Well, to be fair the subject should say “about to” register as I’m actually in the process of signing up with a PRO and I wanted to share and eventually clarify a few doubts I still have, share my experience in the short and mid term and open a space for other authors to share theirs, if they want to, of course.
So, first of all, I kind of made up my mind to go with UK’s PRS, but I’m still on time if any of you dear colleagues had better results with a different organization.
Below a few questions I still have:
I’m not part of Elements so right now I’m lucky if I make 10 sales a month (I made about 150 before Elements). My traffic, thus, is quite poor so I’m not sure if joining a PRO the way things are right now could bring a relevant income stream. Nevertheless, you never know what could happen with one of your tracks out there (I recently scored a few B&Fs) so I guess it’s definitely worth it anyway.
PRS charges about $100 to join. Sounds like a fair price, but still, I wanted to know other authors insights.
Are PROs royalties retroactive? I mean, could they collect a share for something that was airing or used in a popular broadcast content BEFORE I uploaded my music with them? (Yeah, I’m quite embarrassed I didn’t make this earlier but trust me, I didn’t have the time availablity).
That’s basically it, I already have a user approved and I just need to pay the membership and upload my music to start this adventure. I’ll share my experience throughout the process, and I’m aware PRO royalties are not something I’ll be seeing in less than a year or maybe more.
Thanks people! I’ll keep everyone posted and would love to hear your input.
Well, without a PRO you will earn $0 in performance/mechanical royalties, so I would say the $100 is well worth it.
PRS (along with a mechanical collector) should be a good choice if the one where you’re from doesn’t inspire confidence. Normally, I would have recommended joining the one in your country, but I have come to realize that there can be big differences, and going with a big one can actually get you more money due to certain deals and more power to enforce them.
I would guess the best ones in Europe are PRS, GEMA and STIM, and in the US of course ASCAP or BMI.
Yes, they are, to an extent. I’ve heard around 2-3 years. You might have to file manual claims though, so that the royalties can be collected.
Keep in mind that the PROs generally don’t look for your tracks - they just rely on correct reporting from users (which unfortunately does NOT happen).
Look into a scanning company like Soundmouse (free) to help you find your tracks, and generate automatic reports.
Just get started. The right time to do it is yesterday.
My local PRO works well with films, standard music platforms and series but SUCKS with ads and new SM platforms, let alone if they are used world-wide and involving stock music.
That said I have a few nice anecdotes to share: Once, being abroad, I found one of my tracks being used in a prime time TV show. I immediately registred that track in my local PRO, sent all the info (registration number, author id, etc.) to the network in very friendly but legal-ish tone, and they immediately bought the tracks correct license (B&F) , paid me a small extra for the misunderstood and sent the cue sheet to my PRO. A few hundeds total but, hey…
Something similar happened with a local restaurant, same results.
So yes, you’re right it’s definitely worth it.
Thx for the help and I’ll write here once the registration is completed.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t think there will be much of a difference with PRS.
Ads are difficult, especially if they air in a country other than where your PRO is located. You might have to get a publishing administrator, or spend a lot of time hunting down ads yourself, to collect that money. First find out if your music is in an ad (with TuneSat or luck), and then find the ad code (with Numerator or whatever they’ve changed their name to now), and then try to send that in to your PRO.
For ads, the PROs still assume the composer had a personal relationship with the production company, so that everything is filed correctly. Of course, that is not the case with us AJ authors…
Ad royalties are collected and reported differently. I’m still not entirely sure how it all works, but the only time I have gotten significant ad royalties from the US was via a US publishing administrator.
I left them because I thought their cut was too big, but that might have been a mistake. I might look into getting a new publishing administrator.
Oh, ok… I’m a total newbie and I thought they might have some kind of built-in tracking system, but I guess they don’t. I’ll dig into Tunesat as a side tool. I also heard Soundmouse can be useful too and it’s free if you join PRS.
@criskcracker , sorry to bother, but you’re a PRS member, right? Do you use Soundmouse, Tunesat, or any of those services to keep track of your work?
Yeah, unfortunately the PROs are dinosaurs compared to the new services like Content ID. They are changing, SLOWLY… ICE Services (PRS, GEMA, STIM) do a lot of good work though, like mentioned before. For example, hunting down TikTok royalties.
Unfortunately, TuneSat is extremely expensive, especially if you have lots of tracks. It might not even be worth it. Therefore, it might actually be cheaper to have a publishing admin who already has a maxed out TuneSat account to do the work for you.
TuneSat is just a scanning company, scanning in many countries. You will have to do the rest yourself, however, and hope that the PRO accepts your claims. Not all do.
Soundmouse is a different company, as they both scan AND automatically create a report for your PRO. They don’t scan as much as TuneSat (mainly just the UK, Germany, and Australia right now), but I believe it’s a more streamlined process.
In fact, I believe many production companies in those countries rely on Soundmouse to create the cue sheets. That means if you’re NOT with Soundmouse, no cue sheet is sent in at all.
Everything is kind of a big mess, regardless of what PRO you are with. But, the money can be substantial after a while.
The best PRO is SACEM in France, number one in the world in royalty turnover for 8 years.
And the oldest in the world, created in 1851.
This is why Universal entrusted them with their entire catalog.
