This topic has been coming up a lot lately and also I had the opportunity to hear about this from some of the bigger libraries recently and thought I’d weigh in on it.
In my experience, most non-exclusive deals are also re-titling, where the library creates a “derivative work” simply by giving your piece a different title. Now they control the publishing for that music under that title, but the exact same music can still be marketed to other libraries under a completely different title with that other library also controlling the publishing (same music, different title)!!
I’ve also seen contracts where the music is signed to be exclusive in the markets that the library competes in but the piece can still be sold by the artist on their CD (itunes, etc.). This seems OK to me as long as the artist is going to be on the ball enough to refer any requests for licensing the music (someone hears it on itunes and wants to sync it, for instance) to the library that owns the rights for synchronization.
Then there’s exclusive, which is totally fine with me. (Keep in mind that I’m an instrumental composer with an ever expanding catalog of music, not a songwriter with a much smaller catalog. I’m not going to speak to that because it’s a different kettle of fish altogether, IMO.)
With exclusivity, both the composer and the library have more skin in the game. The library is probably more picky so if you get in, you’re smarter than the average bear, and the library owner places more value on their catalog because you can’t get this stuff anywhere else. That’s good for everyone, even the clients, because they would also like to think they’re getting something special. Everyone likes to think they’re special, right? You can’t go to some online library that takes anyone and find this quality of music. That’s what makes it special. (the next level up is getting hired by a library to create a collection for them, which means they have even more motivation to push your stuff!!) Remember, a lot of these libraries have excellent relationships directly with supervisors at networks, etc. They also have a quality standard to uphold and having pieces that no one else has is a great selling point.
At the beginning of my foray into library music, I signed a few pieces with a couple of different places, but I started looking into it more and talking to composer friends and discussions here and elsewhere, and I made the decision to treat every non-exclusive deal as an exclusive deal. I intend to write several hundred pieces of music in my career so it’s more important to me to have a diversified catalog in several excellent libraries than it is to have a small number of pieces in lots of libraries at the same time.
Let’s not forget watermarking and fingerprinting technology that is right around the corner. Whatever technology gets generally adopted, it will be possible to detect any piece of music by it’s unique signature, which will obviate re-titling, because that piece of music is really just one entity, not a bunch of titles referring to the same music. Re-titling will eventually go out the window, I predict.
So what value do you place on your music? You might actually be doing yourself and your library clients a disservice by placing your pieces in several libraries at one time because it will end up competing against itself and instead of making a nice sync fee, it might lose out to itself to a lower priced library. Same piece gets lower price because it’s in more than one library? Doesn’t make good business sense to me.
Think about it.
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I myself do all deals out there.
I specifically create shorter, catchier pieces of muisc for distribution with non-exclusive libraries. Most of the songs in these libraries get used for ads and reality TV shows. They usually use anywhere from a few seconds to one minute of a song. Therefore, it is usually a waste of time to send in full-length songs.
I usually send full length songs to exclusive libraries. Some of these companies like to sell CDs with a collection of songs. Clients would prefer to hear a full-length track and can edit these songs themselves if needed.
I think it is important to listen to each individual track you create and decide whether it is suitable for a TV ad or in use for a feature film.
A lot of composers posting on various websites believe that re-titling is going to be discontinued in the near future, because of the watermarking technology that the PROs will start to utilize.
What they don’t consider is the advances in recognition technology that will allow distinct watermarking to be added to tracks, that will differentiate different copies of the same music.
It’s very possible that each re-titling library will be able to add a watermark to their tracks that allows the PRO’s recognition software to gather the publisher and writer info, as well library company name.
The concept of simply analyzing the audio signature of background music is old technology – heck even iPhone apps do it now!
If, in fact, a watermarking technology that can do what you say comes about and becomes standardized, I’m all for it, as long as the legal aspects are worked out. As it stands now, music supervisors are becoming less willing to use music from non exclusive re titling libraries. And even if the watermarking tech gets worked out, how does a music supervisor decide which publishers piece to use when two pieces of music which are obviously the same with different titles show up on their desk, watermarking or not? Composers need to be more attuned to their end clients and less concerned with placing one piece in several libraries. IMO that’s going to backfire, but I hope I’m wrong and the technology make it better for all concerned. Thanks for commenting!
I don’t think that technology is set up to work in that manner. Check out this article regarding BMI’s Blue Arrow watermarking system: http://www.filmmusicmag.com/?p=3314.
You’ll want to pay extra attention to this section in the article:
“So, contrary to the long-standing library mantra of ยit makes things easier to track your income,ย sound recognition technology actually complicates things, making it more time-consuming and HARDER to track the uses of any re-titled track. If a composer has retitled tracks out there with multiple libraries, this tech will now hamper the ability to monitor where music is being used and by whom. Each sound file will be popping up with multiple titles, multiple publishers and multiple master owners. The libraries will ultimately be falling all over each other trying to figure out whose title got what hit in the monitoring”.
I think I solved the retitling problem. ๐
One thing I recently learned about BMI and ASCAP is that titles really do not matter. Each time a song is registered, a new Work ID is formed.
I could register the same title with me as the songwriter and a different publisher for each version. The work ID would be unique to that particular registration.
Music libraries and publishers should use the work ID instead of the song title to add to a cue sheet. That Work ID is as unique as DNA. That alone would solve all retitle issues.
Thoughts?
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