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Andy Lykens

Innovating and operating through growth

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Why Every Brand Should Follow McDonald’s Golden Example In Music Publishing.

February 28, 2014 by Andy

McDLogo

I used to think music publishers were just big music companies that owned songs. Then I found out McDonald’s is a music publisher and things got interesting…

Everyone knows there’s money to be had with placing music in advertising, but many people may not know exactly why it’s such a boon.

Including the very brands that pay for the music in the first place.

It’s key to realize that the owners of a song get paid every single time a song airs on television or the radio. This is called a performance royalty.

What does this mean for brands?

You may be surprised to find out that many brands are already setup to collect these performance royalties. And not just small players – brands like McDonald’s, Nestlé and Unilever all collect performance royalties when songs air on TV.

But how do they do this?

It’s simple actually – a lot of advertising work is done as work-for-hire. Therefore the brand owns everything that’s created for their commercials, including the music.

A brand can simply sub-contract a “real” music publisher, or even small royalties shop, to setup a publishing entity, collect, track and manage the royalty income on their behalf.

Fees for setup are reasonable, especially compared to the amount of money the brand will earn back from performance royalties (out of which the music publisher will take an administrative cut).

The resulting income for any given spot depends on many variables.

The PRO’s certainly aren’t very open about their tracking formula – much of it is mystery sauce with a pinch of fairy-dust. Despite there being VERY reliable computer tracking services available this seems to be more of a thorn in the side of the PROs than a welcome new tool.

That means it’s tough to tell exactly how much money one spot brings in.

However, they could make enough in performance royalty income to pay themselves back for the expense of the music creation in the first place in many cases.

Is this bad business for the musicians that write the music?

In fact it’s often a better situation for the musicians. If brands don’t register their compositions that are works-for-hire it can be tough for Bill G. Songerton to collect his performance royalties.

But attach a big brand name to a small publisher, and you’ve got an entity that commands respect at the PRO’s (and not to mention one that registers works with all relevant data needed for tracking).

If a brand uses bespoke music for ads that air on TV or radio but isn’t setup to collect performance royalties, they’re missing out on creating a way to offset the cost of music, while also helping out the composers of the song at the same time.

This can all be managed by setting up a simple 3rd party music publisher that can run all of the administration for the brand and literally just cut a check once every quarter.

Let me know what you think about this in the comments – brands, does your agency have you setup to own your works-for-hire? Songwriters – what’s it like to collect performance royalties if your ad-work isn’t registered at a PRO?

Filed Under: Advertising Music, Brand, Music, music business, music business development, music industry, Music Licensing

Brands Want The Latest Hit, But Are Any Brave Enough Find It?

February 18, 2014 by Andy

Last year the music publisher I worked at got lucky.

We landed the new Daft Punk album.

EVERYONE wanted “Get Lucky.” We had so many requests pouring in for this song, so many brands and agencies went after this thing (or something that sounds like it) you just wouldn’t believe it.

All of them were turned down.

You see here’s the thing that a lot of brands do – they try to piggy back on the next new musical thing. They’ll throw obscene amounts of money at it (or sometimes laughable amounts of money if they don’t have much music licensing experience). But they can’t get it.

By the time the latest hit is a hit, it’s got too much clout. It’s too popular. They can’t afford it.

Why not try to FIND the next new thing?

Every label, every publisher, every indie artist that’s clamoring to get their song somewhere, ANYWHERE, is willing to let you listen.

Why not do the hard, low-risky work of curating the music as a brand project?

Some brands do this (or outsource it at least) – Mt. Dew (Green Label) and Red Bull are two obvious examples – and have seen some pretty cool results.

The problem with transactional music licensing is you often end up not getting what you pay for…what is it you’re paying for anyway?

Like anything, the more real effort you put into something the more positively it will reflect on the brand.

You don’t even have to do it with in-house employees or your agency – you can hire tastemakers to do this on your behalf (ahem, the contact me form on my blog is real easy to fill out by the way).

Let’s not forget to mention the service you’re doing for artists and for music in general. A whole new outlet for music.

What a great thing for everyone.

Filed Under: Advertising Music, Brand, Music, music business, music business development, Music Licensing

Learn How A Record Label Pursues Music Licensing

July 25, 2013 by Andy

If you’re an artist or in a band, chances are you’ve got a record out. Maybe you put it out yourself, maybe you’re signed to a small indie label, or maybe you landed a major deal with a nice advance from one of the bigger guys. The bottom line is you have a record.

But what exactly does that entail, and what does your label have to do with music licensing?

One of the basic elements of how music licensing works is the copyright for the sound recording. Just like the song you wrote, the actual sound recording has copyright protection as well. Typically sound recordings have only one owner.

A sound recording is often owned by the funders of the album.