I use https://www.trqk.io as an alternative to Tunesat. Way more affordable, more findings and also it provides a video reference rather than just the audio file so it’s easier to understand where the tracks are actually used.
I forgot to mention that you can also upload all your PRO statements and it generates graphs and statistics to have a better understanding of what performs better etc
Hi Wormwood, I think joining a PRO at any point in your music career is a good move.
I can only answer your questions based on my own experience and I’m no expert on PROs by any means, but hope I can help to some degree.
It’s definitely worth it. My income from the PRS has been growing steadily since I joined in July 2020. My best payout to date was the quarter ending July this year. PRS paid me £1,725 and MCPS paid me £1,124. This was based on eighty-odd works, mostly arrangements of public domain music, selling around 40 licences a month on the Music Vine platform through a combination of individual sales and their subscription plans.
For the PRS the answer to this is no, sadly. In their words, because they can’t legally collect royalties earned during a period where they did not represent your rights.
I don’t know if other PROs work differently, but I would guess not if it’s a legal thing, although I’m no lawyer!
Most of my PRS and MCPS income comes from Youtube.
Yes, Soundmouse is a must if you join the PRS in my opinion. I don’t know how else they could detect your music on YouTube if you don’t upload the recordings.
I use some of the free track allowance of tunesat, but I don’t get very many detections. I don’t think my music goes on air much really. Not enough to warrant $35 a month for a premium subscription. Others might have better mileage. Definitely worth a punt on the free 50 tracks/detections though.
I would recommend joining MCPS at the same time as the PRS. I wish that I did back in 2020. It’s an extra £100, but the income is almost comparable to the PRS for me. MCPS collect your mechanical royalties, whilst PRS collects your performance royalties. @redoctopus has some really helpful info in his community guide, also you might find some of the info in my thread P.R.O. Chat useful.
I spoke to Soundmouse, and they told me they just scan a small sample on YouTube, so that is not the main way.
The main way the PRO finds your music on YouTube is via Content ID and pure title/artist matches.
I know this since my PRO statement mainly shows me my unique Content ID titles, not what is registered with Soundmouse, and my royalties went up hundreds of times when I fixed my PRO registrations to match my Content ID registrations.
In the future it will hopefully be both, equally.
By the way, if you have lots of plays on the auto-generated distributor YouTube videos, those are found via the ISRC code (and/or title/artist name), just like Spotify, not by scanning.
I have used the trial, and they did find lots of stuff.
May I ask, what is your process after you find a match? Do you have a publishing company set up in the country of the match that you use to send in the claim? Do you have to use Numerator codes?
What is the process from Trqk match to actual PRO payout? Thanks!
I was instructed by BMI to provide the Numerator code and a video proof from ispot.tv site. I also attach the marketplace item page so they have everything to verify and match the track with the ad.
I once couldn’t find a specific version of the ad which was using my music on Numerator and they told me they couldn’t match it, despite the obvious video proof.
This is for the US and it worked. I still have to verify for other countries. I’m currently chasing a foreign placement but the PRO seems not super responsive for stuff out of US.
I’m in Europe but went with BMI around ten years ago, because it lets you collect the publishing side without having to set up a publishing account (the Writer has a 200% clearance if no actual publishers are on that record) and it also has no yearly recurring fee to be a member.
I’ve always received royalties from all over the world, but since I’m using Tunesat-like services from relatively little time, I can’t say for sure everything has been correctly directed to my pockets
I have no experience of joining multiple PROs or just the Publishing side in different countries. I know that my library music has the main Publisher/owner of the library and then various sub-Publishers in every country, but I’ve never thought about doing it for AJ music.
Yeah, unfortunately I don’t think most advertising use gets reported automatically. It seems we have to hunt down and submit Numerator codes in the US via a publishing company (unless we are registered with BMI/ASCAP like you are).
Yes, I think this would be the case with most PROs.
My statement was a bit confusing, sorry about that.
Retroactive royalties are definitely possible IF you were a member back then. So, let’s say you join now, 2023, and you find something in 2025, that was aired in 2023. Then, retroactive royalties are possible.
I have gotten retroactive royalties myself going back years. Actually, the publisher registered with ASCAP AFTER many of the air dates, but I suppose since I was registered years BEFORE, it worked anyway.
Thanks everyone! @criskcracker, that’s some tremendously generous and specific data you shared!!! Thx!
@ED-MusicProductions, I’m sure SACEM works like a charm. Do they take-in authors that are non-risedent in France? I’ll take it into consideration though I admit I’m still leaning towards PRS.
I already submited an application to Soundmouse but I could not complete it as I don’t have (or I don’t know) my IPI number. Guess I’ll have to make up my mind about a PRO before to get one. About Tunesat, it looks cool but I have around 200 tracks in my catalog and their fee for that amount is above $400 a month. Given my current AJ sales (almost non existent) and my perspective to compose new stock music (almost non existent) I guess it’s a no-go right now.
It seems like a combination of tracking platforms, luck and research is needed to have reasonable results with a PRO and I’m definitely willing to do as much as I can, but again, freelancing and custom music eats up most of my day right now. Maybe I’m a good reference for other fellow authors that can’t afford that much time hunting usages down.
So summing up, things are rolling already. I’ll share the news here.
