The following story is pure fiction. But I thought it would be fun to play devil’s advocate and show what could happen when you’re not careful with the types of deals you sign or don’t follow up appropriately.
Again, this is fictional story that doesn’t represent me or anyone that I know, work with, or have worked with in the past.
Trevor is a very talented 27 year old songwriter and musician who plays several different instruments. He’s also a prolific songwriter and great music engineer. With such talent it ‘s no surprise that by the age of 25 Trevor had written well over 100 songs and had a cut with a promising up & coming recording Artists.
A few years ago Trevor got involved in music production libraries and learned how he could get his instrumental music placed on TV and film projects. He realized how much easier it was to get placements in these types of projects than actually getting a song cut by a major recording Artist. So he put together a collection of instrumentals music and started shopping it around to different music libraries.
It wasn’t too long before he had over 70 songs signed with a couple of libraries. To his surprise he discovered that if he signed non-exclusive deals with these libraries he could continue to shop those same songs to several other libraries, opening up even more possibilities for placement. The work paid off. In a short period of time Trevor got a couple of placements on TV projects and began to see some extra money on his BMI statements.
As Trevor continued to look for more libraries to get his music placed, he learned how some non-exclusive libraries were using a practice called “re-titling”. Basically libraries would sign songs then re-title it. They would then register the new title with the performing rights organizations (PROs) showing him as the writer and the library as the publisher. All this was legal and the process didn’t affect Trevor at all since this process was only meant for the libraries to be able track which publishing share belonged to them. He would still be getting his normal writer’s share.
Trevor eventually signed several “re-titling” deals and continued to see even more of his songs get placements. His BMI royalties by now started to make him a little extra income where he was able to upgrade his equipment. He knew that if he kept writing, producing and getting his songs placed, he would establish a pipeline of music and royalties that could eventually lead him to do this as a full time job.
About a month later, Trevor was approached by a “mysterious” music library who also wanted to sign his entire catalog. They told him how they would re-title the songs and try to place as many songs as possible just like the other libraries were already doing for him. Trevor didn’t know much about the company, but since their offer was no different than the other re-titling libraries; he signed about 80 songs with them.
About a week later he received an email from the library with a list of all his songs and their new titles. Since he had so many songs they told him they would not t register the new titles with the PROs until they actually got a placement for them. He didn’t think twice about it since he understood how time consuming something like that was.
Trevor never heard anything back from that library, but figured they just didn’t get him any placements. He didn’t care too much because he was now working with about 17 non-exclusive libraries, and creating a nice pipeline of songs and revenue.
Then one day as he was watching TV he saw a car commercial and noticed that the background music sounded familiar. The next day the commercial aired again and this time he paid closer attention. Sure enough! The song was one of his! It was a short piece he wrote years ago called “Speed Racer”. Trevor was excited to hear his song on TV and even happier knowing that his BMI royalties would be increasing soon. After all; this song had never generated him any money before, so this was going to be new revenue on an old tune.
Trevor decided to see which library had gotten him the placement, so he sent all 17 of them emails asking if they had licensed the song to one of their clients. Most of them answered him back saying “no”, a few never replied. After a few months went by he noticed that the song was not appearing on his BMI statements, so he decided to contact his BMI representative.
His BMI rep told him that the song he was inquiring about was titled “Old Racer” and BMI had been collecting and distributing royalties on it for over 16 months. When Trevor asked who is the publisher and more importantly “where was the writer’s share going to”, he learned that it was the same “mysterious” library he had never heard back from.
Trevor quickly went into his files and found the list the library had sent him showing the new titles for his songs. He noticed that his song called “Speed Racer” was re-titled to “Racer Head”. Nowhere on the list was the title “Old Racer” in which BMI was collecting royalties for. Upon further research Trevor found out that his song was not only generating income from the U.S. but for almost a year it was generating royalties from overseas broadcast as well. The song had already earned over $8,000.00 in performance royalties, and he had not seen a single cent from it.
Trevor tried to contact the library but there was no phone number or address available. He wound up sending multiple emails which they weren’t responding to. It wasn’t until one of his emails threatened to sue them that he finally got a response. The girl who responded said that it was probably a simple mistake, but Trevor wasn’t buying it. He had figured that the library re-titled his song differently than what they told him in order to collect on his writer’s share.
After a lot of back & forth Trevor was finally able to get his share of the back royalties and through further, negotiations he was also able to pull all of his songs out from the library, however he was never able to know for sure if this was the only song which the library had illegally claimed as their own. Could some of his other songs be generating revenue that he is not aware of?
