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Forget about “make it in TV Licensing Scams” that is not what this thread is about. We’re discussing “Changing Trends”.
However it should be titled “Dumb Composers who ruin the business for themselves and everyone else by accepting horrible deals where you hand over OWNERSHIP out of overt stupidity and ignorance, lowering their prices to $5.”
Who are we kidding here? Who is helping to change these “trends”. Don’t you see the writing on the wall? Music Publishers, Music Libraries, Stock Licensing Platforms will keep chipping away at your share of the pie anyway they can. If you writers keep giving them more of your pie, they will keep asking for more pieces so long as you keep saying “Yes sir, take my music and don’t pay me! I love working for free for you.”
Of course they all want your music EXCLUSIVELY for them to publish and make money off of. They want EXCLUSIVE ownership to make them exclusively wealthy (example sell blankets to SCRIPPS and ESPN with your music and not share that revenue pie with you). Meanwhile, you remain desperately poor, scratching your head, wondering what happened? Well when you sign and agree to every Sh_t deal placed in front of you, you will change the trend and the trend will not be in your favor.
How about reversing the trend? Raise your prices, Ask for 60% or 70% of the pie, don’t write a track for a lousy $200 to help CBS VIACOM build an internal PRO free library that will help wipe you out one day. Don’t ever give up 50% writers share.
Who created this “trend”? I’d say look in the mirror.
Also, those selling courses on how to make money in sync licensing, they aren’t stupid, they are smart. They see an opportunity to earn money from people with some money to hand over. It’s no different than Universities grabbing 30K to 75K a year for hyper inflated tuitions. As long as there are willing buyers out there, they will keep grabbing your money.
@reallife4, the only asset we all have is the catalog itself. Those music files that I OWN are the only baby in town producing $$ for my family. Once you start giving that away (often for free) to exclusive publishers who are just preying on weak handed music producers, you already have shot yourself in the foot.
Just stay the course, keep your prices at a respectable level, one off sync licensing is still very much so alive and kicking because not every buyer out there needs 50 tracks a month from subscription. Most need a great track for 5 or 6 projects a year and they will pay the asking price. The race to the bottom only happens for those who join that race. Those bottom races start with writing for $200 buyouts, too much participation in subscription, caving into bullying demands to sacrifice writers share to greedy publishers. Music Producers simply need to say “no” to these deals. Otherwise, when you say “yes I’ll accept that deal” (to every deal presented) the race to far less income will be your end result
I often think about what my income would be today had I signed an exclusive agreement 12 years back and supplied music to even my best performing library. Had I done that and not distributed my music for sale to several other platforms, including DSP’s and Content ID, my income probably would only be 25% of what it is today. Even if that one (hypothetical) exclusive publisher bought everyone of my tracks for say $500 per master, I still would have far less income.
In conclusion this business is a never ending negative feedback loop where you have publishers doing everything they can to take advantage of, intimidate, bully, and extort music assets from original creators for nothing to extremely cheap. It’s all about ownership and control. Everyone knows that without ownership and control, you essentially have nothing.
Also be aware of the fingerprinting shift that is happening very quickly. I recently received an email from a European sub-publisher about how they want ISWC codes, and PRO Song #’s (aka work id’s, BMI song #, ASCAP song #’s …etc) to supply to BMAT for fingerprinting. BUMA and SABEN supposedly will soon be doing away with manual cue sheets and all performance royalties will be paid based on fingerprinted detection technology with BMAT being the service provider for that data, to those PRO’s.
Here is the bad news about this: It would take me probably 40 to 50 hours of my time copying and pasting these two codes (ISWC # and ASCAP Work ID) to every title in my master metadata spreadsheets.
I suppose the good news is that detection technology is finally taking over and replacing manual cue sheets.
If BUMA and SABEN, then PRS, GEMA, SACEM,….Then of course BMI and ASCAP adopt the same position, then its bye bye to cue sheets and hello detection reports from BMAT.We’ll see how it all plays out. I think ASCAP is using soundmouse, perhaps GEMA too.
