Anybody else get this email?

[JohnnyP]

So I just got this today. Looks like a nice way ( for the company) to get access to your music for an unknown license fee.
See “ licensee fee” below.

Am I wrong on this? Best, John


Dear Licensor,

We are contacting you on behalf of our client, Snap Inc., with a license opportunity in connection with the Snapchat application and Snap’s online properties.

Music can capture emotions, heighten expression, and set the mood for a moment. That’s why Snap is offering a library of music (which Snap calls “Sounds”) that end users can add to text and multimedia messages using the Snapchat camera and Snap’s online properties. Snap is excited to see what its end users create with Sounds and to provide new ways for artists and songwriters to be discovered on Snapchat.

The main deal points of Snap’s license offer are as follows:

Grant of Rights: As further set forth in the definitive License Agreement, Snap may enable end users of Snap’s online properties to incorporate up to 0:60 seconds of applicable Licensor works into (a) text and multimedia messages (which messages can be sent to and viewed by public and private audiences and edited by end users) and (b) visual or other elements or effects created by Snap or its end users.

Licensee Fee: Quarterly License Payments calculated as Licensor’s share (based on Licensor’s pro-rata share of eligible independent publisher music library message creations) of a $600,000 total Eligible Independent Publisher Pool for the initial term.
Territory: Worldwide, excluding Argentina.

Term: 3 year initial term.
To review and consider Snap’s license offer:

[JohnnyP]

Territory: Worldwide, excluding Argentina.

What's up with Argentina?

Lol, yeah I was wondering that too lol..

[RPaul]

So I just got this today. Looks like a nice way ( for the company) to get access to your music for an unknown license fee.
See “ licensee fee” below.

Am I wrong on this? Best, John

Yes, I got it. I haven't read through the detailed agreement yet to decide if I will go for this one, but it sounds very similar to ones I've agreed to for other media companies, and I actually do get royalty checks from the organization that sent the message, albeit ranging from a penny to maybe 50 cents or so. (I think in most cases, they've paid more for postage to snail mail me checks than the amount of money in the check.)

It may be an "unknown" license fee, in a sense, but that's not unusual for these kinds of blanket licenses. In particular, how much anyone gets will depend on the proportion of usage of both the music of the organization who is doing the licensing gets (to determine shares versus other organizations who are also licensing music to Snap -- think of the similar tradeoff between license fees to BMI and ASCAP, for example), and the amount of usage for any given rights owner's music within that share. Of course, if your music isn't getting "snapped" (is that the verb used for posting something on SnapChat?), then there's no payment. But I've gotten money through this organization from Amazon and a few others.

As for the Argentina exclusion, this is just a guess, but it may be that some other organization has an exclusive to cover this sort of thing for Snap in Argentina. Or maybe there are just some other sorts of legal considerations there for music rights?

Rick

[JohnnyP]

Yeah what threw me on this one Paul was that I never signed any songs to them.
After looking into their website it appears a publisher I wrote for in the 90’s signed a few of the demos I was a co-writer on. And yes it appears I’ve made about .06 from Amazon lol!

[RPaul]

Yeah what threw me on this one Paul was that I never signed any songs to them.
After looking into their website it appears a publisher I wrote for in the 90’s signed a few of the demos I was a co-writer on. And yes it appears I’ve made about .06 from Amazon lol!

They're not actually a library or group you sign songs to per se. Rather, they're a sort of collective that some licensing organizations, especially Amazon (Microsoft also did at one point if I remember correctly, and I'm pretty sure Pandora uses them as well), have used to deal with mechanical licensing, and other organizations use for other types of blanket licensing. I haven't yet figured out how things will change with the Mechanical Licensing Collective starting the first of next year. So, at least on the front end, it was more like they did the compulsory licensing for organizations that needed mechanical licenses from publishers who weren't affiliated with Harry Fox or some such thing.

But they've also done deals for various other types of establishments, like exercise-oriented companies. I always read the details of the agreements they put forth, but most of them have been reasonable. I know I did not agree to the one for Twitch as they were not going to pay royalties at all, but only "promotional value" when gamers play your song in the background. From the summary in the email, I suspect I will agree to the Snap license, but I will want to get time to review the detailed license first.

Honestly, it's not likely my songs will get any mileage out of this, but it's the sort of thing that doesn't hurt. At least unless you're thinking about putting the same songs out there to exclusive libraries or something...

Rick

[JohnnyP]

Great info Rick and thanks for the PM. And sorry about calling you Paul. .
If anyone else has had experience with this company - I’ll call them “ Music R’s” (hope that’s cryptic enough?) please chime in.

1) I’d love to know if other writers/artists have made anything substantial through Music R’s
2) mainly I’d also like to know since you have added your music to their catalog, do you feel it diminishes the value of your songs signed with non exclusive libraries?

I’ll also reach out to some of my non-excl libraries and ask directly. I’ll add that info when I get it.

As Michael Laskow quoted in the Quarantini last night -“ prod music is a game of pennies”. I just want to see if those pennies add up.

Best, John

[JohnnyP]

As Michael Laskow quoted in the Quarantini last night -“ prod music is a game of pennies”. I just want to see if those pennies add up.

What I wonder about (all theory for me anyway...) is if they only add up in some genres, such as Hip-Hop etc., but never in others, such as (I make this up) Indie Pop.

Tom

Yeah I’m sure you’re correct Tom.
Hip hop is certainly the hot genre and has been for a while. I would imagine what would get used the most on Instagram, Snapchat,Tik Tok etc would be hip hop or high energy, uptempo pop and to a lesser extent indie rock.
Just an assumption..

[cosmicdolphin]

These types of things usually add up buy you a cup of coffee every 3 or 4 years

[JohnnyP]

These types of things usually add up buy you a cup of coffee every 3 or 4 years

Yeah lol! You’re right Mark!