production music

My wife Robin and I attended the PMA (Production Music Association) meeting Thursday 9-24-09 at the Courtyard Marriott in Sherman Oaks, CA.

The panelists included:
Randy Wachtler – President and founder of 615 Music Companies;
Cassie Lord – General Manager/Executive Producer – 5 Alarm Music/Rescue Records;
Ron Mendelsohn – Co-founder and CEO – Megatrax
Shain Miller – Senior Director, Music Clearance – Evan Greenspan Inc. Music Clearance
Adam Taylor – President – Associated Production Music
Randy Thornton – CEO – Non-Stop Music
Steve Winogradsky – Attorney – Winogradsky/Sobel

The PMA consists mostly of music libraries and some music creators – songwriters and composers. (Although it is now much harder and very expensive for a composer to join). Their overall mission is to create a strong, unified presence within the entertainment industry in order to protect the rights of music providers for television and other media. Like any trade union, they are out to protect their rights and ensure their ability to negotiate the best possible deals for their members.

On to the meeting.

Randy Wachtler acted as moderator. Here are some of things that were discussed.

1.) Everyone was pleased that ASCAP is appealing the decision that downloads are not a public performance.

2.) They are trying to come up with some sort of standardization of meta-data. They realized there were many variables but some general standard, industry wide, would be beneficial to everyone. This would also carry over to ID Tags in the MP3 format.

3.) There was concern voiced of “meta-data dumping” (which I would call “keyword stuffing”). Evidently some are “stuffing” the meta-data with keywords that really didn’t match the mood and feel of the music in hopes of coming up in a search. This makes searching irrelevant.

4.) Of course re-titling came up and much of the concerns voiced here and other places were brought up. Some felt it would blow up soon. Some could see both sides. Steve Winogradsky called a re-titled piece a “shadow copy” and used the term “legal fiction”. Some concurred that the PROs don’t seem overly concerned about the practice.

5.) Much talk about the “fingerprinting” technology. Only until recently the school of thought was that music could not be accurately detected under dialog and effects. Tunesat seems to have changed that and most agreed that Tunesat or some other company’s product was the future. Matching up the detection with the underlying meta-data would be the next big step. Cassie Lord from 5 Alarm mentioned that they have a Tunesat account with about 120,000 tracks.

6.) There was discussion about how the major labels were getting much more aggressive in going after music libraries that they thought were infringing on their artist’s music. The major libraries are concerned enough that both APM and 615 have taken all references to artist’s names out of their meta-data. Descriptors like “Sound likes” and “Sound Alikes” would not be used. Ron at Megatrax felt that having an artist’s reference was like putting a target on your back.

7.) The phrase “sustainable business practices” came up often. The fact that many libraries were charging low sync fees, or not collecting any at all, was a race to the bottom. At one point, Ron Mendelsohn of Megatrax (I believe it was him), was bemoaning this downward spiral and asked everyone (especially new libraries) to be aware of other library’s rate cards when setting their prices. Steve was very quick to point out that could be considered price fixing, there were anti-trust issues and that the PMA itself could be subject to litigation.

8.) Direct source and per program licensing was discussed and how that was impacting pricing as well as PRO payment.

9.) Indemnification. It seems that more and more clients are demanding indemnification from the libraries. Being on the hook for a potential million dollar law suit for a $1000 sync fee raises a lot of concern.

10.) Bundled rights. Where once the libraries were able to “carve out” rights for different pricing, more clients want all the rights in a bundle.

There was much, much more and very in depth. There were a lot of “real world” stories of various negotiations, particularly from Steve Winogradsky. Fascinating stuff. I’m sorry we couldn’t get all of it in. I tried to be as accurate as possible here but there is a good chance I may have misquoted. It would be nice if the PMA had the text of the evening’s discussion. It would make great reading!

BTW they had a decent buffet which was a nice bonus:)

Take care

Art (and Robin for all the note taking!)