BTW, now it really makes sense why AJ introduced a 5 track uploading limit. Chapeau Envato!
4 Likes
Hello to all !
One thing i really don t understand about all of it ! 7
if anyone can help !
When you up date in you re profile you re PRO situation and choose I Have a PRO affiliation … you get that link from Envato :
Please note that while it is okay to be a member of a P.R.O.
and register music outside of AudioJungle, our current policy is that
any music that you submit and sell on AudioJungle must not be registered with a P.R.O.
So i really don t understand what is the porpose ???
for me it s if you want to ulpload and sale music on AJ this music can t be registered with a PRO so you won’t get any royalties anyway no ???
So i don t understand what will be the difference to be affiliate or not with a PRO …
thks !
It’s the old information from before. The new rules will apply from the 4th of October. Until then PRO tracks isn’t allowed. The text will no doubt change after the 4th of October.
Ok if it s that i understand 
they should have change this … it would have been clearer for me !
thx !!!
Great move, thanks a lot! 
Now I can finally register again in a PRO (possibly in SGAE). So far I had not registered because they force me to register all tracks. With these changes I will not have conflict and able to work for external projects that require to be registered in a PRO.
I should wait to join the PRO from October 4 to not break the rules. Do I put on the form that I am in a PRO although I’m not joined it yet, if I anticipate doing so soon? BTW, Is there here any author who plans to join the SGAE or already joined it?
do we need to register as a writer and publisher on SGAE ?
I have done it a few times already and is nothing changes there )
Is there a chance that authors who are with a PRO will get less sales?
Because the main reason customers come to Audiojungle is for the royalty-free aspect of it(one license and no additional costs in the future)
Or do the bigger companies fill in cue sheets anyway and don’t care, for internet-use there is no additional cost and it doesn’t matter in sales?
Any thoughts on this?
Perhaps that depends on the PRO.
For BMI, you don’t have to register as both. If there is no publisher associated with a song, when registered as a writer, you get the “excess writer’s clearance”, which means you automatically get the publisher’s share. You might want to register as a publisher if you think you can negotiate with publishers to give you a portion of their share. Good luck with that. Otherwise, your publishing entity would be a waste of money since there is a $150 application fee with BMI to register a publishing entity as an individual, $250 if you’re registering as a publishing company. Few publishers will give you a share of the publishing if you aren’t a well known artist whose work is in high demand and you have the upper hand with lots of publishing offers.
Royalties are broken down as 100% of the songwriter’s royalty and 100% of the publisher’s royalty. With this excess writer’s clearance, you get the full “200%”. If there is a publisher, you only get your 100% share of the songwriter royalties and the publisher gets 100%, if there is only one songwriter and one publisher. If there are multiple writer’s and/or publishers on a song, which is not unusual, each entity gets a pre-determined percentage based on your agreement. And when the song is registered, the percentages are designated accordingly. For example, I have songs placed with a publisher who has an agreement with a television network that provides them with 50% of the publishing. So, I get 100% of the songwriter’s royalty and they each get 50% of the publisher’s share. If I had been able to get my music in with the TV network on my own, even if I had a publishing entity, I doubt they would have split publishing with me because I don’t have enough popularity for that.
3 Likes
Yes, I get them all the time on tracks without ISRC codes, which are obviously not required to receive royalties. For the most part, they help with tracking music use and sales, and multiple services that monitor these things require them. The issued codes can be read digitally, which makes for better accuracy. For that reason, while they aren’t needed to collect royalties, they can indirectly help you collect royalties that might have been missed if you are using a good monitoring service that uses them.
Also, they are usually NOT free. One has to be registered to issue codes and there is a one-time $95 fee for that. That gets you a “registrant code” that allows you to issue ISRC codes for material where you are the rights owner as a songwriter or record label. If you have a ton of music and constantly add music you want to be ISRC coded, it might be worth paying the fee and issuing your own codes for the tracks as they’re released. You can issue up to 100,000 codes per year to yourself for free from then on. But you did have to pay $95 to get started. Otherwise, you have to get the codes from a service authorized to issue them as an ISRC Manager and they usually charge a small fee per code. Some companies that offer other music services will say they’re giving your the codes for free… but you just paid them for the other service they’re giving you. You also have to watch out because some rights holders who are registered to issue codes for material they own think they can issue them to other people on material they don’t own without further authorization, which isn’t true, and those codes are invalid. There is a list of authorized ISRC Managers here.
2 Likes
Well, alright then. I’m happy to see this happen for the authors here because the “performance royalty free” business model is the absolute worst thing that has happened to the production music industry hands down.
