# Question on music library deal



## wolf (Dec 17, 2009)

Here's the story: Guy askes me if I can write comedy cues, he would need some for his music library which is distributed by the allegedly largest music library in the US. They typically do a 50/50 split with their libraries and the composer keeps the writers share of the royalties. I write 40 cues, he loves them. Now the owner of this "sub-library" offers me a 50/50 split deal and sells it as a great deal where I get more than other composers get because he really likes my tracks. I'm thinking that I am actually only getting 25% of the publishing, no upfront payment and keep the writers share, which doesn't seem to be all that great.
This arrangement reminds me of the supposedly abandoned practice where libraries hire sub-publishers (often abroad) who hire sub-publishers.... and all split the moneys and in the end, the composer is left with almost nothing. 
What would you do? Is this a typical deal these days? I am not (yet) a name composer nor do I have any library music credits. I have done plenty of smaller games scores in the past 6 years. What's my negotiating power?

I'm grateful for all insights and sharing of experiences.


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## germancomponist (Dec 17, 2009)

Yeah, this result of our system is so sadly. One man works very hard and 10 others earn the mony..... .

You know the graphic? 10 people sitting in a rowboat. 9 are giving commands and only one is rowing.


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## gsilbers (Dec 17, 2009)

maybe he sees it like this;

he is working his side of the deal by finding places where to publish the music and from that revenue he splits it 50/50 with you. now, i think something like that should be in the contract if not he is placing your music in another library w/o your consent. 
might as well just call the bigger library and tell them and see if u get a better deal. and see ways to get out of the contract.


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## JohnG (Dec 17, 2009)

Any composer's negotiating power in any situation is to say "no" until you have a deal that you'd rather take than leave. Saying "no" is very powerful. If, at the moment, you have no alternative for the 50 cues, you could shop around a little and see if you can do better.

That said, it's more important to me that the people handling one's music be good marketers than whether one gets 30% or 50%. Everything else being equal, it's nice if it's a higher percentage, but then of course it's better to have 30% of $15,000 than 50% of $500. So the more decisive question I think is what level these guys are and what level projects they can land for you.

If there is no upfront payment and on top of that you are producing the cues yourself -- they are not paying for an orchestra -- that reduces their incentive to push your music because they've invested nothing. Accordingly, I'd ask for a reversion clause, that after some number of years (say, five), if they have not licensed your material it reverts to you.

Staking a claim that they are the "largest" library is encouraging, but for you as an individual composer hoping for your individual tracks to be noticed, being the largest may be less important than some other issues: 

1. What kind of people are they? Honest? Hard-working? Are they charming and funny like most good sales guys? Do they seem to like their clients or complain a lot?

2. Do you know anyone else who's worked with them? Are they tricky, as one of the other posts asked, or good fellows?

3. Do they get out and market their stuff or wait for the phone to jingle (so to speak)? 

4. What kind of projects license their stuff -- is it daytime TV, local TV spots, the latest epic movie? If the library is comprised of all synth / samples, normally that would limit the level of project they aspire to. Of course there is plenty of widely-used electronic-only music, and even big studios sometimes use all-electronic music in trailers, but it's less common than their use of cues performed by an orchestra, or orchestra-plus-electronics.

I doubt that it's all that easy to get answers to all of these questions, but they are interesting to me when I think about partnering with somebody.

And finally, I don't begrudge the sales organisation its 50% cut. It's hard to sell anything, including music, and they need to get paid for that function. Besides, if they get bigger percentages than yours by selling someone else's music, that creates incentives that don't work in one's favour.


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## José Herring (Dec 17, 2009)

I'm with John. You've already done the music. He's looking now to distribute it. He's ready to go thinking there's money to be made. You've got all the negotiating leverage in the world. Sometimes you have to channel your inner jerk to get things done.

Jose


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## midphase (Dec 17, 2009)

I have a big issue with music libraries that don't pay any money upfront to commission the music. I have done some tracks in the past, but the moment they decided that they weren't going to share the risk by giving me some upfront money, I stopped giving them my music...simple as that. I find the idea that most libraries now operate under those conditions sad.

The truth of the matter is that any revenues from your 50% of the licensing fees is becoming nonexistent. Except for trailers (which unfortunately is a field that's getting very rapidly oversaturated and hence will follow suit), most libraries license music for free or for "packages" where the individual composers get little or nothing. The #1 revenue for any composer who works on library music then has to be back end royalties. That means that if a library is not good at placing your music on TV, you might as well assume you're working for free.

I suspect that much like composers, music libraries are putting themselves increasingly in a more difficult position. Most of them are being absorbed and consolidated, except for a handful of them, the small ones are not surviving, and the composers are not doing as well from participating in them as they were 10 years ago.


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## The_Dark_Knight (Dec 17, 2009)

If it's not:
ExtremeMusic
KPM
APM

Then it's probably not one of the largest. Maybe others would care to ad a name or 2.

I had a similar situation, but walked away for about a month, when I came back they were willing to reconsider. Never do royalties without upfront money....ever....ASCAP's survey system issss HORRRRIBBLLEEE and unreliable. Pump Audio and the like are destroying the tv royalty market. I also have actual proof that I'm not getting all the money I should be from (ascap), because the library is paying in advance for every placement and ascap statements don't match in any way. Be careful!


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## stonzthro (Dec 17, 2009)

ASCAP has been hesitant to move into the digital age for music tracking, and while there are many theories as to why, the fact is they use a survey net to catch performances, which, for anything but major networks, seems to function randomly. I had a film on PBS run 43 times in one year and ASCAP didn't catch it once! 

I will say this - when it works in your favor, it is really great! 

Same goes for library writing too.


