Jeremy Spencer
Senior Member
I have not been successful with this request, I always end up in "work-for-hire" category.
Buyout rights and PRO
- Thread starter MichalCielecki
- Start date
I have not been successful with this request, I always end up in "work-for-hire" category.
chrisr
Senior Member
I've been told by fellow writers that my current gig is something of a decent catch and I should expect to see pretty good back end. I'm three years, 60+ eps, 3 movies and some TVC's along the road with it now. Still early days perhaps. The (long-running 500+ eps) tv show and movies play on tv and cinemas worldwide, and the show is translated into more languages than I ever knew existed. Meanwhile, PRS log the cue sheets incorrectly and ask me what my "songs" are called ... I've looked at the cue sheets for old seasons of the show (from before I wrote for it) and they're kinda all over the place too, so I'm not filled with too much hope right now.
My experience with PRS is best summed up by the phrase "lets wait and see what comes through" which is usually uttered with a sense that I've just purchased a ticket for hook a duck... and by the following anecdote:
---------------------------
I went to an event that they ran a couple of years back. I had just completed my first series of the show then and wanted to make sure I was dotting all the i's and crossing the t's. Afterwards, as people were leaving I got chatting to "Claire"* who worked in the department that ingests cue-sheets. I should mention that I personally draw up the cue-sheets for the show, pass them to the production company, who pass them to the publisher, who pass them to the broadcasters, who pass them to PRS...
My question to her - "Is there a process of "best practice" for cue-sheets (file format etc...) that I can follow to make sure there are as few hiccups as possible down the line?" was met with a sheepish "ummn - not really, they're all a bit higgledy piggledy really... " - which I found to be a slightly worrying but disarmingly honest answer. Then she said - "but look - here's my direct email address, if you're really struggling with something drop me a line and I'll see if I can help."
"Brilliant!", I thought ... "these people are so helpful, we're bound to be able to sort out any potential issues fairly easily". Some minutes later I was talking to some other PRS reps, and happened to mention that 'Claire' had given me her direct contact details and how kind and helpful that was.... Cue shocked looks all round (i started to worry...) - "Oh that's weird" they said, "we really don't ever give out direct email details like that to members because we get swamped by requests...". A short awkward pause later, one of them said.. "Oh... Clare!! - That's right, she's got a new job, it's her last week next week!" - cue much laughter and knowing smiles all round. Oh how we laughed...
In the same conversation, another member mentioned that he had recently been incorrectly assigned the royalties of another members work (with a very similar title) - to which the initial response was "Ooh lucky you! - well we won't tell anyone if you don't! Nudge nudge" - once he realised they weren't joking, the member had to awkwardly but politely insist that it was looked at.
--------------------------------------
*not Claire *might have been .... *dunno.
Thus far, my opinion of them is really not stunningly great - although I appreciate very much what distribution money they have sent me - and I'm heartened to hear that some folks are assigned their own PRS manager. I'd be interested to hear the views of more senior PRS members like yourself Daryl (and anyone else who cares to chip in) as there are so many things about them that, to me, just seem so, so poor... Even more trivial things like, I can't for the life of me** understand why they're mostly based out of a massive, absolutely stunning state-of-the-art office in the heart of St Pancras rather than a nice cheap office out in Watford (granted, I know they also have that unremarkable office south of the river...) I don't really know why they produce that glossy members magazine - they're literally a monopoly - nobody needs to be sold on their service, we can't go anywhere else. I even object to that distribution ticker-counter on their member homepage that's designed to make you feel like you've won a lottery prize rather than just had your due royalties distributed! Imagine if banks did that sort of gimmick with their customers. I could go on at some length... but I'm sure everyone catches my drift. In my experience *so far* the PRS has been rather more mouth than trousers, as we say up north.
Honestly, I would love nothing more right now than for a bunch of PRS members to correct me in the posts below by pointing out how awesome PRS are/have been in their own experiences. It would make me very happy to hear it. I'm stuck with them after all for better or worse... I should probably just 'wait and see what comes through' and in the meantime read all about Emeli Sande in the magazine.
** I do actually understand why they're in amazing offices - but I think it's an appropriate metaphor for an organisation that seems to me to be big on style yet, so far for me at least, low on substance...
I can't help but laugh reading this, thinking of my own experience with PRS.
So how much do you have to make a year to have a direct line to a manager? Are we talking 100k, 500k? Glad to see they're looking out for all the little guys..
I've had some experiences with them that made me wonder if anyone there knows much about overseas royalties, cue sheets and so on.
