10 Random Thoughts On The Business Of Music Videos
1. If you’re going to monetize your music video (make it available for sale/download), you should consider getting an ISRC for it. Yes, videos can (and should) have an ISRC. This ISRC is separate from the ISRC of the track being performed in the video.
2. You’d be surprised to know this, but music videos still earn significant reach on broadcast and OTT (over the top) platforms. Check out YANGAROO DMDS for pitching to MTV, MTV U, BET, NuVo, CMT, and more. Your video needs to be broadcast quality WITH closed captions.
3. There are many websites where you can monetize and set permissions for your music videos, including social media and discovery sites like DailyMotion. Check out Vydia for managing the distribution of your videos across your socials.
5. Audiam will help you collect composition side “sync royalties” from YouTube. In doing so, they also claim to unlock “performance royalties” paid to you by your PRO.
6. Pitch your music videos for plays in retail stores. Mood Media, PlayNetwork, Inc., Shoplifter In-Store Radio Promotion, and several others can help get your music video playing inside retail shops and malls reaching millions of shoppers. I own Maven Promo, so you can always consider pitching to my small network of 130 retail stores.
7. Sometimes bands can’t afford a full production music video. Lyric videos are great promotional tools as an alternative to nothing at all. I actually place lyric videos on my network often. Here are some great resources to have lyric videos made.
8. If your song is explicit, make sure that you have a clean cut version of the music video. Don’t wait until you land an opportunity for placement or a feature to get it done. Your editor may not be available to cut the clean version in a timely manner. I deal with this every month.
9. The three copyrights associated with a music video: 1.) the copyright in the composition (requires a grant of synchronization right), 2.) the copyright in the sound recording (requires a master use right), and 3.) the copyright in the motion picture itself. If your artist doesn’t own and control all three copyrights, make sure to have paperwork drawn up with whomever owns and controls a particular copyright granting the artist the rights, before distributing.
10. I don’t have a 10th thought, but it would be weird to end at 9.
Spotify Moves Spotify Ad Studio Into Beta – Opens Up To Indie Artists & Managers
I’ve been hearing that Spotify is rolling out their BETA for their new Spotify Ad Studio, which they are comparing to Google Adwords and Facebook. Some artist managers I’ve spoken with are already in the beta and using it to run ad campaigns on Spotify.
One manager posted in a group that I’m in:
Everyone go to adstudio.spotify.com and check it out for yourselves. Apparently I already have access. The targeting doesn’t get as fine as Facebook, for example, and there’s a $250 minimum spend which gets about 10,000 airings at $0.025 each. There’s also a $5,000 maximum, I presume per campaign, and above that you’re getting into their Spotify For Brands territory which has a $25,000 campaign minimum spend.
They also specify that they don’t currently support driving traffic to songs or playlists. Their ad objectives are ‘Announce an event,’ ‘Raise brand awareness,’ ‘Drive people to my website,’ and ‘Other.’
If you’re interested in advertising content, they encourage you to email adstudio@spotify.com
Want to learn more, here’s a Google Doc with FAQs:
What Every Small Artist Management Firm Must Do Immediately
Artist Management Firms: If you do not have someone on your team whose sole responsibility is to utilize online music sync agencies, pitch ad agencies, and cozy up with music supervisers, you’re missing out, bigly.
When I owned/operated Renaissance Artist Management (aka RAM Artist), I established an in-house position for the sole purpose of securing music sync opportunities. This was during the early days of micro-sync and the boom of online sync agencies.
We leveraged online agencies (at the time that included Rumblefish before they were acquired by HFA and pivoted). Check out Songtradr, Music Bed, MusicDealers, YouLicense, Pump Audio, and many others like them.
Consider giving some tracks to exclusive libraries who do well pitching your artists’ sound. Red Bull Media House is always looking for good music and they get YUGE placements.
Make sure to read the deats of their contracts.
Here’s a few things to look out for:
- Exclusivity – Try not to give micro sync agencies exclusivity. If you’re giving a company exclusivity, it better be a solid library. (TuneCore PRO users…did you know when you opt-in to their sync licensing program, you’re giving them exclusivity?)
- SoundExchange Royalties – Some pitch houses and libraries have tried to sneak in a cut of your SoundExchange royalties. Don’t let them get it. They are not getting your music placed on digital radio, so they do not participate in your digital radio royalties. I successfully helped an indie artist negotiate that clause out of a library agreement.
- Tagging/ReTitling– Tagging is the practice of adding an identifier to your song title when the song is registered with a PRO. Retitling is creating a new title for the song when registering. The goal of both methods is to disambiguate any performance royalties generated as a result of the libraries sync placement activities. This is necessary when you have multiple non-exclusive libraries getting places of the same song. They want to make sure that when the cue sheet from the TV show gets to the PRO, the royalties earned against that specific placement gets to the right entity. It’s not unheard of for one song to be placed by several non-exclusive sync agencies, each with retitles or tagging and capturing royalties for their specific placement. Do know that the writer gets the writer share for all of the placements. The agencies/libraries participate in the publishers share of their specific title.
- Duration of Term – Exclusive libraries may want up to 3 years exclusivity. Aim for 1 year for the first term.
Learn about royalty forensics, that is the art(science?) of tracking down uses of your music and capturing associated royalties (this is definitely important when it comes to big multi territory placements, TV syndication, and film secondary market distributions). Tunesat and ACRCloud are two audio detection platforms that’ll detect performances of your music in sync media.
You may want to setup your own music licensing store, so that when you meet music sups, you can send them to an easy-to-search library of your own music. Check out Soundgizmo and LicenseQuote for this.
And of course, don’t forget to make sure the music is registered before it starts to generate royalties, with TuneRegistry.
A Primer On Music Publishing, Rights Splits, And Royalties For Confused Artist Managers
I recently assisted an artist manager with a post-release dispute between his client (DJ/producer) and their guest artists on the track.
Here’s a quick primer for new managers who may not be 100% clear on how copyright & publishing work/relate:
1. There are two (2) separate copyrights: the composition (song) and the sound recording (master).
2. There are four (4) types of income participants: songwriter and publisher for songs (we call this “writer’s share” and “publisher’s share”) / artists and record companies for masters. In the event a writer is not signed to a publisher, he/she owns the publisher share of income. In the event an artist is not signed to a record label, he/she owns what would be the record company share of income (however, if you’re working with a production company, they could own these rights depending on your production agreement).
3. COMPOSITION: Generally, the songwriter and publisher split is 50-50 (this proportion is represented in percentages as 50%/50% (most of the publishing world) and 100%/100% (specific to BMI), but it is the same proportion). American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), SESAC, and Global Music Rights (GMR) collect and pay out performance royalties to songwriters and publishers. Harry Fox Agency and Music Reports, Inc. collect and pay out mechanical royalties to publishers (if you rep a writer who does not have a publisher, you may be missing out on mechanical royalties in the U.S. and overseas). Synchronization (placing music in film & TV) is a license that is negotiated between content producer and publisher (or you as the manager repping a songwriter). The content producer pays an upfront synch fee and then the performance generates performance royalties on the backend once it is has been distributed/broadcast (unless it’s a movie in U.S. movie theaters or DVDs; in which case you should negotiate a higher upfront synch fee since the U.S. does not have a performance right for music performed in movie theaters). There are more royalties, but that’s a primer.
Also Read: Demystifying The Music Industry: What’s The Difference Between ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and SoundExchange?
4. MASTER: Generally, the artist and record company split income based on the terms of a recording contract. The exception is neighbouring rights, hometapping/private copy, and DART royalties. All of these royalties are collected and paid out by agencies directly to the artist and record company. SoundExchange pays out digital performance royalties for non-interactive Internet services (e.g. Pandora), satellite (e.g. SiriusXM), cable (e,g. Music Choice), and over 2,500 other webcasters (e.g. iHeart Radio and Slacker). SoundExchange is our only version of “neighbouring rights” in the U.S. SoundExchange pays 45% to the artist, 50% to the record company, and 5% to background vocalists and session musicians via AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund. Digital services pay master streaming royalties directly to your distributor/aggregator. There is a fund for hometapping/private copy and DART royalties paid out by Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies to artists (50%) and record companies (50%) because, among other reasons, in some countries (like Japan and Netherlands), music is rented much in the way we rent DVDs. Overseas, masters also earn neighbouring rights royalties (performance of masters on radio, TV, movies, etc.). The only way to capture these royalties is to sign up with a neighboring rights agency like Kobalt Music or Symphonic Distribution.
Now that you have a premier, what you need to make sure to do for EVERY song released is to spell out in the contract the COMPOSITION/SONG SPLITS and the MASTER OWNERSHIP SPLITS.
If you do a split sheet with guest artists on a song, you’re only covering the composition, unless you have some addendum agreement attached that says the splits will also be applied to the master sound recording. Otherwise, you can have two different sets of splits; one set of splits for the composition (the songwriters and publishers) and a second set of splits for the master (the featured performers and the record company/master owner(s)).
SCENARIO 1: EDM DJ/producer produces a track and invites a guest artist to lay down vocals. If producer composed the track and artist wrote the lyrics, then they’ll all have a percentage on the COMPOSITION/SONG split sheet. If producer wrote all of the lyrics, then he/she will own 100% of the COMPOSITION/SONG. Now, the master recording has a different split. The guest artist is effectively the featured performer on the MASTER, so he/she would be allocated the 45% featured artist share of SoundExchange royalties and the 50% artist share of AARC royalties. The copyright owner in the master (label or individual) would receive the 50% copyright owner share of SoundExchange royalties and 50% record company share of AARC royalties. In order for the producer to receive a piece of the SoundExchange royalties, you’d need to include the allocation in your agreement and have the ARTIST sign a Letter of Direction, which you’ll submit to SoundExchange (join the Creative Affiliate Program to expedite this). This LOD will split the “featured performer share” between the Artist and Producer. (Note: These splits have nothing to do with sales and master streaming royalties).
SCENARIO 2: A five member band put out a new song. Only two members wrote the song, but all five members performed on the recording. The two writers would split the COMPOSITION/SONG ownership, and each of the five members will receive a share of the featured artist share of SoundExchange royalties. Master sales/streaming royalties will have a different split.
I can go on and on.
The point is, there are 4 buckets in the music industry when it comes to copyright/publishing:
- Bucket 1: Writer/Composer/Lyricist
- Bucket 2: Publisher
- Bucket 3: Artist
- Bucket 4: Master Owner/Record Company
Each of these buckets receive their OWN income streams, and most music rights organizations and royalty collection agencies will pay one or two of these buckets DIRECTLY based on the splits that you provide when you register the songs/tracks to the entities.
This is why it is imperative to #1 have these splits spelled out and agreed upon on paper prior to release and #2 register the songs/tracks with ALL entities BEFORE release.
Obviously, TuneRegistry is the only product on the market designed to help you with this at an indie artist price point.
‘Managers need to motivate artists. But we also need artists to motivate us.’ – Music Business Worldwide
Here’s a good lesson on treading the water when your promising artist experiences ups and downs across their career. Being self-motivated as a manager is imperative, especially in the early years when it’s virtually all work and little reward. But having a since of mutual motivation with your artist is also important. You’re here to guide and build their careers, but like the saying goes “help me help you” is definitely a motto that I lived by as a manager. It’s refreshing to hear that notion echoed in this piece.
How Colin Lester stuck by his star artist – even when the music industry turned its back
CONNECT WITH ME
