176 thoughts on “Royalty Payments – Monitoring and Collection”

    • Not performance royalties for sure. Other than a license fee, you’re probably not going to see anything more from it. A big shot game composer can get a cut of the sales, which is like a royalty, but most composers don’t get that in their deals these days. If they don’t get it when they score the whole game, it’s unlikely you’ll get anything more for getting a library track licensed.

  3. Is there ASCAP member who is not a US-citizen?
    I’m not a US-citizen and member of ASCAP but I can’t activate “Member Access”.
    I’m wondering how member who isn’t US-citizen can activate ASCAP’s “Member Access”. SSN or TIN must be needed to activate “Member Access” but this numbers are issued to US-citizen.
    Is it essential that ASCAP member who is not US-citizen have to be issued ITIN instead of SSN,TIN by IRS to activate “Member Access”? or,
    Is there ASCAP member who is not US-citizen and activated “Member Access” without ITIN? (I’m also wondering if EIN is applied like ITIN to activate Member Access)
    Please give me some advice.
    Thanks

      • Thanks for answer John.
        It is sad that ASCAP doesn’t answer especially about this problem when I send a question email about this several times. It is more sad that I can’t speak in English well to call ASCAP and all I can communicate with ASCAP is using email.
        But I tried to send more detailed email again hoping to solve this problem.

        • If you just joined ASCAP it will take at least 2-3 weeks before you can activate member access. That’s my experience anyway. Not sure about the other issues you mentioned though.

          • I joined ASCAP about 4 month ago but still didn’t get any answers how to activate Member Access without SSN/ TIN. Of course I didn’t send email to ASCAP websupport EVERY DAY but sent email about five times about this problem. And I finally considering about to leave ASCAP if this problem continues to remain without any member supports.

            • Sorry to hear that. I had a different issue some months back and I also found that they don’t answer emails. Unfortunately, it seems the only way to get through to them is to call (as John stated above).

            • LJCD,

              Maybe i missed it, but how did you sign up with ASCAP without a SSN or Tax ID number?

              I’m not an accountant, it is my understanding that in order to pay American taxes, which is probably required if you have an American ASCAP publishing entity, you will need a SSN or Tax ID number….

              ASCAP web support will probably not help you, you will need to call the ASCAP offices in Los Angeles (323) 883 – 1000 to help with your problem…

              • I have found I need SSN or TIN in the paper application form of ASCAP. I wrote temporary EIN instead of SSN or TIN or ITIN and maybe it was accepted. I know of that non-US citizens will pay tax(30%) to IRS from their of earning from the US. Or non-US citizens will pay about 10% tax to IRS if they have ITIN or EIN. But I don’t know for certain whether this rule is applicable to royalty or not. Anyway, I joined ASCAP with temporary EIN but I didn’t know SSN, TIN will be needed to activate Member Access and EIN doesn’t work. Thanks for helping. It is very hard for me to call oversea but maybe there is no way but to call.

                • Hi, LJCD,

                  I got the same situation, too. (I’m from Japan and join recently.)
                  ASCAP emailed to me “Welcome to join” but I can’t update or see anything first time user.
                  How do you think about to register song title at first? I mean not waiting activate Member Access fixed, instead. Am I wrong idea?

                  Thanks.

  4. The network cue sheet/survey system is alot more streamlined than that of cable. The best way to handle this is to either.

    1) Show ascap tunesat data and hope they honor it (probably won’t happen anytime this year)

    or even better

    2) Ask the music house/ad agency for the ads’ Media Buy, then submit that to ascap.

  5. I just received my ASCAP publisher check and noticed that my NETWORK survery for a commercial I did was reported, but that there were NO payments for the Cable usage of this commercial.

    Does anyone know if ASCAP pays royalties for music used in commercials on cable?

  6. Does anyone know what the score is for music synched with video games? (Gameplay background music as opposed to main or character theme music.) We just stumbled across a credit for one of our tracks used in a recently released PC game. I’m assuming it’s the same as DVD sales where the only way royalties can be earned is by negotiating a mechanical royalty agreement with the licensee, but I really have no idea.

    Backend or not, it was really good of them to credit us! So often library music is simply credited to the library rather than the composer.

  7. Tunesat seems to be gaining more and more ground in the industry. They have recently announced:

    “Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), the world’s leading global music publisher, and TuneSat, LLC announced today that they have entered into a deal to utilize TuneSat audio fingerprint technology to monitor performance use of UMPG’s vast copyrights across U.S. broadcast television.”

    They have also announced:

    “Our BMI/ASCAP comparison report is in beta testing. With this advancement, we look forward to providing users with a customized exception report comparing your PRO royalties against our detection data.”

    Hopefully the PROs are getting the message!

  8. @ Dansen: Thanks for the kind words.

    @ Art: You ain’t so shoddy yourself, dude. 🙂 I think that your commitment to the composer community is outstanding — hosting this site and making info freely available to all. Not too many go out of their way to help the next generation of artists/composers, and you have stepped up to the plate in a major fashion.

    Cheers!
    Gael

  9. I just wanted to take a moment to say that this is a fantastic thread…full of valuable information and insight from everyone involved.

    And YOU, Gael MacGregor, must be commended for your contributions – not only on this forum – but elsewhere regarding the current unionization effort. You have intelligent, logical, and insightful contributions capped by years of experience. I would nominate you for president of the United States, but I know you wouldn’t want THAT job!

    Again, kudos to all posters (and naturally, to Art Munson).

  10. Quick question – if you sell tracks on “Royalty free” sites, and “Royalty” sites, what happens if the tv station in question claims to have bought the track under a royalty free license? Is there any way of following up to know? Would this cause confusion with this?

    • I have same or similar question, too.

      example)
      Artist sell Song “A” on “Royalty Free” site AND “Royalty site”.
      Company B bought or licensed song “A” from “Royalty site”.
      But afterward, company B noticed that song “A” is also sold on “Royalty free” site.
      I’m wondering about this situation.
      Please give some advice.

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