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Saturday, April 28, 2012

Motion Picture Performance Monies

Motion Picture Performance Monies

Due to some fancy footwork by the film industry a number of years ago ASCAP and BMI are not permitted to collect public performance monies when making your own music and your songs are in motion pictures. There seems to be no logical reason for this. It is just political and historically not done. However, foreign territories have never bought into this nonsense, and motion picture performance monies are very significant. The fees are collected by local societies, then paid over to ASCAP and BMI.

     Foreign film performance monies are percentage of the box office receipts, which means they generate a good amount of green. How much? Well, the composer of a major smash film score can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign performance monies alone.

Which Society Is Best

This is hard to tell. The best gauge is to look at cross-registered songs, which means a song that is registered with both ASCAP and BMI. This happens when a song is owned by an ASCAP and BMI publisher. If a song is owned 50% with BMI and 50% with ASCAP, each publisher must match that of the writer. With cross-registered songs, ASCAP collects half of the song and remits to the ASCAP writer/publisher on the same song, each independent of the other so we get to see who pays more.

    In the comparisons I've seen, ASCAP seems to do a bit better in general, but for some compositions, BMI beats them. Also, BMI changes its payment schedule periodically. Thus there are no hard and fast rules. 

Home Recording Software

     Here is the best value to record music at home effective and with a high quality of sound. Home recording software can be expensive, This one is under 40 bucks! Have a look here. Dub Turbo.

*Author Arian Collin is a independent manager for bands and solo artist. Mr. Collin is highly knowledgeable in music law.