What can we all do? All I can say is respect yourself and the price of your music. Don’t cave into the subscription BS because
A. there is very little money in that game and
B. not every buyer needs or wants a subscription. Many just want to search for that one track for that monthly or quarterly media project and they will pay your asking price if the track really hits the mark for their video.We can also all aggressively lobby the PRO’s to give greater weight to YOUTUBE streams, Netflix usages, Facebook usages, ask them to pay us for all DIY, HGTV, BTN, ESPN, GAC , Cooking Channel, Travel channel shows, etc. Music adds value to all of these shows. These shows are supported by advertisers who sponsor these shows. Our music is broadcast to the public, we should be paid! Write to your PROS, call them, lobby them…ask for an explanation. Present your TUNESAT data to them. I do all of this all the time. Should an opening news theme airing in NYC three times a day (for 9 months now) not pay me a damn performance royalty? Does that news station just get the track “Gratis”? That was my argument to my PRO just 2 days ago, we’ll see what they say.
@NY Composer, a composer friend of mine recently told me that he received briefs from “M” (you can imagine who this library is). The brief was for “buyout tracks for Viacom, because they are trying to build up an internal library”.
So, for those newbies and youngbies reading and listening here is why this offer is horrible:
-Viacom/ CBS is currently a media giant that does pay performance royalties for CBS, MTV, VH1, BET stations.
-When you take the tiny $200 buy out deal, not only are you foolishly selling a track for peanuts and under valuing your work effort, but you are complicit in their end goal: Build an INTERNAL NON PRO library so VIACOM CBS can one day avoid payments to PRO’s and as a result cut you out of back end performance royalties.Why would anyone jump at the opportunity to write, record, mix, and master a track for VIACOM/ CBS for a lousy $200? That is the dumbest deal ever. You are selling your intellectual property for $200 and that is all you will earn from that piece, forever. Secondly, you are shooting yourself in the foot because an “internal PRO free” library is in direct competition with PRO (rights managed) libraries you hope CBS would use for production music.
Finally, have you ever thought about what that track would earn on other licensing platforms if you chose not to sell it for $200? Surely it could easily earn you $200 if you gave it some time and see how it can perform.
My thoughts on the TV Network graph/ sheet.
NBC Universal/ COMCAST is a class act that always comes through for composers.
VIACOM/ CBS (includes MTV, VH1, BET)- I wonder, about them as I have been hearing about lots of shenanigans from fellow writers writing for “buyout fees” so these folks can build a library PRO free for “some reality TV shows”? Guys, is the $200 buyout really worth your time and effort knowing that is all you will get forever and simultaneously, you are helping them build up a PRO free internal library? What the fudge?
Disney, ABC…generally speaking a class act, but their ESPN policy is pretty disgusting
Discovery, They are all over the place with some of their networks paying decently, but others such as SCRIPPS, seems like a sleezy under the table workaround to avoid the PRO issue. I’d just love to know why the PRO’s tolerate this double standard.
Fox Business, News, Fox Sports – Yep, they pay…so they look out after writers!
CNN/ TBS, TNT, CNN, and TruTV. – They pay, classy operation. aka WARNER MEDIA
Art, does Hallmark Channel not pay?
Here is a great “story”
I like this part from the article, Are you paying attention writers and publishers?
The music business is notoriously complex in terms of how royalties are apportioned and to whom, but the basic premise is that every time a song is purchased or performed, its copyright holders (and in most cases there will be several) earn some income.
Also, Art…my philosophy as to why some older stars like Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton etc….are selling their catalog’s is because they probably realize that they are at the tail end of their life and want to simply cash in and set up their will’s with their family members.
I know I wouldn’t mind cashing out of my catalog at the right price. But here is the interesting thing, I am the only one who knows how to collect on my multiple revenue streams. It would take me a year or more to teach my wife or kids how to properly collect and maintain all the royalties streams I have created for my catalog. For us production music composers, we have so many different sources of revenue:
– Content ID
-PRO royalty distributions for TV air dates, radio, streaming on Netflix, hulu, amazson, etc
-Sync sales on stock music licensing platforms (unfortunately “subscription royalty revenue” too)
-Harry Fox Agency
-Neighbouring Rights
-Spotify, APPLE, FACEBOOK (aka DSPS_ or “streaming” royalties
-Sound ExchangeThese multiple revenue streams are not easy to keep up with. And now we have the MLC collecting a new stream of royalties. That is just getting started. And now we are hearing about music and crypto joining forces (NFT’s?)? It just gets more and more complicated every year.
