Robin and I attended the PMA meeting, June 21st 2010, on “Non-Exclusive libraries and retitling”.
Tunesat sponsored this event and it was great to finally meet some of those folks, Mellisa, Chris and Lara. They are as nice in person as in the many e-mail conversations I’ve had with them! Chris was on the panel and was particularly eloquent in explaining Tunesat, fingerprinting and detection. It is the future!
Another nice surprise was when one of the panel members, Catherine Farley, Director of Music Licensing, for the Disney ABC Television group mentioned that she uses Music Library Report for research and recommended that others use it. Wow, cool, so they are paying attention. Very gratifying. Thanks Catherine!
The panel members included: Catherine Farley (Disney ABC), Cheryl Hodgson (Trademark and Copyright attorney), Ron Mendelsohn (Megatrax), Alicen Schneider (NBC Universal), moderator Randy Wachtler (615 Music) and Cris Woods (Tunesat).
It’s not hard to imagine how most of the assembled panel and guests felt about the topic. You can read more about their position here: http://app.e2ma.net/campaign/27456.af55d60b404c79870d1c9931918a94fc
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, many of their points were well taken. In particular, I can see it from the networks’ point of view. Alicen Schneider (NBC) and Catherine Farley (ABC) both spoke of the increase of multiple claimants on music that has been aired. They also spoke of music that is overexposed because of the retitling issues. (Then again, at least with production music, how many people are going to recognize a short piece of music from one show to another, buried under dialog?). There is also the issue of 3rd party deals that might conflict and how they may impact foreign sales as well as potential legal and ethical problems. All very good points, and they opened my eyes a lot wider.
On the other hand, from the PMA’s point of view, it all seemed a bit self-serving. The old library business model appears to be failing and there is a mindset that the “The sky is falling”. It’s fine to protect the interest and value of music, no argument there, but the genie is out of the bottle regarding non-exclusive libraries and re-titling. There must be tens of thousands of re-titled tracks available through non-exclusive libraries. One of the biggest arguments against re-titling is the potential loss of ownership of your copyright. Call me naïve, but I find it hard to believe that the courts would take the position that all of those thousands of copyrights (involving untold numbers of libraries and composers) are in jeopardy because of re-titling. I think one of the answers lies with the PROs and finding a mechanism for keeping all those income streams straight. And yes their are other potential problems but I don’t think the “sky is falling”. Then again I’ve always been a “glass is always half-full” kind of guy!
For those of you who are new to this: Generally speaking, you have a number of options to promote your music to the film and TV world. There can be many variations depending on your negotiating skills and/or demand for your work:
Exclusive – Up-front Money. The music library will pay you, upfront, for each piece of music, up to and including, all recording costs and expenses. You will give up ownership of the copyright in perpetuity and will not participate in any license fees. You will retain your writers share of the performance royalties (but not the publishing share). There will be no re-titling of your music.
Exclusive – No Upfront- Money. The music library will NOT pay any upfront fee or costs. You will give up ownership of the copyright in perpetuity. You might participate in any license fees. You will retain your writers share of the performance royalties (but not the publishing share). There will be no re-titling of your music.
Non Exclusive – No Upfront Money. The music library will NOT pay any upfront fee or costs. You will NOT give up ownership of the copyright (any music placed with a show will stay with that show in perpetuity). You probably will participate in any license fees. You will retain your writers share of the performance royalties (but not the publishing share). Your music will be re-titled.
Go It Alone – You will NOT give up ownership of the copyright (any music placed with a show will stay with that show in perpetuity). You will receive 100% of any license fees. You will retain your writers share of the performance royalties AND the publishing share. Your music will not be re-titled.
Because the exclusive library route is not possible (or desirable) for the many and the “Go It Alone” takes a particular personality trait, the non-exclusive avenue is an attractive alternative.
One member of the audience asked the panel what they would say to a non-exclusive library owner who says that this is the only business model that works for him. A member of the panel gave a rather sharp reply; “go exclusive or get out of the business”. I found his comment not very constructive. I would assume he also feels the same away about composers who are unable to get signed exclusively by one of the major libraries.
