Why so many non-exclusives?
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- Serious Musician
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Re: Why so many non-exclusives?
Quote:Matto, have you ever committrd tracks to an exclusive deal that never generated anything more than the advance money?Sure, that comes with the territory. You make up for it with others that get many many placements. Also I'm still holding out hope for most of the cuts that have't made any money YET . Remember (depending a bit on style) these library disks can have a very long shelf life. Still, when you have a catalog of several hundred songs I think you'd have to get used to the idea that some of these will never get placed.Quote:And how big should that advance money be for a 3-5 year exclusive deal for 1-3 tracks?Well you're very unlikely to get an advance for a deal with a reversion. I guess I didn't make that clear, but the companies that pay upfront typically do so in exchange for aquiring the copyright to the songs (which means in perpetuity). If you think about it, for big companies whose discs get distributed to thousands of clients worldwide, giving reversions really wouldn't be feasible...how would they keep track of reversion clauses on the tens of thousands of songs in their catalog? And how would they "recall" songs that had reverted, when those songs have been included on library CD's that have been distributed all over the world?So Casey is correct in pointing out that many smaller companies will offer no money and still ask for exclusive or semi-exclusive representation, but in THOSE cases there's usually a reversion which can be anywhere from 1-5 years.As far as how big the advance "should be" to make it a deal that's advantageous to you...anywhere in the range from $0 to $1000 per track, it all depends on your circumstances, the company's track record, the nature of the track(s) in question etc.
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Re: Why so many non-exclusives?
So when they pay upfront and own the copyright in perpetuity, does that mean you get no more money past the advance, or do you still retian writer share and performance royalties, and do you get some additional fee each time it is placed?
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Re: Why so many non-exclusives?
Quote:So when they pay upfront and own the copyright in perpetuity, does that mean you get no more money past the advance, or do you still retian writer share and performance royalties, and do you get some additional fee each time it is placed?You ALWAYS retain your writer's, that's how you make money from it...don't sign any deal that would require you to give up your writer's.Whether you get a share of any sync fees, and what that share might be, depends from contract to contract and is in most cases negotiable.
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Re: Why so many non-exclusives?
This is an interesting thread. I just read the A&R Insider in Recording Mag - Michael interviewing Steve Corn... and they're talking about non-exclusive deals & retitling songs.M: "...is it not true that a musician could take the same song, put it in five different non-exclusive library situations, and each one of them may get a placement or two or three during the course of the year for that song?"S: "It's possible, but I always recommend against that because there's nothing that scares a music supervisor, a picture editor, or a music editor more than thinking that the song they got from somebody isn't owned by or represented by them, and they get the same song from two sources..... ..... I've seen a lot of libraries acquire music by doing re-titling and derivative copyrights and it's not exclusive as far as the songwriter's ability to resue it any way they want to, but it's often exclusive as far as other music library representation companies. I don't recommend having the same song in several libraries..." (Source: "Recording" Janauary 2007 pp 63) H
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- DesireInspires
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Re: Why so many non-exclusives?
Good conversation. There are still many non-exclusive deals out there to work with.
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