That could be a record label, your band, a single member of your band, and less commonly a music publisher or company that had you create a work-for-hire…or your Aunt Mildred.

Ownership comes with responsibilities (ask Spiderman) and while a record label’s aims are more than just licensing your music on television or getting music in a commercial, it’s a valuable revenue stream and that’s what we’ll focus on here.

Here are some ways that your label (or you) can go about getting that recording licensed:

  • Direct Outreach – Market directly to music supervisors on TV shows, ad agency music producers, and other relevant contacts
  • Indirect Outreach – Create PR around your music by revealing a story through video, press release, or other media hoping the buzz brings you to the forefront of new music
  • Public Performance – Whether it be a tour around a region or playing at a branded event or for an ad agency’s happy hour, this can be an excellent venue to get your music heard and your charisma felt

Should your song achieve some traction and a license be requested, the label (or owner of the sound recording) will then be responsible for licensing the sound recording for use. They should be able to negotiate some standard terms and collect a ‘music synchronization fee’ (or ‘sync fee’) for the use of the sound recording.

If you own your masters or perhaps your band owns them collectively, you can get your music licensed with your own efforts. You can also seek representation by labels, publishers, and synchronization representatives in exclusive and non-exclusive agreements.

Do you have any experience with a record label and licensing your music? Leave a comment and let us know about it!

If you want to learn how to start building relationships with record labels for music placements, subscribe to my newsletter.

Filed Under: Advertising Music, Featured, Independent Music, Music, music business, music business development, Music Licensing, Music Placement

What Does It Take To Get 6 Songs Licensed By MTV?

May 29, 2013 by Andy

MTV Music Placement Case Study 2

Today we’re continuing the series of case studies from the exposure vs. value post. In this post we’ll be looking at someone who is self-published and has licensed music across a couple MTV series.

First, if you’d like to check out the origination of this series, you can do so here.

Also, here is a link to the first case study. Caught up? Man you can read fast. Nice work. Here we go.

I like a lot about Andrew’s story because he’s done two very smart things (which is 2 more than most people do); First, he’s acting as his own music publisher, and second he’s outreaching directly to a music supervisor. Here’s what Andrew had to say about his experience:

“I am new to the licensing side of music and when I first decided to give it a shot I was really surprised at how hard it is to get someone to listen to material! But after lots of research, emails, calls, and follow up emails I got in contact with the music supervisor for 16 and Pregnant. He listened to some of my twin brother and I’s material and liked it (and more importantly he liked us) and decided to use 6 of our songs for his shows! It was amazing!”

Pretty awesome right? Here’s a guy who literally just boot-strapped his way to some placements, represented his own catalog, and got a really nice result. Here’s what he has to say about what he gained from the experience:

“I hear a lot of people say MTV doesn’t pay much for their music but for us the amount we got up front was pleasing.  On top of that MTV soundtrack was tweeting our twitter handle and song name every time our song played on the original air date…We Also got the opportunity to be the featured artist on MTV soundtrack website and with that we got extra tweets and Facebook shout-outs.

Music Licensing Can Be Great Money!

I will say that the number of fans we got wasn’t as good as the money we got from the licensing fee and royalties for being the songwriter and publisher. Over all we gained some fans and got credible placements that generate royalties! We also got to establish a solid relationship with someone who can really help us.”

This is awesome and you can probably see why this is one of my favorite stories. Let’s do a brief recap and then I’ll offer some insight of my own to see where Andrew might start setting himself up for more big wins like these.

Value Gained: Andrew got the best of many worlds. Multiple placements that paid him out fairly, royalties, exposure as featured artist and lots of twitter activity.

The Doc Brown Advantage: Like Lauren I asked Andrew what he might do differently were he given the chance again:

“Well one thing i found out is that it’s a very long process. It took me well over a year to get those placements and in that time I learned a lot. One thing I learned and will always do is to build a professional relationship. These guys get thousands of songs every single week so it is very important to stand out and be memorable, if they get an e-blasted email addressed to them and every other music supervisor I know for a fact they wont bother to read it….The reality is that i have tried ALL of the sites where you pay to submit songs for big deals hoping that it will get used in something. The most important thing I have learned is if you want something to happen you have to make it happen yourself.“

IMHO: There are three highlights I’d like to make about Andrew’s situation. First, since he was representing songs he had composed, not only is he directly negotiating his own fees & terms, BUT he also gets to keep ALL of the money generated from the license. He keeps the sync fee, the writer’s share, and the publisher’s share of the performance royalties. Generally speaking if you’re using a library or placement service, you’d get ONLY your writer’s royalty. If you had a typical publisher, you’d get half (or less) of the sync fee plus writer’s share. What a HUGE difference it makes to do it yourself. More work? You bet. But I think it’s totally worth it for a number of reasons.

Great Relationships Mean More Music PlacementsNext, let’s not overlook the value of the relationship he established with the music supervisor. Yes, the placements are awesome, the upfront money and royalties are great, and all the social media attention is nice. But probably the MOST valuable takeaway from this experience in my opinion, is his music supervisor relationship. That person could go on to work on many more shows, films, at an ad agency, you name it. If Andrew periodically checks in with the music supervisor, it could mean YEARS of placements, royalties, and heck, even a new friend. This is why I constantly stress being professional and building connections in a genuine manner. It just works better for everyone.

Finally, Andrew REALLY worked hard to get these placements. One year is not an atypical amount of time to securing your first placement (sometimes it can be longer)! Remember to keep on plugging away, stick to your goal and follow your plan. Stay in touch with the good connections you end up making and let yourself grow with them. I’ll talk about this more in my upcoming book which I think you’re really going to love.

If I were to offer advice to Andrew, I would tell him first and foremost to keep following up with that music supervisor. Ask him what new shows he’s working on or even if he wants to grab coffee sometime soon as a thank you. Second is to reflect on that year of research and outreach and try to hone in on the processes that worked. What did that music supervisor respond well to? Was it a particular email or phone conversation? What were key talking points with him that might be relevant elsewhere? Use it as a starter-template to start outreach to new connections. Finally, Andrew had a lot of social media attention but it seems like there’s more opportunity there to engage fans and potential fans. What about creating an email list sending a free single to anyone who saw his music on the show?

I hope you enjoyed Andrew’s story as much as I did and Andrew, I hope you’re really proud. You did excellent work and I’m really happy it paid off for you. You’ve all heard my opinion, what about yours? What would you tell Andrew to do as far as social media goes? Have any of you found really effective strategies for capitalizing on quick bursts of activity online? I’d love to hear about it so send me an email!

We’ve got a couple more case studies to review and I think you’ll find them equally as interesting. Also, please do me a huge favor and check out Andrew’s band Ratham Stone online as a thank you for sharing his story, ideas, and thoughts with us:

http://www.rathamstone.com/

Filed Under: Music, music business, music business development, music industry, Music Licensing, Music Marketing, Music Placement Tagged With: MTV Licensing

How I Got A Cover On The Top 200 iTunes Download Chart.

April 30, 2013 by Andy

Getting a song in a commercial or on TV is a great way to earn some money. But the other thing artists often consider is the tremendous exposure! We hear a lot about exposure and it’s often used as a negotiating tactic when it comes to licensing. I think exposure value can be all over the map, but this is a case where the original song and the brand’s efforts combined to boost this great cover of “All Shook Up” onto the iTunes Top 200 downloads.

Here’s a quick synopsis of my latest efforts…

The Project: One of my clients emailed me with a description of a new series of commercials he was working on and attached a storyboard (or simply, ‘board’). They wanted a sensual, sexy song for a new Trojan ad but also wanted something that people would recognize.

What I Did: After reviewing the creative material, I immediately recollected a new version of “All Shook Up” – Elvis Presley’s classic – that we had been sent by an independent artist. I pitched the song for the spot and they loved it.

There were some bumps and bruises along the way, but eventually we got it ironed out and I even got the track featured on the brand website with a link to download it in iTunes. Take a look, I think they turned out great! We just found out it entered the iTunes Top 200 at no. 152 and are expecting it to climb higher over the next couple weeks.

Listen to the Track

Music Licensed: "All Shook Up" by Avila

Watch the Commercials

Filed Under: Advertising Music, Independent Music, Music, music business, music industry, Music Licensing, Music Placement

Low Hanging Fruit in the Music Business: Leap-Frog Cold Calls And Get Noticed By Music Supervisors

March 9, 2013 by Andy

Before we get started, if you’re new to the blog you can read Part 1 of the Low Hanging Fruit series about getting music licensing or other music opportunities here. When you’re done with that, hit up part 2 here to learn how to make key music licensing contacts. If you’re done with one and two, strap in! We’re going to cover how to rapidly make connections with people who can actually help you in your career.

When you’re engaged in a conversation with someone – friend, stranger, or enemy – it’s key to have some triggers set up mentally. These triggers will act as stimulus for you to ask leading questions to help bring you closer to generating a genuine connection with someone that can help you. For instance, if I’m talking to a new acquaintance or stranger, the topic of “what do you do?” inevitably comes up.

In the last email, we talked a bit about how to respond to this question (you can tweak those phrases a lot to really behoove you, but I’ll cover that in a future email). Once a conversation is rolling, here are some key phrases to listen for (they should be blatantly obvious):

  • Advertising
  • TV
  • Film
  • A&R
  • Record Label
  • Publishing
  • A Brand

These triggers are probably already setup in your head and if you meet someone that works in these areas or knows someone in these areas, you obviously would like to dig without sounding greedy or pushy. Ideally, you’ll setup some form of informative conversation where you’re not taking too much time from the other person and make it REALLY easy for them to help you out.

When you hear any of the above, here is a string of questions you can use to try and find out if you can get connected:

1. Which company do they/you work for? This is an obvious one but even having the name of a company means you can at the very least go home and research it online. For instance, if someone works for a brand, even a local one, you can see if they’ve done any sort of media with music under it.

Example: Griffin Technology is a well-known brand. If you live in Nashville, TN this means that you may have a connection to the company. Their website is easy enough to find, and if you head over to YouTube, you can see they’ve posted content that has music under it (check it out here).

2. What do they do for the company? Another obvious question and to be honest, the answer doesn’t really matter. This conversation is all about connecting with someone who is willing to help you. If they happen to work in the mail room or are the CEO, someone willing to help you is more valuable than where they lay on the food chain (you will also find that people who are willing to help others are often higher on the food chain anyway).

3. How do they/you like it there? This question is great because you’ll almost always be interested in the answer. People really open up when they talk about what their work life is. Also, they can leave clues here if they’re struggling in accomplishing a task or project. You never know, that could be something you can help them with.

4. What are they/you working on right now? A heavy hitter. Here again you’re giving the person a chance to talk about what they’re doing and to see if you can help. If you’re talking to a connection, here’s where they may not know. That’s fine but if it’s the case you can follow up with “I would love to sit down and chat with X about what they’re doing.”

As you can probably tell, these questions are great and they’ll help you start a natural dialog. Even with people you may have little in common with, you may just find out something interesting about what they do. Here’s where what we talked about in part 2 comes in handy – always saying yes. Keep your eyes open for ANY opportunity through the natural dialog above will help you help more people.

Next it’s good to know some job titles because ultimately we’d like to get our music on TV (or published or what have you), wouldn’t we? So when you hear these job titles, or phrases, get real curious and see if you can’t fix yourself up with a meeting by drilling down with the questions above:

Producer
– Producers exist in music, TV, advertising, still photography, and much more. Generally being a producer means being responsible for over-seeing a project and helping facilitate the various logistics.

Art Buyer
– Ad agencies have art buyers to, duh, buy art. That includes ANY sort of art including music. And because music and picture so often go hand-in-hand, these folks can be great to get to know. Even if they don’t do anything with music, they will know who does.

Creative Director
– At an agency, creative directors are responsible for the overall creative vision for a brand. They oversee and conceive of major creative ideas for commercials, packaging, and any place where you’d see some sort of brand execution. Obviously they are key decision makers and are great to know or meet.

Copywriter
– These folks write the verbage for whatever brand they’re working on. Whether it’s a commercial script or a print ad. Sometimes they’ll be tasked with coming with lyrics for custom music as well.

Director
– An obvious one, these guys are responsible for the overall vision of a video project for either film, video, commercials or music videos.

Publishing
– Generally speaking people at music publishers can do any number of jobs – the good news is they’ll typically know who to talk to if they’re not it!

Record Label
– Another obvious one. Same as publishing above.

Line Producer
– Line Producers are tasked with budgeting on a given production. For this reason they interface with all departments and know how much money they have to spend on any given piece…like music!

Any of the above with the word “associate” in front of it, or “coordinator” behind it.
– Generally speaking these folks are going to be pretty new to their industry, or to the company they work at. They’re great to get to know because they can move up very quickly but are also receptive to things like free show tickets and album downloads.

These are just a few of the many types of names and titles at production companies, ad agencies, music companies, and people in the film world. However, having a good idea of the TYPES of jobs available at these companies, combined with a few simple questions, you can really set yourself down a path to making solid, real connections quickly.

It’s also important to remember what I said in a previous article: you’re not looking to solve your ultimate goal, you just want to meet and talk about what they do and see where it leads. The very worst that can happen is they can’t help you directly but you end up with a new friend or contact. It’s important to keep that in mind because literally ANYONE can be a fan.

Action Step: It’s time to prepare yourself for conversation. First, do a Google search for any music companies, ad agencies, production companies, or other entities in your city (or in the one nearest by) you’d like to contact. Take a look at their “about us” or info pages and look for any relevant material like video with music underneath it. Then do the following:

Email 15-20 of your friends individually (personalized messages)
Ask if they know someone who works for one of your target companies
If so, ask them if they’ll connect you to that person, and see if you can all grab a coffee together sometime.
If not, tell them to keep their ears open and that you’re looking for music connections based on what you found doing research on the company.

I hope you’ve found The Low Hanging Fruit Series useful. I’m working on my next batch of emails so stay tuned for more music business strategy (including how to put your best foot forward when pitching your music to a contact) and if you need to subscribe, click here!

Filed Under: Advertising Music, Independent Music, Music, music business, music business development, Music Licensing, Music Placement Tagged With: Low Hanging Fruit, Series

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