Finance / Royalties Queries From a New Member

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strawberrylou
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Finance / Royalties Queries From a New Member

Post by strawberrylou » Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:14 am

Hi there!

I’m new around here, and I wondered if a few of you guys could give me some personal experiences on a few finance questions I have (it would be much appreciated!)


- How you are paid in relation to instrumental/orchestra cue work? Is there an upfront fee, if so how much do you usually receive?

- If there is no upfront fee, how much do you expect to receive from signing a track? Where does this money come from once used, does it come from your PRO based on how often it is aired?

- If a cue is signed and left in a library unused, would you be made aware of when it does eventually get used? How do you find this out? If you sign to a track to publisher without an upfront fee, don’t you run the risk of this being used without them telling you?

- Realistically how many times did you apply for work until you got your first piece signed?



Sorry that was a lot of questions!! Thank you so much in advance!

SMCM
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Re: Finance / Royalties Queries From a New Member

Post by SMCM » Fri Aug 27, 2021 4:45 pm

strawberrylou wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:14 am
Hi there!

I’m new around here, and I wondered if a few of you guys could give me some personal experiences on a few finance questions I have (it would be much appreciated!)


- How you are paid in relation to instrumental/orchestra cue work? Is there an upfront fee, if so how much do you usually receive?

- If there is no upfront fee, how much do you expect to receive from signing a track? Where does this money come from once used, does it come from your PRO based on how often it is aired?

- If a cue is signed and left in a library unused, would you be made aware of when it does eventually get used? How do you find this out? If you sign to a track to publisher without an upfront fee, don’t you run the risk of this being used without them telling you?

- Realistically how many times did you apply for work until you got your first piece signed?



Sorry that was a lot of questions!! Thank you so much in advance!

- It all depends on the library. I'd say ~80-90% of libraries don't pay anything up front these days. The ones that do are a precious few.

- You really can't expect a certain amount. A track could get never get placed or get placed a thousand times. Sync fees, which are fees paid by the client to the music library for a license to use the track, get paid to you from the library, assuming you are splitting the sync fees with the publisher. Check your contract. Royalties come from the PROs, and yes they are based on how often and how long a piece of your music is on air.

- 99% of the time you don't find out about placements until you get royalties from them in your PRO statement or you get a license/sync fee from the library. Libraries are too busy to tell you about all your placements. As long as you get the money, that's what matters.

- I probably get into roughly 1 in 10 libraries when I pitch new music to new libraries, and I've been doing this for a while (I don't use TAXI). There's a ton of music out there and a million people all competing for the same space.

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cosmicdolphin
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Re: Finance / Royalties Queries From a New Member

Post by cosmicdolphin » Sat Aug 28, 2021 2:26 am

strawberrylou wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:14 am
- How you are paid in relation to instrumental/orchestra cue work?
Very poorly !
strawberrylou wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:14 am
Is there an upfront fee,
Mostly never - except this one time bit we had to give up some of the writers share which is a bad idea really.

The prevailing "deal" in this game seems to be give them the music for free exclusively in perpetuity and hope for some good placements for the backend royalties and the occasional sync fee
strawberrylou wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:14 am
if so how much do you usually receive?
On that occasion we got $50 per track which was split as there was 2 of us working on the tracks and I thin we ended up doing around 15 of them so I got a few hundred $$ ...it was a couple of years ago and none of the music has had a placement to date that I know of.

I know there are libraries that will pay upfront ( have seen mentions of up to $250 per track ) but they are not easy to find I've never been able to into any of them over the past 5yrs+
strawberrylou wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:14 am
If there is no upfront fee, how much do you expect to receive from signing a track? Where does this money come from once used, does it come from your PRO based on how often it is aired?
Yes backend royalties from your PRO ( which is rife with mistakes in my experience ) which takes anything from 9 months to a few years to come through depending on where you're based vs where the TV show was aired.
strawberrylou wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:14 am
If a cue is signed and left in a library unused, would you be made aware of when it does eventually get used? How do you find this out? If you sign to a track to publisher without an upfront fee, don’t you run the risk of this being used without them telling you?


I use Tunesat, you can get a free account which will track 50 pieces of music in the most popular territories. Otherwise wait for your PRO statement. Libraries are generally too busy inform you although some of the boutique libraries do sometimes share stuff on their private composers Facebook groups.
strawberrylou wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:14 am
Realistically how many times did you apply for work until you got your first piece signed?
Signed to a library after a Taxi submission you mean ?

My 14th submission ( 7th Forward ) resulted in a Library getting..beginners luck maybe as it was another 30 or so Forwards until the 2nd got in touch which maybe another 70 submissions.

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