Dot Your “i”, and Cross Your “t”

Last week I got an email from one of the publishers I work with (Eric) asking if I had already received my royalty payment from BMI for a song I wrote which he got placed on the CW Network. The song had gotten a pretty good amount of airplay so the payment was significant enough for him to make sure everything was in order. Unfortunately it wasn’t.

I told Eric that I had not received any payment from BMI for that particular song, but that I would contact them to find out what had happened. I called up BMI and spoke to a registration representative. I explained to her my situation and she quickly went to work on finding out what may have happened. I was on the phone with her about a good 15 to 20 minutes when she told me that they did not have me registered as a songwriter for that particular song. In fact they had not even been collecting songwriter dues for that song at all.

Writing for the Client

As a film & TV songwriter we constantly have to keep in mind exactly what our client wants and try not to veer away from it during the songwriting and production process. I use to have the problem where I would start working on a project for a client and I’ll get just the right rhythm section going, (i.e.; drums, bass, percussion). Then I’ll start playing a riff, melody or even a particular sound that I really liked a lot but it didn’t fit the idea the client was looking for. I use to waste about a good 30 minutes or more playing around with this until I finally came back to consciousness and realize I was getting off the mark of what I was really supposed to be doing.