[Ruiz]

Yes, the same happened to me..From 235 cues to 223 in one day??
I wonder what happened..Double counted cues? Wrong composer?

[Ruiz]

Hi Sander,

I wouldn’t terminate my Buma account, because the royalties and backend from European countries will be processed much faster through Buma.
With Buma I would exempt the royalties from the US, that will give you a big advantage.
And I believe you can have a Ascap and BMI account simultaneously.
I would register your tracks both with ASCAP, BMI and Buma, so that you don’t miss any royalties altogether.

That’s what I did and until now it works fine.

best,

Roeland

[Ruiz]

Ascap held off on it for a very long time, they only make direct deposits to a US bank account, which is impossible to procure for a non-US resident.
After three years they helped me with a wire transfer..

Roeland

[Ruiz]

Hi Sander,

I switched from Buma to ASCAp three years ago.
It has it’s pro’s and cons.
You get paid much earlier, that is every quarter..with Buma it can take three years before they will have all the backend wired to their account.
The main con is, at least ASCAP still sends you paper cheques, which are impossible to cash in The Netherlands.
It took me three years to convince the ASCAP administration that this way of payment is outdated in Europe.

The hardest part of the switching is timing.
You have to cancel your US royalty agreemen with Bumat, but this only possible once a year..I can’t remember if it has to be at the start of a new year.
After that you are free to join ASCAP.
Please check with Buma on the precise timing

Good luck!! and feel free to ask me anything more!

Best,

Roeland

[Ruiz]

I have a couple of songs with them.
The way they calculate their royalties is not in the advantage of the composer.
They put all your songs in different playlists, in which they divide the total amount of songs with the streams this playlist is generating.
So you will have 2 of your songs in a playlist with 300 other songs, which will take a lot of time untill you get to the 100,- euro threshold, the minimum payout amount.
Of the total amount, they take 10% handling and the rest is being divided 50-50.
If you want a good alternative i advise Soundreef!
Much better revenu!

[Ruiz]

Well, there are different tax treaties with each country. In the US-Dutch treaty it’s article 13, paragraph 1.
It could be a template that’s the same for different countries, but i would aks a German Tax consultant for this one!

[Ruiz]

Hi,
I am a composer from The Netherlands and i came across the same issues.
It took me a long time to figure out how to get a ITIN.
It turns out that with ASCAP, they can work with the TIN of your home country.
However you can easily aks for a EIN at the IRS through one phone call.
It takes 10 minutes of your time and you have to tell them that you are a sole propietor( wich you are if you make music for a living).
The hard part is not recieving royalty checks, because they are very expensive to cash in the Netherlands. But to apply for an American bankaccount is much harder..

[Ruiz]

Hi,

I’m not saying that i’m against Taxi or anything like it.

I’ve become a little bit sceptical about their connections and follow ups from the listing sups.

In fact when i started submitting songs, i’ve learned a lot from their critiques, especially in the lyrics section, which is of course not in my language.

Their critique can be very extensive and detailed, which is a good thing.

However, this year i have had a lot of forwards in which their critique was really positive and haven’t had any response from the listing party involved.

It could mean 2 things;

Or my songs are not competitive enough for the “real” music sups, or Taxi lacks the credibility in the “real” world.

It still takes a lot of effort to write the best songs you can write and there’s the fee of 5$ for each song. It does add up at the end of a year.

I made the most progress reading the MLR forum posts 🙂

[Ruiz]

Hi,

I’ve got a question regarding Taxi.

I live in the Netherlands and for me Taxi was the first “hands on” opportunity to submit my music to a foreign based company that could review and give an opinion about my music so i could grow as a songwriter and composer.

I am in my 3rd year of my Taxi membership and although i have gotten a lot of forwards from Taxi, i haven’t got almost no response from the listing parties involved.

Much to the advise of fellow MSR regular forum posters, i have gotten into a few libraries, with 13 songs now in Crucial Music.

So in response of a topic stated above, does anyone has significant numbers that Taxi has real value in getting your music to the right person in the industry at all?

I have learned a lot from the critics at taxi and the Road Rally can be really inspiring( i had a workshop with Pat Pattison on lyrics the was really awesome), but in the end it feels as if your fighting against a wall of Taxi A+R sups, that don’t have a real impact in the listings they are offering.

 

Please let me know what your experience is.

kind regards,

 

ruiZ

 

[Author]

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