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Hey all! Have any American composers/songwriters/artists on the forums ever dealt with any foreign libraries/publishers? The reason I ask is because I just saw an interesting tweet (on Twitter) that a new producer/writer got a placement check from Japan that was double the amount you'd get here in the U.S. It definitely caught my attention and I would like to gather some more information about this from people who have taken this route and expanded their sights beyond the States.

Though I'm not American, I've worked with libraries around the world. Most decent exclusive libraries should be working with sub-publishers in other regions.

You can work directly with libraries who are not in your country. But the thing to always bear in mind is territory boundaries. When you sign with an exclusive, the contract will detail the territory they operate in. It might be just one country. It might be a group of countries. Or it might be the world.

Hypothetically, you could have the same music in a number of exclusives around the world as long as there was no territory overlap.

Example:

ABC Lib - USA
XYZ Lib - Europe
JKM Lib - China, Japan
TTT Lib - South Korea, Indonesia

Typically, such deals would be administration agreements with an end-date rather than assumption of copyright.

But be aware that a lot of exclusives will want global rights which gives them the opportunity to exploit the music through a network of
sub-publishers throughout the world.

Of course, you could have different music in a whole heap of libs all over the place. That will greatly increase your administrative workload as you'll need to meet the format requirements of each different library. But you would keep more of the income because sub-pubs take a cut (usually 50%) before the publisher and writer(s) get paid. On the flip side, being in one lib that uses sub-pubs will reduce your workload as the lib will take care of the administrative and technical requirements of all the sub-pubs.

There are a lot of ways to approach it. You just need to figure out how much additional work you're prepared to take on.

And if you are dealing with non-exclusives then your options just got even broader. But that brings a different set of problems and benefits.

Thanks for your response!

As I understand it (someone correct me if this is wrong) international placements sometimes pay more for the sync as the PRO backend royalties may not be as profitable or non existent. In the US some deals are worth it for no upfront fee as the backend can be at times very profitable. Each placement is different and has its own set of variables.

pedrocosta wrote:As I understand it (someone correct me if this is wrong) international placements sometimes pay more for the sync as the PRO backend royalties may not be as profitable or non existent. In the US some deals are worth it for no upfront fee as the backend can be at times very profitable. Each placement is different and has its own set of variables.

good question - I don't know for sure, but international royalties do pay in situations where there are no payments in North america for things like theatre performances of films. Which is handy!