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[VIDEO] Independent Music Industry Conference Panel Live Video

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If you missed the inaugural Independent Music Industry Conference, produced by Mike Ziemer, producer of the So What Music Festival, you missed a very cool and informative boutique event. But, don’t worry! Below are the live videos from the Record Label panel and the Music + Technology panel, both moderated by me.

Record Label Panel

Music + Technology Panel

If you can’t view this video, click here.

January 11, 2017

Los Angeles Songwriters Collective Photo Recap

I had a great time as the keynote speaker atthe Los Angeles Songwriters Collective meetup this past Monday. Here are some photos.

November 1, 2016

Announcing Pride Music: A Music Business Workshop for LGBTQ Music Creators

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Last month, I announced that I was working on a music business workshop for LGBTQ creators; and the reasons why I felt such a workshop was necessary. Read more here.

I am excited to present PRIDE MUSIC: A Music Business Workshop for LGBTQ Music Creators, taking place Nov 16th & Dec 17th at Brotherhood Clubhouse – BIF. Tickets $15 at https://pridemusic.eventbrite.com

October 26, 2016

The Elephant In The Room: Unclaimed / Undistributed Royalties

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In the United States, there are several “unclaimed / undistributed royalties” funds held by music rights organizations. These funds collectively consist of tens of millions of dollars in undistributed earnings generated by the use of music within the greater music industry, from legislative appropriations imposed on manufacturers of audio home recording media, and from agreements with foreign entities.

Some of the organizations (SoundExchange, AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund, Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund, Live Television Videotape Supplemental Market Fund, and although this is not royalties per say, the US Copyright Office has a Section 115 NOIs Filing database that can be used to track down missing mechanical royalties) have created public databases so that music creators can search to see if they have royalties sitting in these funds. However, the biggest funds do not have public databases and often music creators can not be reached by any of these funds to be notified that they have unclaimed royalties.

I am working on a side project called RoyaltyClaim.com to address this issue of unclaimed / undistributed royalties. The goal is to get each of these funds to join the RoyaltyClaim.com Disclosure Program and to encourage them to submit very basic information to us on a periodic basis regarding the income participants who are due royalties. We will then aggregate these disclosures and maintain one searchable public database accessible for free by music creators and income participants.

By aggregating these lists of unclaimed / undistributed royalties information, we can aid income participants — including songwriters, recording artists, publishers, labels, musicians, background vocalists, composers, and beneficiaries (in the event of musician parents or spousals who passed away, but their music still generates royalties) — in locating and claiming their monies.

If you are a music creator, you should signup at RoyaltyClaim.com to be notified of our launch. We are currently in conversations with the various funds to get them to cooperate and help creators and their families.

September 19, 2016

The Uniquely US Challenge That Indie Artists Face When Asked To License Music To Indie Filmmakers, For Free

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Over the last few years I’ve been approached by several indie filmmaker friends seeking my help on getting music licensed for their indie film projects. While some have had budgets, most have asked for recommendations on getting music for free. Now, as an advocate for indie music creators and rights owners, I tend to disregard “no compensation” opportunities as taking advantage of artists and/or devaluing the work of music creators (although the folks behind the opportunities are wicked good people).

Several times I’ve had to respectfully tell my indie filmmaker friends that I could not share their “music placement” opportunity, but instead I could direct them to resources to license music for cheap.

I’ve since realized that what I have not done was explain why, specifically in the United States, giving filmmakers music for free is frowned upon. So, in this post I aim to do that.

But first, I will say that I understand and agree that many opportunities for music placed in film — as well as TV shows and commercials — can be a huge break for up-and-coming artists. Productions that are widely released and viewed can result in significant exposure for the music, which can translate into increased radio airplay, digital downloads, and audio and video streams, which dramatically increases the artist’s income potential and exposure. There’s a long history of songs from movie and TV soundtracks going Gold & Platinum and topping the charts.

That being said, small indie film projects are typically not the productions that create these kind of success stories. In fact, I’d argue that over 90% of independently produced projects do little by way of “exposure” for artists (if you’re an independent artist reading this who’ve had your music placed in film, please comment and share your experience).

The reality is many indie film projects do not have the distribution or exposure to generate the volume of public consumption to translate into significant benefit for the artists who contributed music to the film. This is because only a small percentage (maybe less than 1%) of the people who’ve watched the movie would actually make any effort to track down a song placed in the movie.

Now, let’s talk about how artists get paid for music licensed to films. I am focusing solely on commercially released songs being licensed to a film. I am not going into the details of original songs composed for a film, film scores, or any “commissioned” work for a film. I am strictly talking about a filmmaker asking an artist to use an already recorded and released track.

Ok, so typically, a production company should obtain what’s called a synchronization license from the artist (or label) to use the track in the film.

The term “synchronization” refers to the act of synchronizing a sound recording to a motion visual embedded in a video. A production company should pay two (2) fees for licensing music to film: master use fee and synchronization fee.

The master use fee is a fee paid to the artist (or his/her label if they are signed to a record label) for the use of the sound recording, also known as a “master.” The synchronization fee is a fee paid to the songwriter (or his/her publisher if they are signed to a publishing company) for the use of the song, also referred to as the composition.

The artist/label owns the sound recording/master. The songwriter/publisher owns the song/composition (for example the song “Diamonds” by Rihanna was actually co-written and is co-owned by Sia and her publisher; but the sound recording of “Diamonds” that you hear on the radio is owned by Rihanna’s record label. Both the writer/publisher and the artist/label must get paid for the use of “Diamonds” in a movie; those are two separate copyrights).

