Confused about some percentages

[bwd]

Hi. I wonder if someone can shed some light on the biz details of a current dispatch listing?

"Placements receive 100% writers, 50% publishing attached to placement only; no upfront sync fee. You retain copyrights"

How does the publisher make 50% on the placement if there is no upfront sync fee? Does the composer get 100% of all the performance royalties that flow from the placement?
Cheers,
Doug

[davewalton]

The publisher is taking 100% of any upfront sync fees but they're giving the writer half of their publishing royalties (in addition to the writer getting 100% of the writers royalties). Kind of an unusual arrangement but not a bad deal by any means. Here are a few scenarios...

Upfront fee $0
Writer's Royalty - $100
Publisher's Royalty - $100

In this scenario, you'd get $150, they'd just get $50.

Upfront fee $500
Writer's Royalty - $100
Publisher's Royalty - $100

In this scenario, you'd still get $150, they'd get $550

Keep in mind though that you'd continue to get royalties for repeat episodes and in foreign markets. It could very well be that over time your share of this arrangement would be much better than their share. Ultimately we all want their share to be good though because we want them to stay in business to continue to be able to place our music. They probably have a market that pays fairly well upfront and those tend to be pretty good projects to have our music placed into. Credits in these shows can be great sources of future income... a good show reel can open lots of new doors.

[bwd]

Hi Dave. Thanks for explaining that! I didn't realize there was still an upfront placement/sync fee involved from the publisher's side. So the composer passes up a share of the placement/sync fee but can expect 75% from future royalties as opposed to the usual 50%? Is that right? Cheers, Doug

[matto]

Yes 75%.

It's also important to realize this publisher may not (be able to) charge an upfront needle drop fee but instead have a blanket agreement with the show(s), where they pay him a set amount per year in lieu of unlimited use of the his catalog. Disbursing that blanket amount according to how many times each composer's tracks may have been used would be quite involved, and may not amount to very much for each composer, so in order to keep his admin overhead down the publisher simply keeps the blanket fee but, to make up for this, assigns 50% of the publisher's share to the writer.
Since it is the production company who does the cue sheets, and the PROs who calculate the payouts to the composers/publishers who do the "admin" for performance royalties, this might well turn out to be a win win.

Please realize I don't know for sure that the above scenario applies in this case, I'm just speculating; however blanket agreements are quite common, especially in reality programming.

HTH,

matto

[bwd]

Hi Matto. Thanks to you and Dave for your insight into how the business works. I've been watching quite a lot of reality TV lately to see what kind of production music is getting used these days. It's wall-to-wall on those shows. I just saw a biography of the Rolling Stones on the History channel and it was all sound-alike music beds under the dialogue - not a single piece of Stones music was used! Cheers, Doug

[davewalton]

Hi Matto. Thanks to you and Dave for your insight into how the business works. I've been watching quite a lot of reality TV lately to see what kind of production music is getting used these days. It's wall-to-wall on those shows. I just saw a biography of the Rolling Stones on the History channel and it was all sound-alike music beds under the dialogue - not a single piece of Stones music was used! Cheers, Doug

They couldn't afford it!

[mojobone]

Yup, you can watch any Stones documentary ever made, and hear very little Stones music; they're famous for being very stingy about licensing, it's one reason Keef and Sir Mick are well off.