Yep, finance is getting more and more bizarre each passing day….
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbyowsinski/2021/03/07/will-nfts-finally-fulfill-the-blockchain-promise-to-music/?sh=6ceb12675b9e
https://www.coindesk.com/what-are-nfts@PAMMUSIC, the reality is that the only way to stop the insanity and exploitation is by unionizing to set certain standards related to composing music for media. These would be my top rules if we had the MPU or “Music Production Union”:
1. Writers maintain 100% of their “writers share” under any and all circumstances and it is illegal (extortion) to pressure them into giving up any percentage of the so called “wrters share”.
2. A Sync licenses for YOUTUBE and all other “social media” will be set at $50 minimum fee for a sync license
3. Subscription models are banned, illegal, a breach of international law, and music assetts can only be licensed one at a time, for one project at a time.
4. Only the original creators or writers can upload their music to youtube’s content ID system and collect “ad revenue”
5. All members of the MPU must be a member of a PRO
6. Exclusive Music production requests must be commissioned at a fee of $1000 per track or a minimum of $10,000 paid in advance by a publisher, to writer for a 10 track album.I can add a lot more but if everyone worked under these 6 basic principles, we’d quickly reverse the most pathetic state of conditions we are currently in – $5 sync licenses getting sold, $15 a month for all you can download subscription models, 50% writers share getting extorted by sleezy music libraries, 100% publishing share being extorted by corrupt TV networks like VIACOM and Discovery.. Stupid weak handed publishers giving into these deals or they are just lying to writers about thier woes with these networks. Also it should be illegal for some TV networks to bypass the cue sheet protocol, and payment of blanket license fees to PRO’s. ESPN/ DISNEY is another corrupt network that is getting away with not paying PRO’s under the bogus excuse of “we do direct licensing”. Yeah right….they do “direct licensing” of PRO registered music but do not have to pay PRO’s for access to this music. How the F__K is that legal????
Mike, Dropping links to our entire business model and telling everyone exactly how we accomplished what we did also goes against Business 101 rules. I too do not license off my own web site. I hang out where the buyers are going every day and it ain’t my web site.
When all is said and done, LA Writer and I achieved what we did through very hard work over decades, not years. We made mistakes and learned from them. One mistake I never made was signing insane exclusive in perpetuity deals. I have offered a lot of tips and content over the years on MLR. If you go back and read a lot of what I have written, it all comes back to this:
1. Lower Prices =’s Lowering your revenue, it fails every time.
2. Exclusivity (without advance payment for your work) = failure, loss of ownership, loss of control, loss of revenue because your tracks are tied up in perpetuity with the Lion’s who ate you up for free. (If a library pays you an advance of say $500 to $1500 per track for your effort, I do not have a problem with exclusivity although I personally would never take those deals unless I knew they were headed straight to an editors desk and solid performance royalties were going to be guaranteed on the back end)
3. Subscription = $2 per download as opposed to $20 to $50 per sync license. YOUTUBERS got a 90% discount they never asked for 2 years ago. Composers jumped on board and wonder why they only make 4 figures.
4. Laziness, not wanting to do what owners of intellectual property should do:
– register your cues at a PRO
-Join a PRO! Yes, we have people in this business who do not even join a PRO!
-Upload to Content ID yourself, don’t let the Lions do it, beat them to it and tell them to F__off if they expect that they should do it.
-DO NOT allow libraries to upload to DSP’s like Spotify and Apple – YOU DO IT. It’s YOUR creation and YOUR property.
