The Cost of Excuses
I wish there was a device that counted how many excuses we made in a day, a week, a month, and a year and could calculate the cost of opportunities lost.
“I can’t”.
“Next time.”
“I want to, but…”
“It’s too difficult.”
“I will get around to it after…”
“I’m not like you. We’re just different.”
How much time do we lose in our lives telling ourselves that we can’t achieve something? That we’re not good enough? We’re not smart enough? We don’t know where or how to start, so why even bother?
If we add that time up it is probably enough time to accomplish something small, then something medium, then something big, then something life-changing.
I remember when I told myself that I didn’t have time or didn’t need to (because I enjoyed where I was at in my career) go to graduate school.
Then, I was abruptly laid off of my $65k per year job.
I decided to take the time to go back to graduate school and I found a nights and weekends program at CSUN Music Industry Administration that fit my schedule.
That was a life-changing decision.
As a result, I had the availability and took an opportunity to teach at a college; and now I develop and teach a Billboard-recognized course at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.
As a result, I took a music publishing and copyright administration class taught by Steve Winogradsky, which strengthen my interest in music rights, which evolved into a research-fueled obsession with conceptualizing strategies and solutions to a broken and seemingly unfair system, which became my area of expertise, which changed the focus of my profession as a music industry professional, and which shaped my achievements as a serial entrepreneur to the point that I’ve sold nearly $2M of my ideas in this space.
As a result, I’ve advanced my role as an executive and increased my pre-graduate school salary to post-graduate school salary by 115%.
As a result, I’ve been able to financially gift my family, claw myself out of debt, and afford certain life experiences.
As a result, I look at excuses differently now. I look at the cost of excuses differently now.
We can measure our achievements, but can we measure opportunities lost? The cost of putting it aside one more day?
How much will one of your excuses from this morning cost you?
Set Goals Or Struggle
I honestly believe that some people are so comfortable with struggling that they refuse to make uncomfortable changes in their lives that would see their outcomes improve in the future. It’s a “chasing immediate results” mindset that encourages them to think about and talk about how a better future could look; all the while simultaneously taking no actions that create long-term and lasting changes.
What is your 5 year goal?
What are your 2nd, 3rd and 4th year milestones?
What is your 12 month plan?
If you took stock of where you are today compared to where you were 5 years ago and have little to no measurable net improvement in income, wealth, professional or academic achievement, global life experiences, health and fitness, or relationship status (I don’t mean just single or taken, but rather does the new or existing relationship (or lack thereof) make you feel happier, more secure, better, more loved than this time 5 years ago?); then you need to think about breaking the cycle and making real changes.
Get used to doing things in phases, whereas a phase could be several months or years, and stop thinking in terms of quick and immediate results. Those generally prove not to be long-lasting.
I’ve completely changed my life outcomes by applying the above to myself. You can too.
Fall Upcoming Music Industry Conferences and Networking in Greater Los Angeles
SoCal Music Industry Professionals x Artist Managers Connect
Music Industry Happy Hour (15th Edition)
An evening of mingling and networking with musicians, songwriters, producers, and music industry professionals from across Southern California hosted by Dae Bogan.
Thursday, September 26th | 6pm to 9pm | 21 and over
at Sassafras Saloon, 1233 Vine Street, Los Angeles, CA 90038
- 9/10/2019 – The California Copyright Conference Annual Music Legal Eagles Night
- *9/12/2019 – Music Finance Forum
- 9/17/2019 – Tech and Music
- 9/19/2019 – Amplifying Music on the Westside
- 9/23-26/2019 – Production Music Association Conference
- 9/26/2019 – SoCal Music Industry Professionals x Artist Managers Connect’s Music Industry Happy Hour 15th Edition
- *10/29/2019 – Music Tectonics
- 10/30/2019 – A2IM SynchUp (A2IM membership required)
On Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” record-breaking chart success and the propensity of people to discredit the song as not being of good quality:
I am reading social media posts by old people (30yo plus) who assume that consumers care about music quality.
Guess what? They don’t.
We have entire genres of music born out of shitty quality (i.e. mumble rap) and entire genres going extinct as a result of apathy to music quality (i.e. soul).
The youth of today have their own standards for consumption. What matters to youth today is the social aspect of music — that is, how music creates a gateway to a sense of community. This has been going on for some time now, but the rise of social music apps and the growth of the first generation born with cell phones in their hands has exacerbated things.
Music quality need not be measurably “good” against songs we’ve historically deemed good and worthy of chart-topping recognition. For consumption in a streaming and social music era, music needs only to strike a chord with audiences that have the time and incentive to play it on repeat.
Charts, after all, are measurements of popularity and not quality. The latter is too subjective to measure anyway.
Music Industry Rant: ‘Rights’ Is Not A Buzzword
I think it is quite disingenuous and frankly misleading to slap on the term “rights” to every music tech platform that collects some minimum amount of metadata regarding musical works.
