garbage can.
You see more and more, youtube (GOOGLE) is becoming a TV network. In my opinion, it IS the largest TV network in the world with the most amount of channels in the world. All of us here, publishers and writers, should be putting pressure on lawmakers to shake google down for more money into the PRO pot so more performance royalties can be paid from YOUTUBE streams. A lot more!
ASCAP hitting record revenue of 1.1 Billion is a positive development
https://www.ascap.com/press/2018/04/04-19-financials-2017
More money for PROS, should mean more money for writers.
We have had some wins with the music modernization act passing, people ARE buying music again. I pay $10 a month for tunes on Spotify. I used to buy 1 CD a month as a kid. So the business is getting my money again.
Question for all writers and publishers:
Has anyone ever heard a client say “Gee tracks are so expensive these days, I wish I could find cheaper music?”
Michale L, I honestly think that tracks that never sold ought to just fall off the assembly line and go away. If I was running a big stock music licensing site, I’d have the track auto delete after 1 to 2 years if it never sold. We should not be dumping the price down and trying to lure customers with tracks they already passed on. I don’t see that as a good strategy. Or I guess let them sit their in search at the bottom of the digital pile.
The Nashville company is not using dump unsold tracks as a strategy. See there presentation at NAB.
Also, why the “NO PRO” talk from a Music city company when I inquired about worldwide advertising campaigns for Billion dollar burger companies? explain that?
Let me address really old, dated sounding tracks…you just never know. I have had 2 experiences in the last month that brought a smile to my face where a customer paid good money – not $20, for tunes I THOUGHT were irrelevant, dated, really just dead as a door nail. It was not the case in their mind!! Thank you for the bonus!
@Boinkee – I use hyperbole quite a bit when I write. I also am very well traveled and understand that the vast majority of the world is just trying to put food on the table. That is in fact my point. composers focusing on western music for western content need to focus on just that: The United States and Europe.
When I study several years of history of who is buying and where they are from – 75% of the time it’s USA, Canada, the other 20% is EUROPE. I can study this stat on one site. The topic is “subscription survival” – the suggestion by LA Writer is “Don’t participate” – at the moment I strongly agree because these folks working in media here in the good ole USA, the last thing they need is another unnecessary cost saving tool with “cheaper” music. All you have to do is look at the price of equities and one can quickly conclude that big corporations are swimming in mega profits. I advise all to make that the focus of their career. Everyone’s efforts: writers, songwriters, even bands, of course publishers should be serving the markets of big media.
But this is what is so mind boggling, frustrating, and confusing: you have a group of talented folks in “Music City” clearly they have some knowledge about this business (I’d hope at any rate). SESAC has headquarters there. There are dozens of studios and publishing companies there. ASCAP and BMI have a footprint there. Probably HFA and Sound Exchange. Then they serve up a $135 a year subscription scheme to provide cost savings to people who are A. not at all in need of it and B. probably not even asking for it. And the real “wow” moment I had during that phone call was when they said “YEs sir, you can use music on worldwide TV campaigns and not be concerned about anything because our music is royalty free.” (See other thread)
As the film trailer states in Micahael L’s post above – “We can not have a society where content (intellectual property) is supported by “VOLUNTARY PAYMENT” . This is where I jump on the don’t participate bandwagon. I am personally not too worried about serving student film makers with extra cheap music. Aim higher y’all! Look at those big companies on NASDAQ, NYSE, THE DAX, etc….Follow the money! Not the broke film student.