TAXI.com

I've pretty much gotten my head around the world of library placements, licensing fees, and back end royalties, but for high-end TV ad placements, I'm not as familiar with the type of deals to expect. These are some questions that come to mind:

1. What rights would the composer typically grant to the ad agency?

2. What rights would the composer retain?

3. Would the deal typically specify a time period in which the ad that uses your music could be broadcast, and if so, what happens if they later want to broadcast the ad for a longer period? For instance, if you were lucky enough to get an initial fee of $50,000!, would the agency (if that who your contract is with) want the right to use your music in the ad forever, or would even a fee that large come with a specified usage period? If they have to pay you again for extending the initial period, is there a percentage of the original fee that the new payment would typically be based on?

Okay, that's probably more than enough questions for now.

If anyone has experience in this high-end ad world, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

Richard

I do not have the answers, but I am thinking of reaching out to some composers to find out more. Large corporations pay five-figure licensing fees to relatively unknown composers to create music for advertising campaigns. That is something that I would like to be a part of.

I want to know, too! Thanks for asking the question, Richard (especially since we're collaborating on Madison Ave. kind of tunes!).

Suz