My Advice to Composers

By Lee Pritchard

This article explains how composers can use Media Music Now to help promote their music by selling directly to businesses rather than using the royalty-collecting societies.

As a composer, I have been approached many times by SMEs (small to medium enterprises) to provide music for media purposes.

In my personal experience, the client usually prefers to buy the music they wish to use outright as most companies don’t really understand copyright laws or royalty collecting societies. They’re more than happy to make a deal that involves a one-time payment directly, like their other business transactions.

So by taking this concept to a wider audience, through Media Music Now, I have made our music library accessible to all SMEs on this basis.

Fair enough, I act as the middleman for you, the music maker, but this offers you a revenue stream where conventional methods often miss out.

Most up-and-coming composers aspire to live from the proceeds of life-long royalty cheques for music they wrote years ago. Unfortunately, unless you are an established soundtrack composer or have music in the top 40, the reality is that this probably won’t happen and most of your income will be from direct sales.

Royalty Collecting Societies…good or bad?

I don’t have anything against collecting societies. On the whole, I think they provide a great service to their members. Avoiding the use of royalty collecting societies is a decision I made based on my target market and my business methodology.

Collecting societies tend to be most effective for composers when your music is used by major broadcasters or included in a mass duplication product, such as a feature film released on DVD.

The drawback is that many non-mainstream music uses are paid for in the form of a blanket license. This means that you’ll only get paid on a pro-rata basis, calculated on a sample of playlists rather than for every use of your music.

This means that big mainstream artists/composers almost always get paid something because they have a greater presence in the world, whereas the lesser-known composer gets paid if they’re lucky!

So What’s the Best Way?

Most music industry advisors, accessible through government agencies, will tell you that you need to join the royalty collecting societies. This is because often, they have never worked in the industry as a composer and are giving the official line. Or they have worked in the industry and been involved in record labels.

Either way, those guys are talking about their traditional industry experience or theory. What I am talking about here is the reality of how so many independent composers actually generate an income from one-time payments/buyout.

I strongly believe it is best to consider all the options. Look at the type of work you do and how the collecting societies work before you decide which way is best for you.

Broadly speaking, if you have music used on TV and Radio, you are definitely better to register your works with collecting societies as these are accurately monitored.
If you write lots of music for one-time payments, you will not benefit from registering with collecting societies and may not even recoup your registration fees.

Of course, you could use both methods selectively. There is nothing I know of to stop you.

Here is a great site and great article that explains royalty collection in detail. http://www.bemuso.com/musicbiz/collectionsocieties.html

Conclusion

I think my fresh pragmatic approach works extremely well for the independent composer/artist and because it offers SMEs an affordable and safe solution, it’s a win-win situation for everyone.

If you have any feedback, comments or questions please click here to contact Lee

Click here to see our dedicated music maker section.

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