Exclusive vs. Non-Exclusive

[guscave]

Good Article Mazz. Thanks for sharing.

[mazz]

Mazz

certainly was worth a look

Thanks

re digital fingerprinting
Looking to the future.....Why dont they just use the metadata in the audio files?

Probably because the metadata is linked to the title and that particular file and not to the actual audio, which is unique. There's only one audio fingerprint of that song, no matter how many titles it's given, which is the main point, I think.

It's a complicated issue with arguments on both sides. I tend to agree with the exclusive argument, the whole re-titling thing smelled fishy to me from the beginning, even before I knew much at all about the business, but that's just me and I don't want to overly influence our dialog here.

Good question!

Mazz

[joshpaul24]

Thank you for this post and all of the great information. Very helpful.

[jdhogg]

Mazz

certainly was worth a look

Thanks

re digital fingerprinting
Looking to the future.....Why dont they just use the metadata in the audio files?

Probably because the metadata is linked to the title and that particular file and not to the actual audio, which is unique. There's only one audio fingerprint of that song, no matter how many titles it's given, which is the main point, I think.

It's a complicated issue with arguments on both sides. I tend to agree with the exclusive argument, the whole re-titling thing smelled fishy to me from the beginning, even before I knew much at all about the business, but that's just me and I don't want to overly influence our dialog here.

Good question!

Mazz

1 song = 1 digital fingerprint .......... wont work for retitling..............dont you find it depressing that they did not see this?

re retitling
I can see the argument both ways. Ideally write a grade stuff and sell it exclusively for a premium.
The problem the big libraries are facing is there is so much well recorded music out there that wants to find a home. That supply and demand was originally a problem for the writer but that flood has now allowed small cheaper libraries to appear.
It will be interesting to see how the ever increasing pool of well recorded music effects the best writers and the big libraries.

[mazz]

That's why networking and relationships are so important. If you write great music, and they know you or about you, then you have a better chance.

As far as them not seeing the possibilities of fingerprinting: Fingerprinting has been a long time coming and has been slow to be adopted widely, but it's only a matter of time before it becomes ubiquitous. Once that happens, AND your music is entered in the fingerprint database, it won't be feasible to have the piece out there with another title.

There's a lot of music out there, for sure, but it appears that the consumers of the music (the music supervisors and the producers) generally still want to use their trusted sources because they don't have time to fish through thousands of pieces of music in an online database. They generally don't have time and they want to be 100% sure that the music is copyright clear, etc. A trusted library will have already handled all the legalities and issues with co-writers, etc. so the music will be plug and play for the end user.

It's really all about the end users, it's not about the composers at all. We live to serve the clients, the people who will eventually place our music. If we cheerfully give them what they want almost every time, they will continue to come back to us. There's more to value than just price. We need to create value above and beyond just the quality of our music. To be competitive, we have to write great music and provide great service to our clients.

The 3 R's of the music business: Relationships, Relationships, Relationships.

Cheers!

Mazz

[Kolstad]

Yeah, fingerprinting is already here. I think they use it for the new string library 'Cinematic Strings', as torrent protection..

[guscave]

It would be great to hear from someone within ASCAP and/or BMI and get their view. After all they would be responsible to implement the fingerprinting technology. Also would be nice to know why it's taken so long to implement the service when it's been around for so many years.

[coachdebra]

That's why networking and relationships are so important. If you write great music, and they know you or about you, then you have a better chance.

...

The 3 R's of the music business: Relationships, Relationships, Relationships.

Cheers!

Mazz

Which result from the 3 F's of the music business: follow-up, follow-up, follow-up

[admin]

If memory serves correctly, the original intent of non-exclusive deals was to give the writer/composer the ability to license the same song for another purpose (eg. to a major label artist or put out their own CD). Libraries were happy to get some cool, Indie sounding material that didn't sound like typical library music (which had to some extent, fallen from grace as sounding too canned). Artists/writers could enjoy another income stream without giving up their publishing to a exclusive deal.

To the best of my knowledge, I don't think anybody ever envisioned the plethora of smaller, re-title based libraries that would crop up and sign virtually everything that hit their web site, thereby causing the problem of multiple copies of the same song/track hitting a music supe at the same time.
Michael

[k o star]

Thanks Michael.. I like the idea of the original intent..
..Sadly, the purpose got misused..

Although I'm now strictly steering toward exclusive deals.. I've already got a handful of tracks in a non-exclusive but respectable Library (IMHO that is)..
I don't know if I'm on the right track but my approach would be to leave those tracks in there & treat this non-ex Lib as if it's exclusive & write more new stuff for other exclusive projects..
Would this be a good approach or should I totally pull out all tracks from this non-ex deal?
Any ideas?

K