recently I had a nice conversation with AdRev support and they told me, they get money only from USA views. AdRev response:
PROs collect revenue generated from all non US views, whereas AdRev can only collect US views for publishing sync. Your PRO should be receiving their info from YouTube directly and paying out accordingly. Make sure you have all songs registered with your PRO, and you can always double check to make sure they have all they need for YouTube collection.
How does it look like in your PRO?
My Polish ZAIKS paid me 0$ for youtube. And I suppose that’s because they have system based on a filtering huge text files received from youtube. They have some kind of text filter which searches for names of registered authors in titles, descriptions of the biggest files. This is enough to find music clips with your music, eventually in films. That’s not enough to find music in commercials, vlogs etc. That’s what they told me more than year ago.
Does ASCAP use SoundMouse fingerprinting for youtube tracking outside the US? BMI?
I´m with BMI and as far as I know they don´t use in this moment any fingerprinted technology, but they collect royalties from YouTube. In this moment I´m receiving only YouTube Royalties from USA.
I get worldwide coverage with BMI for everything except for the internet. I have received plenty of YouTube view payments through BMI but all internet audio payments, regardless of source, are U.S. only. I have never received international payments from internet audio. All of my international payments are listed as either from film/cinema, television, “general”, or “various”. Those last two do not explain the use type, but it’s not likely that it would be internet.
Let me give you an example of how meaningless this is. I randomly checked one quarter where I had 50,632 streams. That only brought me $8.41 USD. This is nothing and in my opinion, not worth worrying about. Where I live, $8.41 is a “fancy” cup of coffee at Starbucks and a bagel. You need millions of views per quarter before this is even somewhat meaningful by itself. It’s just one more revenue stream added to the overall stream.
Besides YouTube general streams categorized as “internet audio”, BMI also pays me for YouTube “video on demand” (VOD) channel use, as well as VOD from Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix. VOD is categorized as “internet audiovisual”. These things also pay nothing. All of this stuff is like popular music streaming, fractions of pennies per stream. My total for all VOD coming from YouTube, Hulu, Amazon and Netflix for last quarter was $5.74. That is coming from several shows playing on each one and some shows have several of my cues in an episode.
While AdRev is basically monetizing violations, BMI is collecting actual royalties from legitimate uses. BUT, each quarter, I earn considerably MORE from the AdRev monetization of violations than the legitimate use royalty payments of internet audio and internet audiovisual combined. Again, those internet royalty payments aren’t just YouTube. Keeping that in mind perhaps I should encourage illegal use…
im with BMI…how do you get youtube earnings from them? I get youtube stuff from AdRev…also i havent seen one cent from BMI ever but ive seen lots of money from AdRev…
You don´t need to do nothing. Just wait until BMI find your music in YouTube. I´m with BMI about 18 months, and each report they find more YouTube videos with my music.
And about royalties: In theory each country PROs should collect all writer’s and publisher’s roylaties from YOUTUBE views. And send them to yours PRO. Haven’t seen these money in my PRO yet and probably I will not see them. Time to switch to ASCAP to collect anything.
Yes, sure, we all know that. Still, I think we have to have knowledge of this system. Year after year system should be better and earnings should be higher. Few weeks ago UE parlament passed new copyright act which tries to increase earnings from internet royalties…
I don’t know. This whole system is so opaque, it’s hard to get to even simple facts like this. I do have several Music rights entities shown in the music by snippets on claimed videos. No idea what those are though. When I asked AdRev, they gave me some vague answers. They told me those other music rights entities were PROs. I’m not registered with a PRO yet. So I dunno what they’re talking about…
Every day I’m getting closer to start the detailed investigation in this royalties area
Like it’s said in the ASCAP link I’ve provided, there is a Youtube service where we can upload our tracks so Youtube can use Content ID to track our music and send more precised reports to PROs. Does anybody know which service they’ve mentioned? I remember something like youtube cid for publishers but I can’t find it.
My understanding is that it is all about who owns the copyright and not publisher versus songwriter like in the case of royalties. I am paid directly as the copyright owner and whether or not I have a publishing company is irrelevant. Otherwise, it goes like this:
In the popular music industry, publishers usually own all or part of the copyright as part of the deal with an artist. For most artists, the publishers take the full ownership of copyrights, but leave the artists with their performance royalties (although they often cheat them out of those via direct licensing deals). Big name artists can negotiate the copyright split. The Content ID money would be split based on share of copyright ownership.
With many exclusive production music libraries, the libraries have a publishing entity (sometimes more than one) that owns the copyrights of songs in their catalog. In these situations, while the artists might be paid performance royalties, the publisher is not obligated to share any other revenue with the artists. Therefore, the artists is not due any of the Content ID money unless the publisher voluntarily shares it.
With non-exclusive libraries that ask for the publishing royalty split on song placements they make, the fact that they have publishing doesn’t matter because they don’t own any portion of the copyright. The same applies to marketplaces like AJ that don’t seek publishing or copyright at all. All money goes to you, the copyright owner.
They are talking about using an approved Content ID partner, not a service offered by YouTube. YouTube only works directly with major publishing companies/record labels, approved music distributors and other Content ID partners, such as AdRev and Audiam. Some music libraries have also made such agreements via their publishing companies. There is no way to directly upload your music into Content ID without using a Content ID partner. In all of these cases, the Content ID partner is getting a small share of the revenue, which is unavoidable.
In my case, since I’m in Content ID through AdRev, YouTube can report use to BMI. I didn’t need to do anything expect upload to AdRev. This is the same for ASCAP and other PRO members.
@AAMediaMusic thanks. That makes sense. So there IS a connection between AdRev and PROs which looks like:
AdRev (or other CID partner) > Youtube > PROs
AdRev collects info about tracks and passes it to Youtube. Youtube sends it to PROs. I wonder which data from uploaded-to-adrev tracks is necessary to properly track you in PRO. Track title, your name or nick, IPI number?
This is how I understand it as well. However, what about the different music entities shown in the “music by” snippet in the video description? On one of my track, I have “AdRev for rights holder” as well as “AdRev Publishing” (and two other unnamed entities). These four entities seem to be sharing the revenue, so there does seem to be some sort of split.
IPI number would the most important, as it’s a unique number.
how are they supposed to find my music? we dont upload any tracks to them…i have never received one report from them about anything. Is it possible i set up the whole thing wrong? I keep checking royalty statements and there’s nothing there.
But there is no field for IPI in the main AdRev submission page. There is no field “writer” (!) but only artist which of course isn’t the same.
If you click “publishing controlled” you can fill the “writer”, “publisher” and “IPI” (optional) (but whose? publisher’s or writer’s?). And why IPI is optional?
I suppose Youtube and PROs have some text algorithms which filter data received from youtube. They are probably based on text and I don’t believe in their intelligence so providing accurate data might be crucial. E.g, until now I named my tracks like “Name_of_track_version1” or “Name_of_track_.mp3”. I would love to know if this have the influence on tracking me or my tracks.
Maybe providing ISRC number is the best solution.
After many years, we know nothing about this system.
And one important thing. I’ve just called my PRO (Zaiks) and they told me that YOUTUBE do not pay royalties for music in commercials. Bullshit or not?
