Recently I had the good fortune to get a lot of airplay from CW Network on one of my dance instrumental songs. My wife was pretty excited about it and later asked me “how much did you make from it?” Don’t get her wrong, she is not materialistic or anything like that, but she was simply asking the same question that so many people ask when their song gets airplay. However my answer was the same as almost every songwriter has to confront with. “I Don’t Know”. At least not yet.
The fact is that one of the most confusing (and mysterious) accounting practices resides in the music business, and that is royalties from the performing rights organization (PRO’s). I have been a member of BMI since 1986, yet I still don’t exactly know how to calculate my royalties until I receive my statement and sit down to break it up. And unfortunately you get those statements every 3 months, so it’s very difficult to know what you’ll receive before hand. Even if when you have a cue sheet and know how many plays you got, calculating what your check will be is not an easy task.