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## wolf (Dec 17, 2009)

thanks to everybody for all your comments - extremely helpful!

@Dark Knight: yes, the big library who is distributing the smaller one is APM, which partly answers JohnG's question #5 regarding sales: they have sales people on staff selling their tracks. Thanks for sharing your experiences with ASCAP - I'm a member of them.
From what I heard, you should be able to get the missing money from ASCAP if you send your library proof of the unpaid performances. At least APM promises that they go after such money. I'm of course interested in hearing real life experiences in this regard.

@ Jose: It really is about "the inner jerk", you're spot on. I'm really bad at negotiating, and that's partly because I'm bad at sales - otherwise I would have no hesitation at walking away from the deal and trying to shop the tracks elsewhere. I know - gotta learn that! I'm trying to do that without hurting my further chances in this business, which makes it extra scary.

JohnG: thanks for your detailed response! The questions you ask are all excellent and good considerations. The library owners seem like good people, but I have a hard time judging that for real as I found people are much nicer as long as they want something from me and the prospects are good that they'll get it in favorable terms for them. For example I had talked to another, smaller library in LA and the guy was all excited about my tracks, ready to make a deal - as soon as I asked for a time limit on the exclusive license, his attitude was radically different and the deal was off.

I don't begrudge the sales people their share - by all means, they need to get paid. I'm just trying to learn about typical deals and to be able to judge what to accept and what to walk away from. Your point about the library possible favoring tracks on which they get a bigger share is well taken. But I think this has to be capped at some point or else we all end up giving our music away for free - or even paying for it to get placed (which in fact does not seem uncommon these days).

And I will definitely ask for a reversion clause.

midphase: I agree, the library has no risk and very little work when they get finished tracks, so asking for an exclusive license with no upfront money does not seem right for custom made tracks.

@gsilbers 1st post: The Sub-Library, if I may call it that, is not doing any active sales as I understand it. He told he is just handing the tracks over to APM. He's basically getting a 50% ongoing commission or finders fee without having any work or risk. This makes me think that a 50/50 split of the 50% he gets from APM is not in my favor. 

So thanks again for all your input. I will meet the sub-library owner this coming week to discuss the terms and I'll report how it went.


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## wolf (Dec 17, 2009)

gsilbers @ Thu Dec 17 said:


> The_Dark_Knight @ Thu Dec 17 said:
> 
> 
> > because the library is paying in advance for every placement and ascap statements don't match in any way. Be careful!
> ...



I think what Dark Knight means is: The library pays him his share of the publishing money and he receives this before he receives the ASCAP statement. And some of the deals on the publishing check do not show on the ASCAP check. Correct?


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## The_Dark_Knight (Dec 17, 2009)

Hi,

I get a statement from the library showing the total number of uses along with a check for my composers share. So I had around 170 uses from that library for one quarter for instance, when I got my ascap statement for the _writers_ share after several months for that quarter, most of the tracks were not included. I'm supposed to get 100 percent of the writers share, so it should have been a happy time payday. Instead...f'd for another quarter. This has happened several times. This has also happened to others I've worked with who are much wiser than myself on these subjects, they ended up having to prove their tracks aired and wait for the next quarter to see if ascrap would finally honor their end of the sync fees, took several quarters, some of them finally showed. :twisted: :roll: :evil: 

0oD


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## The_Dark_Knight (Dec 17, 2009)

Another issue I forgot to mention....

"the honor system". Apparently not all production facilities/agencies file when they're supposed to, even though it's "the law". They only file your usages with ascap when they find the time or are desperate, sometimes not so much. Another paycheck detour. :( 

So much honor and pride dealing with cue processes....I feel like a Knight or something. 8)


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## wolf (Dec 17, 2009)

yeah, the notion that the whole library music world is still relying on the honor system, when we have digital watermarking and the tools to track pretty much every public usage, boggles my mind. And that in the days when stealing music (= file sharing) is the norm.


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## wolf (Jan 25, 2010)

negotiations got delayed (the guy was ill), but today I finally got to see his contract. It states that APM first subtracts its operating expenses, then splits the licensing money 50/50 with the sub-library, which then also subtracts its operating expenses and then splits what is left 50/50 with me. The way I understand this, this puts me a great disadvantage. Is this how other libraries whose deal is based on splitting licensing moneys work as well?


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## gsilbers (Jan 25, 2010)

so with half publishing deal and non exclusivity does that mean you or i can put the same music on other music libraries?


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## Blackster (Jan 25, 2010)

Mike Greene @ Mon Jan 25 said:


> [...] because I don't think there's a lot of money in library license fees anymore, except for trailers.



Sorry, but IMO not true for Europe. Maybe the trailer industry is the most profitable branch at the moment worldwide. But on the b2b sector people are spending a lot of money to have legal compliance when using library music in their projects. And I'm not talking about trailers here but all kind of projects. Up to now I've never licensed a track of mine into a trailer (of course I would be very glad if that would happen, no doubt) but nevertheless you can make good and much money. 

It's always better to have legal compliance instead of getting sued afterwards. People are aware of that and therefore they are willing to pay (this is mostly true for b2b, NOT for the consumer market). 

That's my experience on that (until now).


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## gsilbers (Jan 25, 2010)

Blackster @ Mon Jan 25 said:


> Mike Greene @ Mon Jan 25 said:
> 
> 
> > [...] because I don't think there's a lot of money in library license fees anymore, except for trailers.
> ...



+1 in the US too imo


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## Mike Greene (Jan 25, 2010)

Then I hope I am indeed wrong, because I hate seeing license fees dry up. 

What is the "b2b sector?"


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## wolf (Jan 25, 2010)

business to business; as opposed to business to consumer (like selling CDs or mp3s)


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