Does Getting Paid Have to Take So long?

[Dwayne Russell]

I don't know of any other business that takes 9 months to pay someone for work they did. This is not counting the waiting period for the cue sheet to go to the PRO. Once the PRO gets the cue sheet it's at least 9 months to get paid.

Is there a legitimate reason for this? Or is this just a quirk of the music business?

[matto]

Actually it doesn't take at least 9 months from the time the PRO gets the cuesheet, it takes AT MOST 9 months from the AIR DATE for domestic performances (between 6 and 9 depending on when in the quarter the performance occured), unless the cuesheet came in REALLY late.
The deadline to receive the cue sheets is usually about a month or two before the distribution date, at least with BMI...

The reason is that because of the huge amount of music being performed in a quarter, the amount of sample data, cue sheets, surveys, playlists etc that all have to be logged and tabulated after the end of each quarter and then computed against the corresponding quarterly blanket and per program license fees collected from commercial, public and college radio, broadcast networks, local affiliates, independent stations, cable networks, local cable providers, bars, restaurants, concert venues etc, in order to figure out who is owed how much money, is really formidable.

[Dwayne Russell]

Actually it doesn't take at least 9 months from the time the PRO gets the cuesheet, it takes AT MOST 9 months from the AIR DATE for domestic performances (between 6 and 9 depending on when in the quarter the performance occured), unless the cuesheet came in REALLY late.
The deadline to receive the cue sheets is usually about a month or two before the distribution date, at least with BMI...

The reason is that because of the huge amount of music being performed in a quarter, the amount of sample data, cue sheets, surveys, playlists etc that all have to be logged and tabulated after the end of each quarter and then computed against the corresponding quarterly blanket and per program license fees collected from commercial, public and college radio, broadcast networks, local affiliates, independent stations, cable networks, local cable providers, bars, restaurants, concert venues etc, in order to figure out who is owed how much money, is really formidable.

I guess if you think about how many cues of music that is, it's allot. Is this all tabulated manually?