So, what’s a composer to do? I’ve been a writer/producer all my life with a modicum of success. Certainly, I have not been able to earn enough to live on. That doesn’t mean I will stop writing or producing as I love what I do. The various “Big” libraries I have tried to get into are not interested. I’m also not interested in smaller exclusive libraries that offer nothing more than a promise and want my music in perpetuity. Does that mean I should “get out of the business?” Not gonna happen. In a perfect world I would rather work exclusively with a company that I believed in and that believed in what I did. In fact I had that many years ago as a writer with a couple of major publishing companies. In the meantime, I’m comfortable working with the few non-exclusive libraries I work with and yes, the retitling issue is a problem and will have to be dealt with. If nothing else, last night opened my eyes to the potential problems.
I do think a workable solution can be found. It’s too bad none of the non-exclusive libraries, that were asked to participate, chose not to do so. The only way to solve these problems is for all sides to come to the table, be open, communicate and work out a solution.
I had a song played on Today Show, twice. I didn’t know it until it showed up on my PRO statement. I don’t know how they got the song, I never sent it to them, and the only library that might have it would be Pump Audio. If they sent it to them, they(Pump) would have re-titled, so I would not have gotten the publishing amount, but I did get writers and publishers royalties. Good royalties for each spin too. It is a mystery to me.
Hey EV, That’s good news. Always nice to get those surprise checks in the mail. Is there any other library or publisher that you have the song signed to that could’ve pitched it to the Today Show?
Any comments between; ISRC, Fingerprinting,Tunestat, the same, differences??
ISRC codes are like a serial number for your recording. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Recording_Code.
Fingerprinting,Tunestat is a digital fingerprint of your recording.
Remember, Google is your friend:)
Hey Jason, I checked out your site, really nice music! Just was wondering why you were switching to ASCAP from BMI. I’ve considered doing the opposite, so would be interested to hear your reason(s).
Alas, none of these technologies are perfect, but then again neither are cue sheets.
Hello John,
In answer to your question, the fingerprinting services are able to determine the type of production since their data is cross referenced against databases provided by broadcast media services. These services know what show was broadcast on each channel at a particular time, and it is relatively simple for the fingerprinting services to match their detections against this data. However, what is still missing is the TYPE of usage- the fingerprint cannot determine if the usage was program underscore or interstitial (promo, commercial, PSA).
Though I have found that sometimes the detection and the shows do not match. In one instance detections indicated a number of episodes from a show in which I had no idea how they had gotten the music. When I called the production company they were as mystified as me. Turns out the company listened to the detection and determined it wasn’t their show, which I later confirmed. In another instance I had a cue that had supposedly ran on ABC World News. I was excited until I listened to the detection. Ah, not!
Re: Fingerprinting.
Will the fingerprinting software be able to detect the actual production that the piece of music is in?
I could envision a piece of music with any title whatsoever being placed in a Final Cut timeline and a cue sheet entry automatically generated from that timeline reflecting all the necessary data about the production and have that data linked to that particular title. When the fingerprinting search picks up that show, it would be great if it was able to cross reference the piece of music with the cue sheet from that show. I’m not sure how this could be done technically, but it seems like something to shoot for.
Thanks,
John Mazzei
Good question! Before someone who actually knows the answer responds, I’d guess that currently the system in place wouldn’t actually ‘detect’ the production, but would already know it because there would be a log that keeps track of what the fingerprinting software is listening to.
The only thing missing from a cue sheet would then be the usage – BI, VI, VV, BV, F, THM etc. I wonder if it’s even possible to automate the detection of that.
Hi Matt,
In response to your question, yes if you are hosting audio from one central server without distributing hard drives or other distribution devices then yes, it would be relatively easy to batch watermark the content. But you would still have to deal with unwatermarked legacy content that was previously downloaded by your clients. And the main problem is that the PROs are not paying on watermarked detections so the whole effort would be futile anyway. Regarding cue sheets, watermarking has no affect on cue sheets since watermark detections do not indicate the context of the performance, they only indicate the time, duration and source of the broadcast. This is not enough information to fill out a cue sheet. But the main point is that watermarking technology is quite primitive compared to fingerprinting, which is where most of the development is happening these days.