Music rights administration (including publishing and neighboring rights) is not a frivolous add-on to be used as a way to beef up one’s otherwise undifferentiated service offerings in an effort to attract customers in an ever more saturated music monetization and catalog management marketplace.
Music rights administration requires a comprehensive understanding of music publishing, copyright administration, licensing and multi-territorial relationships with CMOs, intermediaries, and administrators that goes well beyond delivering releases to DSPs or creating playlists to pitch to music supervisors. Understanding the nuances between royalty accounting and royalty forensics (not just parsing income statements), and having a grasp on the complicated music licensing and rights management ecosystem — not just direct deals — are bare minimum requirements for being a “rights” company.
Music rights administration requires knowledge, experience, and skill set that only comes from spending years doing nothing but this kind of work (it doesn’t hurt to have a masters degree specifically in music industry administration either); handling complicated issues around works registrations, disputes, and conflicts; combing over raw CWR and certain types of DDEX files; being in the room with the powers that be at CMOs and adjacent entities; and understanding how works are licensed and how income participants are accounted to in different territories under potentially overlapping representation mandates framed by international treaties (Berne, Rome, etc.) and bilateral agreements and supported by local copyright laws and termination terms.
In a word, slapping “rights” into the company tagline/description of a music tech platform that was founded to do anything but rights administration and for whom the founders have little to zero background and experience specifically in music rights administration is the new adding “decentralized” to data company descriptions.
Music industry people, be careful regarding the services that you sign up for. Your copyrights are the most important assets that you have. Putting the management, representation, or administration of these assets, for any period of time, in the wrong hands can and will lead to a world of trouble for you now and potentially for years to come.
Music industry colleagues, don’t let non music rights people abuse the term “music rights”. It isn’t a trendy phrase to add to your tagline to be current with everything that’s going on in the industry (e.g. MMA, MLC, CRB rulings, Article 13, etc.)
#MusicBusinessMonday: About Direct License ‘Black Box’ Royalties And Music Publishing Administrators
(Author’s Note 07/08/2019 10:33 AM PST: An industry associate of mine who is an independent music publishing industry leader and activist/advocate, as well as the owner of a small music publishing administration company, reached out to me to express his concern that my blog post paints all music publishing administrators in a bad light. He explained that entering into direct licenses is common practice for all publishers — including full-fledged publishers that own or co-own copyrights, as opposed to just handling administration like pub admins do — and not just pub admins. I know that. He felt that pub admins are being unfairly singled out in my blog post. As I explained to him, that is not my intent. I have many blog posts of opinions, analyses, criticisms, praises and reviews of many sectors and companies of the music industry. It is my role as a music creators’ rights advocate and watchdog, if you will, to raise awareness about these issues and practices, and educate music creators on their rights and business. This particular blog piece is not about small pub admin shops, like the one he operates, that has an overage of a few thousand dollars at the end of the year from direct deals, but rather the nature and effect of some of the large “catchall” pub admin services aggregating hundreds of thousands to millions of copyrights and the potential voluminous black boxes that direct licenses can accrue for their bottomline. These are some of the issues that we are asked about at TuneRegistry when speaking with songwriters who have or are considering switching to self-administration or to supplement the efforts of their existing large pub admin. Calling out provisions, or lack thereof, in contracts that songwiters may not be aware of, and which ultimately impacts their income, regardless of if it’s a small shop or goliath, is fair industry criticism. But, for clarity, this piece is in direct response to recent inquiries we’ve received at TuneRegistry regarding some of the popular catchall pub admin services on the market and not small pub admin businesses)
In this particular case, I get that he may take offense when the criticism may extend to parties that are not acting malicious — and I’m not saying that the big players are acting malicious anyway, but rather this issue is a fact of the deal that songwriters sign and should be aware of — and want to be presented in a fair light. So, to that end, I’ll update the post and my socials.
A music publishing administrator’s (“pub admins”) job is to register your musical works with CMOs/PROs/MROs in the territories for which you’ve hired them to represent your administration rights and to collect your royalties, prepare and remit income statements and payments to you. However, some pub admins go a step or two further and issue or enter into direct licensing agreements with companies on behalf of the compositions that it represents, such as direct performance licenses for startup social music apps or a blanket license for background music services.
The right to enter into direct licenses may be included in your contract with the pub admin. In this case, you will have explicitly granted the pub admin the right to license your songs, without asking permission per license, to third parties. In some direct deals, companies give advances or negotiate minimum guarantees to be paid to publishers. These advances and minimum guarantees are deducted from the actual earned royalties that are calculated from the usage of songs by the licensed service. However, in the event that there is an overage (meaning, the total volume of usage does not equal or exceed the advance or minimum guarantee) the difference between the overage and the actual earned royalties is the unallocated “black box” royalties.
It is important that these monies flow to the songwriters that the pub admin represent (less an appropriate commission) as the license fees were paid against the licensed catalog of songs, regardless of actual usage.
Surprisingly, although pub admins that ask songwriters to grant them the explicit right to direct license the songwriter’s songs, many pub admins do not have or do not communicate their policy for distributing unallocated “black box” royalties that stem from these direct licenses. And some cases, they just keep the black box royalties as miscellaneous income.