Recently, I realized that a good number of very talented people here are really young and don’t have a lot of business experience. I’ve used the word “exploitation” in these forum threads quite a bit. I guess I’ll stop using it once the rates are closer to more standard micro-stock music rates. Until then, I encourage authors here to really take a look at the market rates and compare them with what’s being charged here. If you think these rates are fair to you, OK. But at least you might want to know what’s actually available. As we now can see with PRO registration, you do have a voice.
3 Likes
Yeah, I remember reading something similar, but afaik it wasn’t completely free. I’ll have to re-read.
I wholeheartly agree. This is (or was) a FUNDAMENTAL problem with audiojungle. That’s why I said that Elite Authors should’ve perfomed much more pressure on Envato to push this trough, because they actually have something to say here. The truth is that everyone on AJ wants to look fun and positive to get as much sales as possible instead of having the courage to say what’s wrong.
That’s interesting. I suppose I can only speak for myself, in Australia it is free to make your own ISRC codes, I didn’t realise it was different in other countries.
I have two questions that still remain unclear to me.
If I go and register all my Audiojungle tracks with my PRO, what happens
to those customers that bought the license before the tracks were PRO registered?
There’s a potential conflict here. Could this lead to problems?
Another question. Will it be mandatory for Audiojungle customers to submit cue sheets
or is it going to be voluntary? Just curious because I know few library sites that allow
PRO registered tracks but it’s up to customers if they want to submit cue sheets.
2 Likes
I agree.
It’s kinda sad that many people here don’t seem to know what PROs are and what they do.
But I am glad Audiojungle is now taking a step in the right direction.
from the faqs:
What is the fee to create a publishing company with BMI?
Although some performing right organizations collect annual dues, BMI does not. Instead, there is a one-time application fee of $150 to register a publishing company that is owned by an individual, and $250 for a publishing company that is a partnership, corporation (including sole stockholder corporations) and/or limited liability company. The fee is due when the publishing company is initially set up, and it is neither refundable nor deductible from future earnings. To get started visit our Join page.
I can’t find anything on a so called “excess writer’s clearance”. Link or it didn’t happen Ovation! 
I’m with Ovation, it happened @mikesea! When you compose a track you are the 100% rights holder until you assign a publisher to the track. There is no case where 50% is withheld from your PRO earnings if you do not assign a publisher, but see ovationmusic’s post below about ascap and publishers.
There is one reason, however, that you might prefer to register as a publisher, and that’s to prevent an empty box on the cuesheet being filled with someone else’s publisher details. Most broadcasters demand zero blank spaces on any paperwork so a “creative” employee might just put in his/her own publishing company in the blank space. Stranger things have happened…
Anyway, I’m not with BMI but this is how my PRO explained it to me.
1 Like
Thanks star diva for clarifying. I found a comparison between the north american pros on the interwebs, they say the same. Good to know.
Thanks for answering that. But for those who need to see links specific to BMI, like @MikeSea, go here on the BMI site and scroll down to the section that says How Royalties Are Divided. Here’s the important part, keeping in mind what I stated earlier about there being a 200% scenario where it’s 100% of songwriter royalties and 100% of publisher royalties:
- Where no performing rights (or only partial performing rights) have been assigned to a publisher, the songwriters or composers will receive the entire 200% (or the balance of the entire 200%) in the same ratio as their respective writer shares.
In other words, with BMI, you get the publisher’s share when there is no publisher. If you’re looking for an explanation that actually says “excess writer clearance”, you won’t find a definition on that in the general area of the site. This is the terminology used by BMI on the registration form when there is no publisher on a track. That is what confirms that there is no assigned publisher and you’re entitled to what is in the explanation above.
Keep in mind that as I stated in one of my other posts above, PRO’s have their own rules, even just within the US. BMI and ASACP are different in that you do need a publishing entity for ASACP to collect the publishing royalties, but not for BMI. One should always check with the PRO they plan to select. Always…
For people planning on going with a US PRO, here is a link for a quick comparison. Note that there are really just two for most people, BMI and ASACP, because SESAC is by invitation only.
3 Likes
Thanks for answering my (and the other) questions @OvationMusic! Huge help!
Also, I can vouch for BMI’s “excess writer clearance”, as I have registered music (not AJ music) through them without a publisher.
The screenshot below is an example of a work I registered. Since there are two songwriter/composers and no publisher, the shares are divided between us, equalling 200%. Note the “excess writer clearance”:
3 Likes