We have been asking many times for an update of broadcast data policy which is crucial for tracking our performance royalties (which can be much higher than standard sales earnings) and which is standard outside the Royalty Free branch. Finally our demands have been heard… by a main AJ competitor who started a publishing service which collects and manages broadcast and other performance data. I am pretty sure that their move is at least partly motivated by our forum discussions, I bet they monitor AJ forum.
Because we do not have any staff member directly delegated to our whole AudioJungle>Authors issues, I publish the competitor’s announcement here, just to keep staff up to date with the industry standards. I have censored name of the competitor stock due to forum rules. Please do not treat this as a discussion about competitor but as a discussion about the industry standards. Please do not call names of the competitors.
Historically, collecting performance royalties can be a difficult, time-consuming, and costly process. More importantly, it can be very challenging for a rights holder to obtain the details required to collect accurate performance royalties (including identifying the end user for a given musical work and where the work was broadcast). However, with XXXX Publishing that all changes: we manage all of this on your behalf, ultimately maximizing the performance royalties you are entitled to and creating a new income stream.
Key information about the program:
These performance royalties are in addition to the upfront license revenue you receive when your track is licensed through XXXX.
You will keep all of your writer and publisher performance royalties, less a standard admin fee from the publisher share to cover our expenses.
We will make every effort to ensure that buyers file cue sheets and provide relevant information for public broadcasts on film and TV.
You are not required to license exclusively through XXXX in order to participate in XXXX Publishing.
Participation in XXXX Publishing does not interfere with other publishing arrangements you may have, as we will only be collecting performance royalties generated by tracks licensed through XXXX.
We will help you sign up as a writer with a performing rights organization if you are not already (which is a prerequisite to collecting performance royalties and completely free with BMI).
You’re in control - you decide whether to participate in XXXX Publishing.
As we launch XXXX Publishing, we will also be adjusting your share of license revenue to align with the industry standard for a non-exclusive marketplace. Beginning September 3rd, 2019, contributors to our Music and Sound Effects offerings will begin collecting 35% of the license revenue their content generates through XXXX. We did not make this change lightly but we are no longer able to pay a materially higher revenue share for the same content available on competing marketplaces while continuing to invest in developing a global customer base for your content. We appreciate your understanding as we align with an extremely competitive landscape.
While the reduction in upfront license revenue may be disappointing for some, we believe you will benefit from the potentially significant income associated with XXXX Publishing. Those who are already collecting performance royalties understand how these recurring payments can materially exceed the one-time revenue their tracks generate when licensed through XXXX. We strongly encourage you to enroll in XXXX Publishing to benefit from this important new revenue opportunity.
Who talks about altruism? Let them take some fee and let them track your royalties. It’s way better than current situation in which beginners have no idea how to handle with PRO royalties. And even experienced authors have HUGE problems with tracking royalties.
No. They have changed overall sync license share from 50/50 to 35%(author)/65%(stock). This is additional 15%.for every license, even those non-broadcast. Though they do not say how big will be the “standard admin fee” from PRO royalties.
Theoretically it’s a huge drop, but it can be beneficial if they collect PRO royalties from big licenses. And yes, they will make money from this deal, they will not work for free. Though there is one sentence I don’t understand:
If you make $1,000 today, they will take an extra $300.
if you make $1,000 per month right now, you are paying $3,600 to find out IF maybe some placements will generate meaningful income. It will take a MINIMUM of one year to see any results.
Of course someone can get lucky, but it’s not very likely that the PRO royalties will amount to thousands of dollars…
And they could have just added the PRO deal without taking 30% of your money. They are not related, except for the PRO deal being a way to draw attention from the pay cut. But it is what it is.
Maybe I’m being sceptical, but how are we supposed to know what level of “work” this publishing company is going to put in for their fee? Who’s to say that they may well just do absolutely nothing to chase up royalties, leave all that work up to the PRO’s who’s job this is anyway and then just take their “administration fee” from the publisher royalty. Feels to me like they just sold us a pay cut for the price of a share of our publishing royalties. 'feed it to ‘em like we’re doing them a favour and they’ll never realise they’re being exploited.’
At the moment, I’m feeling like it’s a tug of war between these guys and Envato for who can best exploit their authors.
I found this sentence mildly aggravating:
“it can be very challenging for a rights holder to obtain the details required to collect accurate performance royalties (including identifying the end user for a given musical work and where the work was broadcast).”
It can be very challenging, especially when the company selling the licences withholds buyer information from the authors.
Moreover, I find it a bit odd when a typical royalty free music library asks for publishing. Of course it’s a common practice in TV production music libraries, but these are aimed at TV producers and generate placements, while Lake6’s clientele are mostly YouTubers, corporate video makers and game developers… I’ve been with them since 2009 and got literally zero placements, despite a large amount of direct licences sold during this period.
Chasing royalties demands time and human resources and that equals money. And money is what they need now…
You might be right. I suppose whole publishing thing should generate publishing fee only for those who choose joining it and it should be the only cost. Connecting it with the increase of the overall stock share of all authors looks very bad.
On the other hand something finaly moved in this topic.
I like your optimism about this RedOctopus, but I don’t think Envato, or the competition becoming blanket publishers for us all and hungrily sniffing around our PRO royalties is the solution that we really need over here. I think all that is required is more transparency between us, Envato and the customer, so that we have access to the data that we need.
While the commission cut is definitely a hit below the belt, I have the impression that this site at least acknowledge and builds a roadmap around the fact that there are more customers then those who are price sensitive.
I believe this publishing bit is great news actually, it just should not have been disguised as the reason for the commission cut in general. And I rather have someone who takes a percent of something they manage to fix and collect then 100% of nothing which often seems to be the case (just my impression)
For context and food for thought, just leaving this here…
Here are the Alexa stats for a leading subscription royalty free music site…It really does sum up where things are heading in this once-fruitful industry and no wonder RF libraries are now all scrambling for other revenues.
Edit: This site above is AL, an Israeli based operation I believe, who have the strap line “music licensing reimagined”. You can use that term in Google to reveal their true identity.
They’ve recently started branching out in stock video now too, under the same model.
It’s also worth noting like many other music subscription libraries out there now, they do not accept any AdRev or ContentID registered music, so their customers are guaranteed no copyright claims from the outset.
