Hi again all,
Thanks for your further queries and questions, will and try and clarify.
@GtrString - you mentioned ‘cross-collateralization’ whereby some publishers take their recoupable from all music written, and not from the individual track. This isn’t the case here at Evolution Media Music, recoupable advances are only ever applied to the individual tracks, not your catalogue as a whole.
For example, if you wrote Epic Rock 1, Epic Rock 2, and Epic Rock 3, each with a £25 recoupable for mastering, and Epic Rock 1 & 3 earned nothing, but Epic Rock 2 earned £500, you would receive £475. The recoupable mastering fee only ever applies to the track.
I highly disagree with your statement that we have “little incentive to push a song”. We work with our composers, often for months at a time on albums to make sure if is of the highest compositional and mix standard. We wouldn’t bother to put this effort in, or expect it of a composer if we were to not then push and promote that music as hard as we possibly could. Whilst our sub-publishers at BMG, Sonoton, Groovers, Music & Musique, and others handle promotion and sales as part of their agreements with us, we also create samplers, mailouts, and attend all the major industry events in the UK and USA.
@studiostuff - as with any business, there are costs involved. Our ethos has always been about quality, delivering the best music we possibly can to the market. That incurs additional costs for the business such as the money needed to fund the curation team, as well as the money invested in highly talented artists and mastering engineers.
You mentioned that your main objection was that “the extra charges that are probably applied to most of the submissions you accept”. As mentioned in my earlier post, to my knowledge (and I have been with the company since they released their first 9 albums) the mixing clause has never been used, and as I also said I cant see a way where it would be used. Even if it ever were to be proposed by us to a composer, the composer is under no obligation to take it, they can simply walk away from the deal with their track. We have no way of forcing a composer to use a mix engineer, nor would we want to. We have sonic hurdles yes, but this is offered in the form of feedback whereby each composer is given the opportunity to amend their track. When we listen to tracks and formulate our feedback it is always with the intention that the writer can make the changes themselves. On the few rare occasions where we can tell a composer is great at writing, but lacks the requisite skills in mixing we have never suggested the use of an engineer, but have instead connected them with other writers who then collaborate together (separate of us) in delivering a releasable track. This itself is rare, I can only think of 2 writers who have done this off the top of my head.
The deliverables recoupable has been used once to my knowledge, but again this was not forced on the composer. The composer had written some great tracks but was then tied down with commitments to other projects so had no time to complete the deliverables. They requested us to do them with that recoupable as it allowed them to release the tracks but focus on their other work. We would never push a composer down this path, especially as we all have such extensive work tasks that taking on doing someones deliverables just adds to the work pile. To be clear on this, all libraries to my knowledge require composers to do some form of deliverables, and not one of them would expect the library to do them for the composer. So again, this clause is to cover us to make sure composers deliver the files needed and would never be forced upon a composer.
As Steven has mentioned, there is a massive difference between ‘pay-to-submit’ and the practice of a ‘recoupable’. Firstly, to be explicitly clear, no one at this company will ever ask a writer for money! Money would only ever be paid one way - to the writer.
Recoupable costs are agreed at the contract stage. The contract is only formally agreed when signed by both parties, this is done at the last stage of the process, after a writer has submitted, revised, and then had their tracks signed off by our exec team.
@Wolfie2112 - I’ll use your example to clarify this point. Say you wrote a 12 track album for us, this would incur a £25 mastering recoupable per track (£300). Here are some examples of how that would work out:
All 12 tracks make £0 - Then nothing changes. We have paid for the mastering, but the tracks haven’t made any money so nothing happens.
11 tracks make £0, but 1 track makes £800 - Then the recoupable mastering of £25 for that one track is recouped and we pay out the remaining balance of £775 to you the writer.
I hope this is clear and explains how recoupment works. In no way is this ‘pay-to-submit’ and in no way is it a means of making additional money. We cover all costs and the recoupments only take effect (on a track by track basis) if they make money.
We would love to hear from you all if you’re interested in working with us. Steven produced a wonderful album for us (Inspirational Beats), and we have an ever growing community of global writers, with a lot of them being outside the normal realms of London and LA.
I know this contract stuff can be quite complicated so more than happy to help in explaining things, be it in terms of Evolution Media Music or the wider industry as a whole.
Cheers
Josh
Music Curator & Production Assistant