The AJ Community Guide #2 - Performing Rights Organisation Royalties (PRO)

It has been explained in 3rd chapter. In short: performing rights are still collected by PROs even when monetization is not collected by CID. Those are two different things.

Thanks for your reply. Is that a fact, though?

I understand that video monetization and performing royalties are different types of income, but on YouTube, are they really unconnected?

On Songtrust’s article they say:

“Videos on YouTube do not generate royalties until an ad has been served on them. Royalties on YouTube are essentially a portion of ad revenue. Ads are only served on videos by a copyright owner (a label, publisher, etc.) placing a claim on a video and telling YouTube to monetize that video.

(https://blog.songtrust.com/things-you-had-wrong-about-youtube-royalties)

So what I’m still wondering about is that once the claim and monetization placed by AdRev/Identifyy/etc. has been released by the license bought from Audiojungle, would that also mean that the video doesn’t generate performing royalties? It’s a bit confusingly put in that Songtrust article, as obviously ads could still run on any monetized video, even if it us not claimed by AdRev or similar.

A link to any other, clearer article on this topic would be appreciated.

I have asked AdRev about this, but haven’t got an answer so far.

EDIT: I have removed text from this post because it occurred that it may be slightly misleading.

After a talk with both AdRev and my PRO it has turned out that PROs can only collect performance royalties from videos where there is an active claim. So once the claim is released by a license bought from Audiojungle, no performance royalties can be collected from that video anymore.

Very interesting! I will investigate it too and let you know. Thanks for your attention, I really appreciate it!

Update:

EDIT: And there is one more thing. CID partners like Identifyy or AdRev share royalties for “master recording” and “publishing”. But keep in mind that those “CID publishing royalties” are something different than “PRO publishing royalties”. In CID it’s a kind of video-music-ad-sync royalties divided for the owner of the recording (“master recording royalties”) and owner of the right to publish it (“publishing royalties") which are not the same as publisher share royalties from PRO.

This may be true so I have updated related fragment of third chapter: The AJ Community Guide #3: Content Identification (CID) But still it is not fully confirmed.

Thanks @AudioAgent !!!

Hi, do you, or anyone else, have any information about royalties on music that is used in an actual YouTube (pre-roll) ad? So, music in the ad shown before the video that would generate CID money.

Ideally, that should generate performance royalties to our PRO, but it still seems a bit unclear regarding YouTube and performance royalties.

Thanks!

I am not sure but I suppose they are normal Youtube videos which are used as ads so I suppose it should work same as other Youtube videos. Everything I know about internet royalties and Youtube monetization is in the #2 and #3 chapter of the Guide.

Well, unfortunately no, they’re not, that’s the point.

We can’t just look up an ad and see how many plays it has, or even just to watch it, as it’s not necessarily on YouTube or anywhere else except uploaded to the advertising network.

This is what makes it complicated. I see an ad before all kinds of YouTube videos many times per day with my music in it, which would mean A LOT of money if it was aired on TV… Performance royalties from YouTube is still new, and even my PRO don’t know much about it, so that’s why I’m wondering if anyone has some experience from their PRO?

This is potentially a very good royalty source for all of us.

I get your point. However everything what happens on Youtube is a kind of internet royalties IMHO. I suppose there may be (or there will be) different rates for such usage but I have no idea how it looks now.

Are you sure such Youtube ads are not uploaded to Youtube? I have seen some similar ads with my music and their Youtube versions had crazy number of views so I thought they are related. I can imagine that some of them may be “unlisted” on Youtube so you can watch them only in ad campaigns. I really don’t know how it works but I can ask friends from video agencies :slight_smile:

Other question is what happens if such ads are displayed before shows in streams of popular TV channels? Like VOD, IPLA etc. Are they treated as internet or as TV broadcast?

Hi, you are correct (I just did some research)!

YouTube ads are uploaded to YouTube first, BUT they can indeed be unlisted. So only if they are public can we try to find the ad and check the view count. I would assume many of the shorter bumper ads are unlisted, while big epic trailers are often public because people want to watch those ads again and again.

And I also found out that paid views (when the video runs as an ad) indeed count as regular views on that video, so the big epic movie trailers with millions of views can be 99% paid views.

Anyway, good to know this, but it’s still hard to find the ads on YouTube and impossible if they are unlisted, while they can have millions of views…

Even worse - some say that PRO collect internet royalties only when monetization is on and it’s routed to you. Such ads do not have ads (it’s obvious) so according to that unconfirmed info they can’t generate any royalties. Another PRO absurd.

Thank you @RedOctopus!

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Thank you for putting this together, @RedOctopus and everybody who has contributed to this guide! The most comprehensive read on this topic found online :pray:

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This Post is amazing…Epic! It answered so many questions I had and didnt even know how to phrase properly, let alone where to find it. Thank you so much for your time and generosity and to all those who helped you put this together! :clap:

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im trying to get on top of my PRO game and really make sure I am doing everything right. My composer name as registered in BMI is Menachem Engel (my real name)…i am pretty sure that is my ipi number…do i need to take away the first two zeros? and is it ok to leave the publisher part empty? Thanks!

edit - Was this work created for Film, TV, Theater, or Music Library? - what do we put here? yes or no?

First of all it may be better to register a nickname in PRO and register tracks under the nick. IMHO

The rest is ok. AJ is a music library.

so i need to check that? then it asks me for all this info…cd number,etc? what’s that?

You can always ask the support. I am always confused with those fields so I suppose it is not important :slight_smile:

are you with BMI?