Yep, I do think fingerprinting is the future. I’m amazed at how accurate the detections are on my Tunesat account. Sometimes I have to really strain through the dialog and SFX to hear the music but it’s there, detected and I can recognize it as mine.
Thanks Art (and all) for attending this event!
It’s not easy to get around to all the important events, especially if one is not located in a film industry hub.
Your efforts to bring this back and share it are greatly appreciated. For the last year, I’ve been struggling with these notions of (re-titling/non-exclusives etc.) I was lucky enough (for a while) to have a direct connect to compose/license via a production company, but changes in economic environments and the desire to create more artful works / IP assets than are generally practical to do/use for ‘filler’ music for reality TV or commercial/corporate projects, has caused me to really pause before jumping. The dialog here has been very helpful in assisting in making a reasonably sound evaluation to develop my business expansion and direction!
Much Love:)
T. Reed/TAO X Productions
My pleasure T. Glad to help out.
Watermarking is not a solution. We have had experience watermarking tracks using various systems and it is a huge hassle. Everytime the technology changes, the tracks need to be re-watermarked again. Now imagine doing that for a library with tens of thousands of tracks. Plus the fact that watermarking does nothing for “legacy” data, meaning the huge volume of music that is already released in the marketplace. Most importantly, the PROs are not paying based on watermarks and they are in fact moving away from watermarking and very quickly adopting fingerprinting (audio recognition) solutions. I can assure you first-hand that these fingerprinting technologies are evolving rapidly and they can very successfully identify tracks. It is very clear to those in the industry that fingerprinting is the solution for the future, not watermarking.
Thanks Ron, I appreciate you taking the time to set the record straight. From what you’re saying, I guess a re-titling showdown is inevitable. Unless someone comes up with a way to efficiently (cheaply) watermark 10’s of 1000’s of tracks, and then re-deliver all the legacy data to clients who already have the music on their shelves and in their servers. A huge undertaking that mostly benefits re-titling libraries.
If everything was digital, accessed online by editors and music supervisors, might it be possible though?
What if it meant the end of filling out cue sheets? An integrated system that automatically fills out cue sheets might entice everyone (PROs, libraries, broadcasters) to work towards a sweeping solution like a complete overhaul of how music is tracked and identified.
Re: the early digital watermarking…we were beta testers at Videohelper back in 2002 and the mark distorted the track. Landmark/BlueArrow FTW.
Is that because the process of adding the watermark meant adding audio signal to an already mastered track? If so, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt the audio quality much to run a limiter, slight decrease in gain, or similar finishing tool over the track.
Admittedly, I’m not well versed on the subject, but it seems that digital watermarking is a promising solution to the looming re-titling train wreck.
Art,
Thanks for attending the PMA panel and for expressing your candid views on the subject. My intention by writing the article was to provoke debate on this issue, and I am glad to see that that is happening. Regarding the PMA panel being “self-serving”, I can understand why it might appear that way, however it is important to mention that we extended invitations to several retitling libraries and that none of them was willing to show up to defend their business model. Please also note that no one on the panel suggested that retitling involves “loss of copyright”; it was merely pointed out that titles are not copyrightable and therefore that retitlted libraries may not sue for infringement and may not have the right to negotiate direct licenses. Finally, I regret that we left you with the impression that “the sky is falling”; the purpose of the panel was to educate and inform, which is an important part of the PMA’s mission.
Hi Ron,
Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I appreciate it and I’m sure everyone else here does too.
I agree that it would have been helpful for some of the retitling libraries to have attended the meeting as it would have made for a more balanced discussion.
As I noted above I did come away with my eyes opened a bit wider about the potential problems with non-exclusives and retitling. Still, for some of us, the non-exclusive approach works best, at least for now.
Take care
Art