5. Detection services, know what’s going on with your music, take action to collect as 100% writer and 100% publisher when you can. You’d be surprised as to how that can exponentially boost your income for the right opportunities. If the Lion’s jaws already are wrapped around your neck with a strong bite, well you are out of luck.AS LA Writer said “Get the picture? Ownership = $$$.”
Nothing I say will make a difference because music producers have a track record of shooting themselves in the foot every time. For every writer who says “no thanks” to a loss of 50% writers share deal or bogus subscription deal, it seems like there are 10 others in line saying “Hey wait, I’ll give you my music for nothing, and you can even own 50% of it in perpetuity.”
Music Composer is the $13 an hour dude at Wal Mart all too often.
Music Library Owner is the King of all con artists, a mobster, pro extortionist, exploiter in chief, a shameful, greedy disgraceful human, nothing to be proud of in all honesty.There are other ways to control your financial destiny as it relates to production music, but you have to start by respecting yourself, your time, your value, your skill set, your worth.
So yes, part of my “story” so we stay on topic is …yes… I have always been a higher priced guy on stock music sites where I can control the price. Any time I experimented with “sales” it failed on every level. I have always fought like hell to maintain non exclusivity with all the companies I began working with over the last 12 years, even with publishers who postured as “our exclusive way, or the highway” I NEVER gave into that and never will. It is a fact that when you have freedom ,flexibility, and control over your intellectual property, you can pursue several revenue streams all within your control and you will make a lot more money. I always tell myself “Thank God I never caved into exclusivity with company X.” Because had I done so, my annual revenue would be 15% of what it is now.
It saddens me to see guys talk about “mid 5 figures”. you will be stuck forever in 50K land when you put all of your eggs in those exclusive baskets where the Lion’s jaw is in control of your music perpetually.
Many may say “well we don’t have a choice because the industry shifted to exclusivity”. This is Rubbish, the shift to exclusivity and now the subscription nightmare happened because weak handed composers accepted every deal thrown at them for reasons I can not comprehend. In the end it just comes down to plain old ignorance and fomo. These music publishers were all con artist liars who promised “more placements” , “more attention on your music” , or a ” second and improved revenue stream” (Subscription in addition to sync sales)
All of those “promises” were and still are nothing but bogus deals (overt extortion) that stripped ownership and control away from the original creator and put publishers and stock site owners in the drivers seat. Who is to blame? Look in the mirror and see yourself.
What can you do now? Raise your prices immediately because LA writer is correct, people buy what they need and want, not what’s “on sale” for $5. Then upload your catalog to Content ID before anyone else does and never give a music publisher permission to upload your tracks into content ID.
Here is another story that’s interesting. I recently had a global financial services firm dealing in stocks and crypto e mail privately stating ” we found one of your tracks on AJ and want to use it on a global ad campaign, can we please ask that you verify that you are the rights holder? and Can we have you issue us a license directly? we don’t want any shenanigans for this this project and we do not really trust this site to issue a proper license with this kind of high international visibility.” How pathetic is that? The client can not even trust the stock music licensing platform to issue a valid license for their project! They also don’t even trust that the music they are licensing is held by an account owner that truly owns the music.
P.S. The reason why everyone’s numbers are so low is because you all like to give away your intellectual property for peanuts. Sharks are there willing to take the free give-away’s for $0 and profit from your works. Clients will gladly take the discounted prices they never requested. You writers don’t seem to mind. I guess you all are in it for the “Love of music” . You also do not see the value in collecting money as 100% writer and 100% publisher….that’s too “stressful” and too much work for most of you it seems. Ditto for registering your cues and crafting your own meta data. “um isn’t that for the library to do?” Uploading to Content ID to collect that stream? nah….that’s too much work! Let’s have the library do that and be the first to collect on it.
Start taking notes, these are ways to exponentially increase your royalty revenue. Raise your prices on Stock sites….see what happens, you may be quite surprised. Have I experimented with price cuts? Yep, and guess what….It failed every time. Cutting my prices NEVER resulted in more units sold, and NEVER resulted in increased revenue. Did it accomplish anything for you?….other than feeling good about selling a track for $5? Did that make you put a feather in your cap and make you feel good for an hour or two?