Top Seminar Questions

We were recently approached by a friends who went to a music placement seminar with a handful of a-list music supervisors. Although he found the seminar helpful, he wanted specific answers to questions and felt it was difficult getting a straight-forward answer. We decided to take a shot at it.

1. What does the average television synchronization license go for?
Major artists can fetch tens of thousands of dollars for a single license. Independent artists can expect to fetch anywhere between a few hundred dollars to a couple of thousand dollars per license.

2. Share your thoughts on "re-titling" tracks.
Many companies participate in "re-titling" of tracks. The reasons make sense. It allows the same song to have different publishing administrators and publishing percentages per placement. It also allows the same track to have more opportunities for placements. The problem is that (1) piece of intellectual property (i.e. a track) gets (1) copyright only. It is therefore illegal to re-title tracks. We have heard stories where multiple companies are unknowingly pitching the same artist, and it ends up being a bad deal for the companies and the artists.

We do not participate in re-titling for the above reasons as well as another. We are in the process of partnering with a digital watermarking and surveying company which digitally fingerprints all of our music and then surveys domestic networks, as well as a few international. It's similar to the way Shazam works on the iPhone, but automatically scans all the networks and provides data on usage. A re-title would still trigger a usage and a closer look into any potential copyright infringement.

We believe that this technology will become more prevalent and will expose many of these re-titled tracks, prompting many lawsuits, which will eventually come back to the artists who originally entered into the agreement.

3. What's the best way to submit (get my music in front of supervisors)?

You could send out your record or demo. But, I think most people would agree that it is always about "who you know". Ask around and see if you know anyone in the business, and then offer to take them to lunch and express your goals. An alternative method would be to submit your music here. We have deals in place that will automatically distribute your music to Warner Bros, CBS Paramount, MTV, and others as well as our distributors in France, Greece, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, and Poland. We cannot guarantee that your music will get used, but if it is selected, then we believe it will and send it out giving the music a ton of exposure.

4. How do I get more out of my synchs (credits)?

This is a difficult issue. Most agreements have language that states that the production company will do their "best effort" to afford credit, but that failure to do so is not a breach of the agreement. It's easy to see why. It helps to protect the production company in the event of a mistake. That being said, we have found out that the best way to get credit is to simply ask for it. If the music is a part of the story, not necessarily a source cue, most companies usually don't have an objection.