After some years, and I know this sounds very defeatist, I decided to just leave it be and accept that there will be losses all over the place, and that it's part of the business. I try not to think about it too much. If there's a cue sheet on their system and I don't get paid for it, then I chase it up. Those should be simple, though the last one was anything but.
JohnG
Senior Member
That's not necessarily bad; maybe your gigs are a lot better than some of mine have been!
To succeed with a proposal to work under a sync license instead of the typical work for hire, you have to be working on an independent movie (typically) with low pay.
MichalCielecki
Member
Hey everyone,
You know, I was about to make some dick comment in response, because I am actually writing on behalf of my friend who is in the mentioned situation, but seeing your other post about your experience with PRS actually makes it more clear about where your reply comes from. However, why won't you consider changing your PRO if you are not comfortable with the PRS?
Anyway, thank you everyone for your time! I think some consultation is needed with a lawyer here in Poland to see how all this information applies to Polish law in regards to the buyouts and PRO.
Cheers,
Michal
You know, I was about to make some dick comment in response, because I am actually writing on behalf of my friend who is in the mentioned situation, but seeing your other post about your experience with PRS actually makes it more clear about where your reply comes from. However, why won't you consider changing your PRO if you are not comfortable with the PRS?
Anyway, thank you everyone for your time! I think some consultation is needed with a lawyer here in Poland to see how all this information applies to Polish law in regards to the buyouts and PRO.
Cheers,
Michal
chrisr
Senior Member
Hey everyone,
You know, I was about to make some dick comment in response, because I am actually writing on behalf of my friend who is in the mentioned situation, but seeing your other post about your experience with PRS actually makes it more clear about where your reply comes from. However, why won't you consider changing your PRO if you are not comfortable with the PRS?
Anyway, thank you everyone for your time! I think some consultation is needed with a lawyer here in Poland to see how all this information applies to Polish law in regards to the buyouts and PRO.
Cheers,
Michal
Ahh - apologies! My flippancy wasn't meant to be a put-down against you, which I hope you can see. I was being flippant because of my exasperation with PRS. I can totally see how you might read it like that though.
Unfortunately there is no other uk PRO for me to switch to. They have an absolute monopoly (well I think there may have been a specifically Welsh PRO startup a few years back but no serious contender...)
It might well be that the field of performance rights administration is completely fraught with insurmountable obstacles (I'm sure it is) and that PRS perform amazingly well in very many areas of operation regarding championing the concept of artists rights worldwide etc...and generally perform better or comparably well in comparison to other PROs worldwide, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that they might well do. I applaud their research (Blockchain technology in rights management, anyone?) and campaigning work - all seemingly great. But, really, the front line staff that I have encountered so far have been apparently poorly motivated and ill equipped, and my experiences with their web-portal etc... have been equally underwhelming. I long for the day when I get assigned a PRS manager like Daryl has - maybe things will get a lot better then. Perhaps that might happen in the coming years with a bit of luck. Will be sure to report back if so.
Daryl
Senior Member
Ah, no. I don't have a personal manager. Just a friend of mine did a few years ago. However, when his PRS fell below £250K, they dumped him...! I have no idea what the threshold is these days. I just know what it's not.
SillyMidOn
Active Member
What I am slightly confused about (apologies if I missed something in the thread) is that you say that "the PRS logs the cue sheets incorrectly". What do you mean by that? The PRS itself doesn't create cue sheets, someone involved in the production of the show does, and that could be the composer (though if there is other source music involved it is then a real pain to sort out the correct information for pieces that aren't yours).
It sounds to me like you need to sort out with your production company that the cue sheets are in order first, the PRS can't be held responsible for errors with them. You can get involved in sorting out the sheets yourself (though it is boring as hell), and you can submit your own cue sheet to the PRS, though they don't like that as it obviously causes conflicts in their database.
The PRS are correct in that there is no one correct format for cue sheets, if you go to different PRO societies around the world they all have their own non-binding templates. The important thing is that all the important info is on there, off the top of my head: name/episode of show, air date, channel, contact info/production company, cue title, length, time in/out, usage type (background instrumental, featured instrumental, etc), composer info, publisher info
Looking to foreign royalties you can look at:
(broken link removed)
...though you need to get the cue sheets in order first.
I keep meaning to look into this myself.
Hope that helps.
chrisr
Senior Member
Yes, I personally create the cue sheets for the show. I send them to the production company to check. They send them to the publisher and they go out to the broadcaster, who are the ones responsible for logging them with PRS.
PRS "create" the cue sheets in so far as they are responsible for ingesting the information to their database (arguably the most crucial bit of all this) which as far as I can ascertain, is where the problems are occurring.
