How many forwards typical before pay off

[pedrocosta]

Welcome to the forums
You'll find the most friendly, encouraging, and generous folks here.
The Taxi community is truly outstanding. And as others pointed out, attending the Rally will make it all that much more real for you.

FWIW the 5 year plan for me is based on the business concept that it takes about 5 years for a business to generate profit.
So for me I'd like to see myself breaking even by year 5 and building from there.
My first year with Taxi I found was when I really was able to wrap my head around the basics of the business.
At 6 months in and with 8 forward you are doing extraordinarily well. My advice is keep writing, submitting, forgetting, repeating (a populat mantra around here). Keep doing the work and the rest will take care of itself.

Wishing you best of luck!

[nextphase]

Hi guys,

wow, I had no idea there were so many replies already. Go away a few days and look what happens.
I appreciate the responses.

I will continue to try, but, wow, it's a lot of up front work, for nothing thus far.

So, is it common to hear something from a submission a significant amount of time later, or, should I assume that since I didn't hear anything within a few weeks, I'm not going to get a response from those forwards?

Thanks!

[andygabrys]

Both can happen. Some people hear a year or more later. I just had a publisher contact me last week and that was about 4 months after getting the forward.

[VanderBoegh]

Five months is my longest wait-time so far. But I've got forwards from years ago, that - who knows? - may eventually lead to a phone call. If you do some more reading in these forums, you'll hear stories of people getting contacted around 2 years after the forward. Just depends on how quickly the publisher / music supervisor / record label needs to move.

~~Matt

[nextphase]

Well gang, the news is that I did finally get contacted by a company.

I'm trying to decipher the contract, as it is a bit unusual. It seems they do mostly commercials, but they say they do film and tv as well.
It appears they are looking to get 25% of synch fees and that's it. I see no mention of PRO royalties. I'm trying to understand if I will collect any royalties from ascap if I register it, but they don't even ask from my pro info on the contract, so, I'm wondering if this is a royalty free deal? Any insights here?

Thanks guys!

[pedrocosta]

Huge congrats next!

All the money is as an initial sync fee.
Are they giving you 75% of the fee? That would be quite the nice deal.
Is the deal exclusive or non-exclusive?

[nextphase]

Thanks pedro for the info. Yes, I get 75% synch. I like that part.

[Casey H]

Best thing to do is gather a list of questions and ask.

Some that come to mind:
* Exclusive or non-exclusive?
* Do they register tracks with your PRO? (in case there ARE PRO paying placements in the future and they share in that)
* Do they assist in client filing of cue sheets? (" " ")
* If there ever is PRO money, is that all yours?

This has nothing to do with the term "royalty free".

If they don't share in any potential PRO money, you could register the track(s) yourself with your PRO as both the writer and publisher. If you are with BMI, that's more straightforward. With ASCAP, you can only do that if you create an ASCAP publishing company. But no rush on this. You have plenty of time to do this IF they make an actual placement. Not sure how it works if you are with a different PRO such as a non-US one.

If you want to talk more about it (without telling me the company name!) feel free to drop me a PM.

And.... CONGRATS!!!!

Casey

[andygabrys]

Commercials don't pay PRO royalties.

sorry Pedro. Totally untrue. If i hadn't personally been paid royalties on 2 national running commercials I might be wondering. One commercial on your statement even running for only a month will make make up for MANY tv placements. The first of those 2 commercials was also a union deal, so I actually got paid to play on my own spot too.

The discrepancy in this info (or your experience and mine) could be that a commercial does have to be running in a fairly major center or nationally, to be able to get royalties. Like a local cable station doesn't cut it unless maybe its an affiliate of the big 3. That might be where the issue is.

so to the original poster - you would do well to find out what kinds of commercials they are doing. A national car ad pays a lot differently (sync in the thousands and backend +/- hundreds of dollars per month of airtime for each side - writers and publishers cause they run in major centers) that Dick Dale's Ford in Peoria (which might be on a local channel and would net you a small sync and likely no backend).

[pedrocosta]

OOPS my bad
Thanks Andy. Edited to avoid any confusion.