Hey AudioJunglers,
I have had luck with Tunesat for finding broadcasts of my music. I recently got stuff up on SoundMouse so have yet to see how well it works.
Are there any other similar/better sites out there that you use to keep track of your music being used?
Good Luck
Christopher
Hi Christopher,
I’m in the same boat right now. I have found a lot of broadcasts of my music through Tunesat and am currently uploading my tracks to Soundmouse.
A good tool to gather all the information (product / TV show details, number of times run, air dates, length, etc) you need to make a claim to your PRO is Competitrack. However, Competitrack appears to be now owned by a company called Numerator and the site is quite different to what it used to be. I haven’t seen a way to make an account yet, but I did contact them this morning asking how composers like us would be able to set up an account. It may be free or paid; not sure at this stage.
Can’t speak for Soundmouse, but PROs don’t usually accept Tunesat data as sufficient, so that’s why Competitrack could be an important tool. I’ll keep everyone updated on how things go with Numerator. If we can sign up as composers and access this important data, it’ll be a massive help towards tracking down unclaimed performance royalties.
James
Are you using free or paid plan on TuneSat? @MyBeautifulMoon
Just the free one for now.
Please, @AurusAudio , update us when you can.
About that, i’m almost 100% certain to join Songtrust for my AJ songs. I’ve asked them about tracking my performance royalties around the world (since they collect mechanical royalties and my P.R.O. is brazilian) and just one day later they told me that they track performance royalties around the world too (ASCAP / BMI included) and there’s no need for me to change my P.R.O.
The price is an upfront fee and their publishing share.
What do you think about that?
i’d be a little leery of anyone looking for 100USD up front before they go to work…
That’s a good point but there are some things to consider:
1- After these $100 up front (that give you 10 songs to register), you only pay $10 for every 10 new songs from then on.
2- You keep 100% of your rights (which is better than some other publishers out there).
3- Mechanical rights! Only publishers can get those for you (PROs can´t). If you want to collect yourself, good luck. It is different than performance rights and we deserve both (in many cases).
And about the reliability of the company, I find their credits quite expressive (apart from the fact that they are basically the same as Downtown Music Publishing).
I know it looks like i´ve already made my mind, but not really. I´m just bringing points to discussion.
I’m confused I guess…
Are they a publisher? I’ve never had to pay to work with any publisher ever… they make money off my tunes, typically they pay upfront with some sort of split on the back-end. They get the deals, they administrate.
Looks like you are giving them money for the ability to go and collect unpaid usages for your music that isn’t affiliated with any publisher or something?
I guess I honestly don’t understand totally what they do… do they go hunt down the broadcasters and stuff and make them pay? Are they actively pursing deals with syncs for you?
I wouldn’t get too excited about Mechanicals, it’s my understanding that that only applies to cover tunes? I don’t think too many people are making covers of AJ music 
-Rob
Yes! They are publishers (administrators). Some companies are offering this kind of service (CD Baby PRO and others), but i heard that some of them (CD Baby PRO included) uses Songtrust´s system.
If you don’t have a publisher, you are your own publisher (with 100% of copyright). The publisher, as you probably know, will search (Songtrust specific: including direct tracking your music with more than 45 PROs around the world - BMI / Ascap included), administrate, collect mechanicals and sometimes even increase exposure of your music (if you agree before).
PROs have kind of a gentleman’s agreement about foreign PROs performance rights. They (Songtrust, CD Baby Pro and others) say that they will go beyond that. Doing something called “direct registration”. From CD Baby´s Pro support page:
"## 2. Performance royalties from overseas: reciprocal agreements vs. direct registration
ASCAP and BMI will absolutely collect these royalties for you. That’s why those organizations exist. But they do NOT register your songs directly with foreign royalty collection societies. They rely on something called a “reciprocal agreement.” You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours.
When you sign up with CD Baby Pro, we will register your songs directly with foreign societies, ensuring that international performing rights organizations know about your songs, have all the correct data, stay on the lookout and accurately tally public performances (by which I mean any of the usages mentioned above), and know exactly who to pay.
You don’t want to leave something like royalty collection up to chance. CD Baby Pro ensures that foreign collection societies WILL know about every one of your songs. In most cases, when we directly register your music with foreign societies, it also means you get paid your publishing share roughly 3-months faster than you would when relying on your P.R.O. — and without additional fees incurred between P.R.O. reciprocal agreements."
As i said, mechanicals aren’t the main thing for us, but probably we have those also (if our song is out there on media). It´s not only about cover tunes. It is also about downloads, selling CD (many films sells CDs and / or put on streaming), and even one part of streaming rights are also mechanicals (so maybe we’re looking for performance rights on streaming but we also have mechanicals to receive).
eg. If an indie movie uses one of your tracks and they sell DVDs, guess what? You have mechanical rights to receive from every and each sale.
If there’s a product that uses our music, we probably have mechanical rights to receive there. CD, DVD, download, streams…
Wikipedia says:
The term “mechanical” and “mechanical license” has its origins in the “piano rolls” on which music was recorded in the early part of the 20th Century. Although its concept is now primarily oriented to royalty income from sale of compact discs (CDs), its scope is wider and covers any copyrighted audio composition that is rendered mechanically; that is, without human performers.
Again, its not the “main thing” for us, but if you have even $50 of mechanical rights to receive, which are yours by right, why not?
Interesting stuff thanks for the response.
Not sure that my current state with my RF tracks would warrant the price. I’ve yet to see any domestic/north american uses come through my PRO let alone foreign.
I don’t think the problem is making sure things are “registered properly” in other places, i think the problem is that people buying through the RF sites aren’t filling out cue sheets in the first place… which is why I have my doubts as to what these guys can really do? If they had some watermarking tech or something and were hunting these guys down to extract money out of em… then ya… but just making sure things are registered in other areas… i guess it couldn’t hurt but I don’t see it making a big chunk for me. I guess I could be totally wrong on that.
I have a feeling they make a nice chunk of change off of their $100 setups though on most people, be interested to know how many actually even make it back.
No problem, @RobertReid!!
Unfortunately…true!
Yeah…as i said, I’m not that convinced yet! If i give it a try, i come back here to say how it went.
Yeah would love to know what you think!
Cheers
HHI ! how are you doing man? Can you give us an update on your situation and experience with Songtrust, this last year? Thanks in advance 
I bump it. So did you use Songtrust? Did it help you?
Hey RedOctopus do you use Soundmouse? Is it like Tunesat…how much does it cost? I tried signing up but I dont know which option to choose. Thanks!
It’s free. Have you read this? There is all I know 
@MeGustaMusic and @RedOctopus , i didn’t pulled the trigger.
Needing to know about someone in our line of work doing that, but what really held me was the lack of cue sheets from some indie producers that I knew. I’ve talked to them but I really doubt that it will change.
I’m getting the feeling that if you really want to get most of your royalties, you’ll need to develop a system of SoundMuse / Tunesat + Songtrust + Adrev + your search and insistence with people to fill cue sheets.
That’s a work that I can’t do right now, so i didn’t joined Songtrust.
Ok, thanks !