PRS want to tie each cue to a registered track on their database, with an associated work number/tunecode. Because there are many hundreds of cues across the episodes, all sounding completely different, the cues are all assigned to a generic/dummy "track" for the show, which is a default 3 minute track on their database called "The show: cues" (or similar) and then the name of every cue becomes that dummy track for the purposes of their copy of the cue sheet. The track lists me as having the writers share of the performance royalties, the publisher (on behalf of the production company) as the other 50% and the production company to have the mechanicals.
The first problem is that they often randomly assign cues to OTHER tracks, for other projects that I've written, meaning that whilst I will see some money, the production company will not. I'm sure that will be a problem at some point. I think this happens because whoever is entering the data is simply selecting a track from the first page of my registered tracks with PRS, instead of taking the time to browse to the correct dummy track for these episodes - so the "Work Number/tunecode" as PRS call it, is incorrect.
The next problem is that some cues are not assigned other information like "Interested Parties/Mebership numbers"- the cue shows up on the cue sheet with a name and the correct duration info, but the rest of the row is left completely blank - no interested parties/work numbers etc...
The next problem is that broadcasters are not consistent with their allocation of "Episode Number" - which seems to be "as broadcast". The production company allocate each episode a unique number as the episode number, currently from 1 - 550 or so, but when cue sheets are logged at PRS, the episode number is based upon the series and the broadcast order, so an episode that might have been number 320, and happened to be the 14th episode broadcast in series 11, becomes 1114. Not seemingly too big a problem, except that cue sheets at PRS are clearly logged by both the major uk broadcaster, and then also by some other cable/streaming services as well - meaning that duplicates are rife - and the episode numbers often don't match. Fortunately the episode names usually do so there is a route to debug things, but it's a pain. Goodness knows how it affects matching up cue-sheets with reporting from 50-100 oversees territories!!
Other than that, there are many simple typos that again make things hard to chase/trace.
There have clearly been problems for some time now because when I look at older cue sheets (for episodes that I didn't work on) - they start out immaculately well prepared (many years ago) - with lots of info, even listing key actors etc... Then in more recent years (again, not my eps...) the obviously had a period of just lumping all the cues together in one big entry - so an episode will just contain one cue that is the total music duration and not much other info.
As you may gather from the above, I have very much been involved in that. I would disagree with you that the PRS can't be held responsible though. My feeling is very much that the errors were/are occurring at that last point in the chain, and also occurring because of a lack of leadership from PRS on the issue. I've had some interesting conversations with PRS staff where I've been told things like "it's not possible for you to have created the cue sheet, only the production company can do that" with no comprehension that I might have been asked to do it on behalf of the production company.... and many other similar interactions which have lead me to believe that the general quality of information processing over there is low.
Quite. But wouldn't it be sensible to develop some more specific standards (for PRS members at least) for cue sheets, to try to minimise errors?
There is often a misunderstanding about this request. What I'm asking for is not a verbatim list of what should be on a cue sheet, but a process of best practice.
What I would like PRS to do in answer to that question is create something universal, like a googledocs template, that anyone with a browser can use, or a regularly updated blank .xls template that can be downloaded from their website and filled in. Something that aims to lock-in the format of the document, that all parties have to get on board with and therefore reduces the sorts of human-errors that are clearly creeping into the system as a result of their current ingest process.
As things currently stand it's requested by the production company that I generate the cue sheets as a table in a word .doc (!!) - and I have enough experience of document transfer to know that that's absolutely asking for trouble further down the line. I would love it if PRS demanded that all data submissions be in at least .xls format, but they don't even do that. - To quote the rep I talked to "it's all a bit higgledy piggledy really..."
There's no excuse for PRS not to be leading from the front on this. It would be easy for them to make some very specific recommendations and standards for cue-sheet formating (for example using a particular Googledoc template or an .xls). That they don't/won't is poor form. All they have available is a PDF of a sample cuesheet - which is one step up from posting a photo of one!
If we were still working with paper, their approach would be entirely satisfactory.
Thanks - I will take a look!
best,
Chris
SillyMidOn
Active Member
Wow, ok that sounds like an unholy mess. I do apologise, I assumed incorrectly that the problem was occurring at the creation point of the cue sheet, but it does sound like someone at the PRS is being very lazy when entering the data into their database from your cue sheet. Might it be easier to not use the dummy tracks, but instead send in a ridiculously accurate cue sheet with each separate cue entered and registered? It might force their hand, though then again as they haven't bothered even entering the dummy track correctly they might look at the long cue sheet and go "nah, let's just use on track of his for everything" - as seemingly they have been doing.
