Hey guys. I very recently signed up to AudioJungle and am beginning to submit my music.
I’ve heard that a lot of stock music composers like to join a P.R.O. later down the line in order to make more income. This is something I am interested in doing, however the P.R.O in my country requires a payment which seems a bit costly at the moment, so I want to wait until I start making a reasonable amount of money from my music.
The thing that I was curious about is - if I were to join a P.R.O. later down the line, how exactly would this affect any tracks that I had on my account beforehand? From what I’ve read, AudioJungle seemingly makes all of the tracks on your account P.R.O-affiliated once you join one, but if this is the case how exactly would it affect anyone whose already bought your music and would you be required to immediately register your old tracks with the P.R.O.?
If anyone has switched from a non-P.R.O. to P.R.O. account and knows the process, I’d be very grateful if you responded and outlined what essentially happened. Sorry if this question seems dumb or weird.
Also, looking at some posts on this forum about music being stolen, I think I’m definitely also going to consider signing up to adrev or some other content ID service too…
My advice would be to immediately join the pro if you’re in this for the long term. You won’t regret it and then everything is clear from the get go to clients.
Let’s say you didn’t join the pro and someone buys a broadcast license and your music gets used in a TV commercial. You won’t be able to receive that money unless you join.
If a pro in your country is too expensive you might look at pros in others counties. Some you can join even when you’re living somewhere else.
I’d definitely switch to P.R.O, as this can have a significant impact on your income.
In my case, for example, I don’t earn much from the licenses here at AudioJungle. As you can see, I am only on level 3. But it’s different from the royalties where I use to get higher payments. Last year alone it was more than I got from AudioJungle in five years.
As soon as the change from non-PRO to PRO has been made, the pieces must be registered individually to the PRO.
The process itself is quite easy and straightforward. But this may depend on your P.R.O. I can only speak for SUISA (Switzerland).
However, it is true that the switch is automatically applied to all your pieces in AJ, including the old ones. I also had concerns about this before, but in retrospect, they turned out to be unfounded. There is actually no such thing as really “free” music anyway, as there is always a creator and/or an owner of rights involved.
If your music is going to be used in public, for example in a tv commercial (as mentioned by CWMusic), it would only be fair if you get your part of the cake.
Thank you for your advice. I tried to sign up to PRS (the UK PRO) this morning and unfortunately you need proof that your music has been performed publicly which I don’t currently have. Bit of a bummer. I may consider either joining a U.S. PRO or finding some other way of joining.
Thanks. Currently having some trouble figuring out which PRO would be better to join at this stage so I may just start uploading music now and then switch to a PRO account later on.
All the answers: The AJ Community Guide #2 - Performing Rights Organisation Royalties (PRO) - #2 by RedOctopus
As much as I appreciate your commitment here in the forum (respect!). How about a more subjective and targeted answer? With “All the Answers you find here” you make this forum useless. Then you’d rather call it a FAQ…
Sorry, my bad! I agree some of my posts are a bit of a waste of time and I apologise if they’re taking up unnecessary space here. I’ll definitely try and do as much research here and elsewhere to see if there’s already a good answer before posting a new topic next time. Once again, thanks for your response.
Just marked it that way because I saw you could mark things as a solution to your questions and I thought it was a good answer but actually yeah it looks like people don’t really use that feature on this forum.
Do you suggest I should rewrite again all the answers instead of sending link to them? 
Yep, it is a FAQ and many newcommers don’t know it exists.
Hey,
I had similar concerns when I joined PRS in 2018. Check this thread when u have a sec: Registering older tracks with PRO
I’ve never had any issues with my older tracks. Yes - I’ve been asked to remove my content from a few inferior PRO-free stock music websites, but they never made me a substantial amont of money anyway… Joing PRO was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I never really looked back.
My advice is - take your time and don’t join PRS until you have some tracks aired on TV.
Cheers
No offense, Master I really appreciate what you are providing here in the forum and I’m not to criticize an expert like you.
I can just feel that this post is not only about the technical aspect of how to join a PRO. This has been covered by you in detail already and of course, it’s good if people can find those guides.
I assume that you are positive towards PRO long time already, so the following is actually not addressed to you, as you have dealt with this issue for quite a while and in deep. It’s rather my personal opinion about whether one should switch to PRO or not.
I think that besides how to do it, it’s also about uncertainty and about how potential buyers will perceive the switch to a PRO. Even these days I sometimes still come across people who don’t even know what that is.
Nevertheless, I’ve never regretted switching to PRO, as mentioned earlier. Foregoing royalties would have been the worse option.
In addition, there is always the risk that someone else will edit a non-registered title, and claim it as his own work. Subsequently, the royalties will then be collected by someone else, not by the original composer. That happens and hasn’t even been mentioned here.
I believe that there is still a lot of work to make people understand and accept royalties. Not only with the composers but also and especially with the end-users. It should become common knowledge that any music has an originator, someone who owns the copyright.
The more composers join a PRO, the more their role will become known. So I think it’s wrong to skip it just because one can (maybe) sell a few more cheap licenses.
Our music is worth more than a few dollars. Getting royalties is one of the few options for us to get a fair payment, even though it may take some time.
Therefore I think that in the long run, one will certainly drive worse without a PRO.
But of course, this is just my personal and humble point of view. It will be very interesting to hear other opinions.
Thank you. I’ve ultimately decided that I’m going to wait and see how well my tracks sell before considering joining a P.R.O or Content ID service since at this point I honestly don’t even know whether my tracks are good enough to be accepted to AudioJungle anyway.
In the PDF I’ve attached to the tracks I’ve submitted I’ve left a small note basically asking the customers to keep their license certificate and track information in case the PRO or content ID affiliation changes but reminded them that this shouldn’t be a problem for most customers. I hope this is a good move.
I’m thinking that if my tracks sell well enough I may want to join PRS, but I noticed that you need to have evidence your tracks have been publicly performed in order to join. I’ve seen some older posts recommend using TuneSat to keep track of when your tracks are performed publicly but I was wondering whether that’s still considered a decent service to keep track of that or whether there’s something better?
Edit: Nevermind - Realised that putting that message in my file would be a bit useless/confusing if someone bought it after I registered it with a PRO or Content ID service so I’ve just gotten rid of it
Sorry to chime in here but why wait to register your tracks with Content ID? Placing music on a website such as AJ without some form of protection seems to me a bad idea and if you decide to register the tracks at a later stage may, although I cannot say for certain, cause a headache for yourself and buyers at a later date for example YouTube. IMHO.
I get what you mean - the main reason is just because the only decent service seems to be Identifyy which requires that you stay with them for 3 years and I’m not sure I’d want to commit to a service like that if I’m not completely sure that my music would even sell. I suspect AdRev may have a different policy but it sounds like they’re not accepting many people to their service now.