Andy Lykens

Innovating and operating through growth

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How Does A P.R.O. License Music?

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A lot of artists I know think the first step to licensing music is registering with a PRO (Performing Rights Organization). Interestingly, when it comes to getting your music in commercials or on TV, this is quite often the last necessary step (albeit a VERY important one).

ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC are entities that collect royalties in the United States. They then distribute these royalties to their members based on complex equations that mostly, don’t work very well. But that’s another article.

How does a PRO work, and do they license music in films, TV, and commercials?

The PRO’s talk a lot about how they license your music, and that’s true! But what you may not understand is that they’re collecting licensing fees from restaurants, broadcasters, radio stations, and more. Their goal is to get CBS or The Olive Garden to pay them an annual fee. They then take that fee and divvy it up among that PRO’s registered members.

Are they actively trying to get your music placed in television or trying to convince every McDonald’s to play your latest CD? No.

However, they do have a very important role if you do get your music licensed for movies, a commercial, or other media that gets performed for an audience (which includes broadcast uses).

Once you get your music on television and the show or commercial starts to air, it is technically being publicly performed. Think about it – your work is being performed, and an audience people are hearing the rendition.

Each public performance garners a set fee. These fees depend mostly on the time of day (prime-time, daytime, etc), broadcast channel (cable, pay cable, network) and type of performance (is your song in the background, is it a theme song?).

Those fees are monitored, recorded, and finally distributed to the songwriters and publishers who own and represent them.

So if you are able to secure music placements on TV or in commercials, you’ll definitely want to get setup with a P.R.O. right away! If you’re an up-and-comer however, you may be better off focusing your initial outreach on landing a music publishing deal or contacting music supervisors to try and get your music licensed first.

If you’re REALLY serious about getting your music licensed, subscribe to my newsletter for a free 8-part how-to course, music publishing 101 audio download, and more!

Learn How A Record Label Pursues Music Licensing

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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.

How To Determine The Value Of Music Licensing Exposure On MTV

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This post was originally published via my newsletter, where my newest material always gets sent months before it appears on this blog. Click here to subscribe to my music licensing newsletter.

Musicians are often asked to trade dollars for ears and told how great the exposure will be. Whether it be a live performance, a synchronization usage, or simply giving away CDs at a gig you will constantly be confronted with opportunity paid only by a promised quantity of listeners.

What’s interesting about this predicament is how set most people are in giving their opinion. You’ll hear things from “never play for free!” to “give it all away!” In the end, it boils down to a simple choice – but these choices are often made under pressure or time constraints.

It’s key to think about these sorts of business decisions before they even arise. This way you can be equipped to answer them under pressure, or at least know enough to ask the right questions. In this way, you’ll have enough information to make the right choice for you.

So how do we value exposure?

Well, it goes back to a bunch of other topics I’ve written on – specifically goal setting. If you have your key goals in mind you’ll be able to make the most of ‘exposure’ opportunities.

Let’s take a look at just one instance of value vs. exposure on TV

Many placement companies will make a list of placements and a lot of the shows on that list will be MTV. Have you watched an MTV show recently? How many songs get played during any given show? How are you to differentiate one song from the next?

Generally MTV pays very, very little money for the music they use (sometimes they pay nothing at all) but then touts how great it is to get music on MTV and they put a track list up on a website after the program airs.

This CAN be good exposure but think about this:

If a potential new fan is watching television and hears a new song they like, will they go through the process to seek it out online, listen through the various songs used in the episode, find the song, google the band, and go to their website to sign up for their mailing list or go to iTunes to download their song?

The answer is – they might! But this is a long and fairly tedious process to acquire a single song that they’ll most likely forget about if they don’t IMMEDIATELY take action upon hearing it on the show. Yikes!

Now look, I’m not saying to not take a placement on MTV, but what I am saying is you need to consider what you might get out of it. So let’s give it a try, shall we?

I went on the MTV website and here was my process:

  1. Go to MTV.com
  2. Find the show I pretended I was watching (in this case I just chose 16 and Pregnant – nice’n’wholesome).
  3. Here’s what I immediately see:

  4. I’m not sure which song it was, so I’ve got to try and nail it down by clicking on each artist (I’m pretending it wasn’t the ‘feature’ song).
  5. Alright, now I see the following:
  6. After listening through the track list, I finally find the song I liked. My options are to buy it (on Rhapsody!), or check out the info and bio for the artist. Here’s what I see for the artist page:
  7. The artist page is a joke. No link to the artist website, no bio, so now if I want to find out more about the artist, live dates, or if the artist is trying to funnel me to their mailing list I’d have to specifically google her and hopefully she’ll show up and I’ll be pointed in the right direction. And finally, buying the track from Rhapsody? Are you serious? When you think of where to buy digital music, is Rhapsody the first name that pops into your head?

Sheesh – lots of work involved for the fan. How many opportunities does a new listener have to get fed up or bored with this process before they find your song? Furthermore, I did this on a laptop, what if the person is using an iPad or an iPhone? How great is this ‘exposure’? What kinds of questions might you ask if you’re given a proposition like this one?

Remember: have your specific goals in mind, weigh the opportunity as carefully as time allows, and do your homework BEFORE the situation arises!

If you’ve licensed a song on MTV yourself or through a service, I’d love to hear about that experience and how it turned out for you. Leave a note in the comments and fill other readers in on your experience!