Yes I agree, uniform .xls cue sheets round the world would be better, I never found one I liked, so I created my own by adapting some existing ones.
I have, during my odd dealings with the PRS also come across the lethargy you mentioned, and I think there could be a systemic issue, in that the PRS hold a virtual monopoly, make tons of money, and that can breed complacency. Like yourself I've been to AGMs (two, many years ago) and couldn't help but feel that it's a bit of an old boys club. Anecdotally, on one of those occasions a boisterous member questioned Robert Ashcroft's pay package, to which the other members of the broad said we needed to pay that to attract his sort of talent, and Ashcroft said that he took a significant pay cut compared to his previous job at Sony (well, why did he leave, then?). I noticed that he was picked up by a chauffeur after the event. Hm.
You've probably also seen the email yesterday about the errors they uncovered in recent distributions. It often baffles me when I get several additional statements after the main one, and it doesn't give one a sense of confidence in the system as a whole.
I did hear a shocking story about cue sheets on a big UK radio show, but I am not at liberty to share this here in public, sadly, but it's one heck of a story.
Are you a member of Basca or the ISM, that they can maybe help/give advice?
chrisr
Senior Member
I'm not a member of Basca, and I really should be. I was in the MU for a while and they gave me some good contractual advice when I needed it.
Yeah I read the email. It didn't read terribly well, but I really appreciated that there was acknowledgement/ownership of the problems, which is reassuring.
I've also seen people really lay-into PRS reps! I've cringed and actually felt very sorry for the reps because sometimes the most vocal members are the least capable of structuring a useful discussion. I think I'd absolutely hate to work for them and have to represent a bunch of pushy musicians, so I do sympathise with them a great deal.
Probably best that I don't know the radio story - I fear it would only feed my sense that I've sat in the nest of vipers that is the music industry!
best,
Chris
PS - @MichalCielecki - I'm sorry to have derailed your thread so much...
Yeah I read the email. It didn't read terribly well, but I really appreciated that there was acknowledgement/ownership of the problems, which is reassuring.
I've also seen people really lay-into PRS reps! I've cringed and actually felt very sorry for the reps because sometimes the most vocal members are the least capable of structuring a useful discussion. I think I'd absolutely hate to work for them and have to represent a bunch of pushy musicians, so I do sympathise with them a great deal.
Probably best that I don't know the radio story - I fear it would only feed my sense that I've sat in the nest of vipers that is the music industry!
best,
Chris
PS - @MichalCielecki - I'm sorry to have derailed your thread so much...
SillyMidOn
Active Member
Consider the ISM as well, as you get unlimited advice (maybe as ISM has more members?), whereas from what I remember with Basca, you can only get a certain restricted amount of time with a lawyer over the phone.
chrisr
Senior Member
Oh I didn't know that, thanks!
bleupalmtree
Active Member
This is really good info here. Thank You
Sorry if I've missed something on the thread as I've only had time to skim read it but I would suggest you should just get an established publishing rights collection company to handle your royalty admin. It'll cost you a cut of your of your back end but will allow you to focus more on composition more than admin, which is priceless IMO.
All the best
gsilbers
Part of Pulsesetter-Sounds.com
I think this important due to the increase use of royalty free music available and producers just expecting the same terms and lingo.
companies like epidemic sound getting away w not using PROs and making it seem it’s a simple Subscription and you get to use tons of music free w/o any hassle. Oh the hassle of copyrights and the irony of who bitches about dealing with copyrights.
So the work for hire for production companies might be interpreted like it’s their music they paid someone else to write but they keep all rights.
gsilbers
Part of Pulsesetter-Sounds.com
Btw - I’ll make a new thread but I think sample developers should all be doing more about informing composers about this stuff.
There’s like 4 or 5 “big” companies that every composers who does any work for tv and film uses and of these band together to promote composers getting better royalties it would mean more money for them down the line.
There’s like 4 or 5 “big” companies that every composers who does any work for tv and film uses and of these band together to promote composers getting better royalties it would mean more money for them down the line.
stixman
Senior Member
I’ve been offered a work for hire (first time)with advance but I don’t feel comfortable with no backend, also would need a letter of intent apparently as I’m registered with a pro in the uk…existential problem the more I research into this offer I’m 50/50 atm whether to decline on principle or accept their terms!
Daryl
Senior Member
If you are a PRS member, and they look after your music worldwide, your agreement with them means you legally can't sign away your Writer's share without their permission.
Last edited:
