By Paul Bordenkircher
In our Recordkeeping segment months ago, we covered the key items a publisher is responsible to maintain as part of their duty to Promote, Protect and Collect. So far, we’ ve covered registrations and credits, now comes another hurdle: tracking actual uses of your original works. Such an un-sexy way to end this series, don’ t you think? But all this work is for nothing if you don’ t get paid for your work.
Pitch a song, they say yes, and you wait for the checks to arrive. You’ d think this would be easy, right? Naturally, it’ s never quite that simple. And frankly, if I covered it all, this would be an incredibly long article, so I’ ll try to keep it brief.
Tracking Uses of Your Music //
In theory, every time music is used as part of a television show or any live broadcast, it is supposed to be logged--when it’ s used, how much, and whether it is in the foreground or background--onto a cue sheet. Each episode of every show has its own cue sheet, and the cue sheets are supposed to be filed with performing rights societies.
In reality, this often does not happen.
There are a few different ways a song can be accepted for use and can make it difficult to track. Here’ s just a couple examples.
▪ A sport channel picks up your song for use in game broadcasts. Your song is played in one of the bumpers, either going to commercial or coming back from a commercial. The song is used during live broadcast, and only plays for 5-10 seconds.
▪ A news documentary channel picks up your song for what they call their pre-cleared library.
For the sports channel, songs used in the bumpers are often picked live on the fly, and therefore, aren’ t documented. Some channels claim that the use is so short, is does not require documentation.
In the case of the documentary channel, many companies will create their own collections of outside music for which all licensing paperwork has been completed. Their underlying productions are now free to grab any song from their own library to drop into show episodes, because all the songs have been cleared in advance. Problem with this one is, your work may never get used, or sporadically over many years.
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