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.
The following is a break-down on how BMI pays its members for songs played on television. This information is straight from their website, so if you want more details I advise you to visit them. Now ASCAP has its own mysterious methods as well, but since I’m not a member of ASCAP I’ll just give you BMI’s explanation. Mind you however, that they’re both pretty much the same when it comes to issuing payments.
First thing to understand is that there are 6 types of performances that BMI recognizes. They are as follows:
1) Feature Performance; in which the song is the
focus of the audience attention.
2) Background Performance; when a song is used as an underscore to a scene where the music is not the focus of audience attention.
3) Theme Performance; the regular theme of a program. Viewers will identify the song with the program.
4) Logo Performance; Almost like the Theme Performances, but it recognizes a logo instead of the program (ex: snare drums and horns on the logo of 20th Century Fox).
5) Paid Programming Performance; music you usually find on info-mercials or long advertisements which demonstrates a product.
6) Promotional Announcement and Commercial Jingle Performance; A promo announcement is an announcement that advertises an upcoming program.
Now the following is a break down of how each performances are paid out according to the time of the performance and if it was on a major network or cable network.
ABC, CBS AND NBC NETWORK TELEVISION RATES
(Through September 30, 2007)
|
PERFORMANCE TYPE |
PRIMETIME (6:00 PM-10:59 PM) |
LATENIGHT (11:00 PM-1:59 AM) |
OVERNIGHT (2:00 AM-5:59 AM) |
MORNING/DAYTIME (6:00 AM-5:59 PM) |
|
FULL FEATURE (45 SECONDS OR MORE)* |
$11.50 |
$9.00 |
$5.00 |
$6.00 |
|
THEME (PER SHOW) |
$7.00 |
$4.64 |
$0.80 |
$1.40 |
|
BACKGROUND (PER MINUTE) |
$1.42 |
$0.94 |
$0.68 |
$0.78 |
|
LOGO (PER SHOW) |
$0.30 |
$0.24 |
$0.22 |
$0.28 |
Local Television Rates
|
PERFORMANCE TYPE |
DAYPART A (4:00 PM-12:59 AM) |
DAYPART B (ALL OTHER TIMES) |
|
FULL FEATURE (45 SECONDS OR MORE)* |
$5.00 |
$1.50 |
|
THEME (PER SHOW) |
$2.00 |
$1.00 |
|
BACKGROUND (PER MINUTE) |
$0.76 |
$0.42 |
|
LOGO (PER SHOW) |
$0.18 |
$0.16 |
Now you would think that from these two charts and a copy of the cue sheet which is provided by the network, you would have a clear way of calculating how much you would be paid. Well not so fast. Here is some additional calculations that BMI performs:
Network Television royalty payments are based upon the license fees that BMI collects from each individual network. Royalty payment rates will vary from quarter to quarter depending upon the amount of the license fees allocated to each quarter determined by using television audience measurement data provided by Nielsen Media Research.
As you can see there are a lot of different variables in place and unless you have your statement in front of you, it maybe almost impossible to calculate how much money you’ll be receiving from your performances.
One good thing I can say for BMI is that whenever I have had any questions regarding my statement and/or payment, they’ve been pretty quick at given me a clear answer. So don’t be afraid or shy to call them up if you feel something in your statement is off or you don’t understand something. Remember it’s your money.