What’s in your contract? Talk you your pub admin about direct license black box royalties.
Statement By Dae Bogan On The Cancellation Of His ‘Music Industry Entrepreneurship’ UCLA Summer Class
Dear UCLA and non-UC Students who enrolled in my Summer 2019 Music Industry Entrepreneurship class:
Regrettably, my class, which was scheduled to begin this Thursday through UCLA Summer Sessions and UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, has been cancelled. If you enrolled in the course, the school has already unenrolled you and you can find another course in the Music Industry program.
I decided to cancel the class due to low enrollment, which has impacted a number of classes this summer. Unlike my winter class, which is generally over enrolled with a wait list, summer has proven to be particularly difficult (Maybe students do not want to take class in the summer?).
My curriculum requires a significant amount of group work (60% of the grade) to be distributed across student group members as groups progress through the class as mock co-founders of a fictitious music industry startup business. Consequently, the class requires a minimum threshold of enrolled students to make the course dynamic enough to highlight the entrepreneurial principles, fundamental business strategies and music industry best practices that I teach.
While I hate that the class had to be cancelled with such short notice, I felt that to maintain the integrity of my curriculum and to ensure that student who get to take my class benefit from the way in which it was designed cancelling was the only option.
Student reviews of Dae Bogan’s Music Industry Entrepreneurship class:
Hi Dae, Just wanted to thank you for an awesome class. This was one of the few classes at UCLA where I felt I was taught skills, not just about the subject matter but in how to go about achieving my career goals, that were applicable to my endeavors and will be used for the rest of my life. I got more out of it than I had with any other course here and I would highly recommend your class to to anyone interested in a music industry career.
– Student testimonial, Winter Quarter 2019
Without a doubt one of the most useful classes I have taken in my undergraduate career at UCLA. Professor Bogan has so much real world knowledge and knows how to convey that knowledge in a classroom setting immensely well. All the course material was invaluable to my progression and aspirations of being in the music industry. Every lecture was extremely well-prepared, with amazing guest speakers and information that I will be using for the rest of my life. Professor Bogan did a phenomenal job and I will be recommending this class to all my friends interested in music or starting their own company. Can’t say enough good things about this class.
– Student testimonial, Winter Quarter 2018
If you are still interested in exploring entrepreneurship in the music industry, you may consider taking my online program Music Industry Entrepreneurship Masterclass which is a 4 hour sample of my full course. You can sign up for the masterclass at www.marcatoacademy.com.
Musician Mastery Summit 2019
Come learn from me at Musician Mastery Summit 2019! I’ll be sharing my story and strategies on what it takes to succeed in the industry today. Attend online on June 21st and 22nd and gain lifetime access to all of these interview sessions.
Check out the full agenda & get your ticket now: https://aaronwolfmusic.lpages.co/mms-home-2019/?ref=daebogan1 #MMS2019
Introduction to Music Royalties Forensics (North America – USA & CAN)
Price: $90
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes
Order: Click here to purchase.
Course Overview
Every day, millions of music streams, downloads, digital transmissions, public performances, and broadcasts generate tens of thousands of dollars in unclaimed royalties. To date, the estimated pool of unclaimed royalties exceeds $2 billion.
These royalties are often due to independent music creators, heirs and beneficiaries, and legacy artists. After a period of time, these unclaimed royalties accrue in escrow accounts around the world only to be disbursed by market share to the major labels and publishers leaving the indies, to which much of the money belongs, underrepresented and unaccounted to. Music royalties forensics is the process of searching for, identifying, and claiming these royalties. This course is an introduction to the art and science of finding and unlocking unclaimed royalties.
Your instructor, Dae Bogan, is a music rights and royalties tech entrepreneur (original founder of music rights administration platform, TuneRegistry, and the world’s first search engine of unclaimed royalties and music licenses, RoyaltyClaim), music creators’ rights advocate, and lecturer of music industry entrepreneurship at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He has written about black box royalties extensively on his blog DaeBoganMusic.com. He has helped hundreds of music creators and rights-holders find and unlock hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid music royalties from around the world. And his research on the state of unclaimed music royalties was used by US Congressional Budget Office in its analysis of the Music Modernization Act of 2018.
Learning Objectives
- What are your rights, entitlements, and income participations as a music creator and/or rights-holder?
- What are the most common royalty streams generated from a variety of music usage types and where do those royalties flow?
- How are music royalties allocated and distributed by music rights organizations?
- What are niche funds and sub-funds that often generate unmatched so-called “black box” royalties and how do you check for your records?
- How to track music usage to leverage usage and detection reports to reconcile or audit royalty statements?
- What are some tools and resources to help you search for, identify, and claim unclaimed royalties and music licenses?
- What are the requirements to properly setup to be accounted to and paid royalties from previously unaffiliated sources going forward?
- What are some tips for managing your music rights affiliations?
- What are some tips for preparing your music rights and royalties for beneficiaries?
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