Alright that was a crash course on publishing.

In order for a filmmaker to license a piece of commercially released music to your film, you need a synchronization license from the independent artist (I’m going back to talking about independent artists, although I used Rihanna (a “major” artist) in my example above). An independent artist may not have a publisher nor a label, so he/she is the sole owner and should still get paid the synch fee (for the song/composition) AND the master use fee (for the sound recording/master).

Now, so far I’ve talked about what’s known as the up front fees. These are the fees you, filmmaker, would pay to an independent artist to put their music in your movie. But like I said in the beginning, many filmmakers have asked me to help them get music for free. 😦

I wouldn’t mind this too much if we weren’t talking about small projects that will be released (and generate most of its viewership) in the United States.

Why?

Outside of the United States, artists earn public performance income from the movie theaters. That’s right, movie theaters must pay public performance fees to public performance organizations for exhibiting movies. These backend royalties can add up if the movie becomes popular and has many showings across many territories.

However, in the United States movie theaters are exempt from having to pay public performance fees. This means, independent artists (specifically, singer-songwriters) do not earn income from movie theaters when they exhibit movies containing their music.

So, when you do not earn up front fees from synch and master use fees, because the filmmaker “doesn’t have a budget for music” AND you do not earn backend royalties from U.S. movie theaters, because they are exempt from paying what theaters in other countries pay, it is frowned upon to give music for free to U.S. filmmakers making low budget movies. Because these low budget projects may not have the distribution and marketing backing of it’s major and big-independent counterparts, the potential for the movie to generate “non-compensation benefits” for the artist (e.g. radio airplay, downloads, streams, awards, etc.) is significantly low.

Basically, if your indie film is being released in a few United States independent theaters and then on DVD and you want music for free, it will be a challenge. There is no substantial benefit for the artist.

All that being said, there are several examples of small budget projects generating grassroots marketing buzz and cult popularity that does impact the distribution and exposure of the movie, which in turn could generate benefits for artists who’ve given gratis (free) licenses to filmmakers. But this is not the norm. Furthermore, there are scenarios where you can license must free in the interim, but commit to payments based on hitting milestones such as getting distribution, hitting box office sales milestones, hitting DVD rental or sales goals, etc. This is a good way for a filmmaker who doesn’t have a big music budget to potentially negotiate with artists to defer compensation based on the performance of the project.

Thoughts? Questions? Stories to share? Post in the comments.

August 23, 2016

FREE WEB CONFERENCE: Artist Launch’s Virtual Music Business Summit

FREE WEB CONFERENCE:

Artist Launch’s Virtual Music Business Summit

August 24th, 2016, Starting at 12pm PST

• Dae Bogan (Co-founder & CEO of TuneRegistry)

• Benji Rogers (Chief Strategy Officer of PledgeMusic)

• Reggie Hawkins (Program Director of Hip Hop Nation on SiriusXM Radio)

• Cynthia Charles (Touring at AEG Live’s Urban Touring Division)

• Cherie Hu (Media & Entertainment Writer for Forbes)

Join the live Q&A on “HOW TO PROTECT AND MARKET YOUR TALENT” with Dae Bogan at 3:30pm – 4:00pm PST

See full schedule: https://karenmariemason.com/
Tune-in here: http://events.instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=88530465

August 8, 2016

Please Vote For My SXSW Panel Idea

For the past two years, I’ve been mentoring music and music tech entrepreneurs at SXSW. From music app founders to indie bands to artist managers, I’ve given my time to provide advice and guidance to awesome people working to improve their careers or businesses.

Over the last year, I’ve focused a great deal of my time on the issues surrounding rights and metadata in the music industry. My research and work has culminated in the launch of my startup, TuneRegistry, which enables music creators and rights-holders to manage their music catalogs and register their rights and metadata all in one place. We believe that by empowering music creators with a tool to organize accurate metadata and streamline the rights registrations processes, the music industry as a whole will be better accountable to artists and writers.

This summer I had the honor of teaching a course at the UCLA Music Innovation Summer Institute on the music tech business. During the program, I curated and moderated a panel on rights and metadata and invited representatives from Music Reports, Crunch Digital, BuzzAngle Music, and the co-founder of TuneRegistry to speak on the challenges we’re seeing in the digital music space. The panel went so well that I was encouraged to submit the panel to SXSW.

I am happy to say that the panel, along with the original speakers — Bill Colitre (Music Reports), Keith Bernstein (Crunch Digital), Jim Lidestri (BuzzAngle Music), and Jesse Morris, Esq. (TuneRegistry) — is up for consideration for SXSW 2017.

Please take a moment to check out the panel idea, comment, and vote at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/62361.

April 9, 2016

[VIDEO] Music Business Q&A Webinar

I was invited to participate in a live music business Q&A. Independent music creators from around the world tuned-in and asked questions. Check it out above or here.

April 5, 2016

Hangout With Dae This Saturday On Google Hangouts

Hangout With Dae Boogan

Haven’t been able to make any of the music industry conferences where I speak (SXSW, International Music Festival Conference, Independent Music Conference, SAE Music Tech Expo, Indie Entertainment Expo, Digital Entertainment World, etc.)? Well, now is your chance to do so from home.

For the first time ever, I’ll participate in a Google Hangout to discuss independent music creators rights, self-publishing, self-releasing, metadata, marketing, and more.

Tune-in for free music business advice and insights.

Saturday, April 9th | 10am PST/1pm EST

Join Google Hangout: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cpfc280mcikvukuu2qa63m6fk1s

or Watch Only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCvUufDeXwM