Whats the point in having the Work for hire agreement?

[Kelil]

I'm an Irish citizen born and rared, and Almost all people I've spoken with ( including Pro companies here in Ireland ) have never heard of a work for hire agreement. We have a law here in Ireland and the EU that states all muscians receive performance royalties featured and non-featured on tracks. I was told that Raaps and imro ( both pros in Ireland ) cannot collect performance royalties from broadcasts in the states but only for ireland and the Eu. Which leads me to believe that the whole work for hire thing is entirely an american one. It also leads me to assume I dont need to present work for hires and that the film/tv libraries be in the know of this.

My heads in a twist someone slap me on the wrist quick and put me in my place.

[mazz]

Things might be different if you end up working with US based libraries. Only your attorney knows for sure.

[Kelil]

Hi Mazz thanks for the response. Do you mean different as in I would not need a wfh or different as in I would need one? If I'm an Irish citizen I must obey Irish legislation, if doing the work for hire agreements with irish citizens I would be infringing upon their rights if I had them sign a work for hire, or at least it wouldnt matter if they did or not because the law ( the pro company tells me ) exceeds that and wouldnt change the fact that they would get performance royalties if broadcast in ireland and EU. But whether or not they sign a wfh they still wouldnt receive royalties if broadcast in the states because there is no law there that collects performance royalties. In other words, once I'm registered with them only I would receive royalties and nobody else, so the work for hire thing seems to be needless in my case.

So yes I must contact my lawyer for more advice on that. Just not a nice thing to do when you've a deal pending. Yikes.

K

[mojobone]

If you desire US placements, you will almost certainly need WFH agreements, unless you record solo. Of course, the usage determines the royalty, and there are two copyrights (song and performance) involved, at least as far as the US market is concerned. The performance royalty of which you speak doesn't apply in the US; music originating in, and intended for US sync use pays only the songwriter, hence the discrepancy. The good news is that, despite signing WFH agreements, your session players will be owed money if your track appears in a US movie or TV show that is later re-broadcast or displayed in Europe.

[Kelil]

Thats the problem though. most us based libraries pitch your song to europe as well as the states and unless the library only wants to exclusively pitch it in the states then the performance royalty for the musicians must be paid out otherwise.

So:

A) no work for hire can prevent a performance royalty from being redeemed in europe

B) No irish musician can claim royalties from broadcasts in the U.S

C) the music is clean because its fully copywritten and registered with the locally based pro

D) which leaves me with the conclusion that the library does not need to work for hire in that case.

*scratches his head in confusion*

[Casey H]

My experience is most of the time you'll never have to show the WFH agreements to anyone-- just keep them on file. But you still very much need them.

Forget copyrights, royalties, and all that for a second and think of it in these simple terms. When you sign a contract with a music library or any end user, you stipulate (it's always in the contract) that you own all rights to the the track you are signing, free and clear and no one else has any claims. You also guarantee legal resposibility for such claims with respect to your work. If you used WFH musicians and don't have WFH agreements, you really can't attest to that with your signature. You'd be lying. Maybe one of those musicians will see that a track is making money and make just such a claim? You'd be in deep legal doo-doo. You want to get sued by a TV network?

I think this has been discussed a lot here. If you want to pitch those tracks for film/TV use, get WFH's signed or make them co-writers/co-owners (with signed collab. agreement). That's it.

Best,
Casey

[Len911]

Kelil, are you positive that music libraries meet your goals and expectations of where and what you wish to do with your music? It is my understanding that they are geared primarily for individuals that do most of the recording, writing and production themselves with low overhead.

[Kelil]

Deciding to chase after ownership royalties once the track does well is something they wont do. I've already offered them an ownersship royalty and they understand what that entails but they dont want a co-write ( or to qoute them ''we dont want money from ya'' ) they just wanna be able to collect their performance royalties that they are entitled to under irish/european law.

So with all the above said I think I'm clear.

Len I think casey is right though, record deals ( which I'm after ) are far and few between. Always good to have some film/tv placements under belt and in your bio along with gigs/online fan base etc etc whilst submitting for those. What do you mean by low overhead?

Kelil

[Casey H]

Kelil, are you positive that music libraries meet your goals and expectations of where and what you wish to do with your music? It is my understanding that they are geared primarily for individuals that do most of the recording, writing and production themselves with low overhead.

Not always the case. Many who don't do their own recording or use session musicians as part of their recording, have tracks in production music libraries. I'm one of those folks.

True, to make a LIVING at production music, using demo services for all your tracks wouldn't work well and certianly what you said applies to writing custom tracks for libraries. But there are lots of cases where people are getting placements with tunes that used demo services or session musicians.

Casey

PS Years ago, the backing track from one of my demo service songs almost got picked for use in promos for the Spike TV cable channel when it was being launched. The network changed direction on their choice at the last second, but with no WFH, it would not have been in the running.

[mazz]

Kelil, are you positive that music libraries meet your goals and expectations of where and what you wish to do with your music? It is my understanding that they are geared primarily for individuals that do most of the recording, writing and production themselves with low overhead.

Not necessarily. I have a friend who only uses live players on his tunes. He hires the best jazz players in the SF Bay Area and then sells or licenses the songs to libraries. He does his own publishing and pitching too, but to ignore libraries would be silly because they have a much larger client base than he does.

Also, if you go to the higher end libraries' websites, you'll see music available for licensing from some of the top film and game composers and even some pop and rock bands and songwriters. Licensing is a much bigger game now because of the collapse of the record business and libraries are already positioned for licensing because they have been doing it for so long.

IMO licensing is the "record deal" of the present and the foreseeable future. Don't knock libraries and production music, it should be a component of any serious artist and craftsperson's business plan, at least given a serious look.

I wish Kelil the best of luck with this.

Mazz