Have We Been Cheated Out Of Money?!?

[DesireInspires]

Sitting back and looking at my PRO royalties, I cannot be sure if I am being cheated. The calculations vary from quarter. Sometimes I do good. Other times I make a fraction of previous quarters. But one component missing is upfront money.

I have music placed on over one hundred shows now. That is something that I thought would be impossible five years ago. Apparently I have a skill set and people actually like what I do. But as of today, I can count on one hand the number of upfront or sync fees received. They appear to be extinct. This has got me to wonder: is it really worth it to create a bunch of new music in order to chase backend royalties?

I have been evaluating my scenario and realize that I have cheated myself by not working with companies that pay upfront money. I have been leaving money on the table for most of my short career in music licensing.

I admit that I am not a full time musician. But it begins to make less and less sense to wait months or years for payouts. Many backend uses generate less than $10 for me. I have only been able to make decent money by the volume of music that I have out there.

Long story short, I am working towards increasing my income by collecting more money upfront. Although it is fun to create music, there really isn't a great incentive to sign over exclusivity just for backend royalties. The results have spoken.

[HectorRContreras]

Dear Desire,

Hector was collecting about $26 a year, from selling his CDs/Songs at CD Baby.
Just about the same in other places like Amazon and iTune, etc.

But one day, he had a collaboration with a beautiful Brazilian Singer.
Hector just composed Demos, about 5 of them. But the Melodies were cool.
The beautiful Brazilian Singer used the 5 Songs, made them her own, and created a CD, and performed the Songs in Concert.
Hector received £1000 upfront.
And Hector would receive a small fee each time the Songs were performed, and or the CD sold.

He liked that I think !

Here is the beautiful Brazilian Singer and the CD called : "Naturalmente"
http://musicabrasileira.org/fabiana-pas ... te-brasil/

[HectorRContreras]

Someone has just posted something interesting about this Topic :

http://forums.taxi.com/topic128434.html

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permali ... 1367187500

http://www.ascap.com/playback/2014/04/c ... newsletter