Caltrops - Rants - Re: They just started www.audiooutpost.com too

Forum Overview :: Rants

by Fullofkittens 05/04/2005, 7:16am PDT

They might as well have, since that already was the system before there was any such website. The way commercial jingle houses work is, a client pays the house for the music, then the jingle house owner gives the commercial to like 5-10 different composers. One of these guys will get money, the other guys will have something else to put on their demo CD.

The way that business is eventually going to end up, though, is that everyone will be using library CDs. It started out with the idea that composers that weren't getting much work would put their unbought music on these library CDs, and although they didn't get paid they could at least expect to get royalties from BMI or ASCAP when the thing went on the air. Now, with the advent of Soundtrack and Garageband, producers can just lay in whatever they want on the scenes, and the CDs they're buying are the "royalty-free" CDs since it's a hassle to report to the PROs what music you're using. So instead of getting royalties (which could have been a lot money, even it did take 9 months to get to you), composers are asking a flat rate of like $100-$200 a cue... which isn't bad if you can crank them out once a day but only if you can get somebody to buy every single one you make. It ends up being more like $200 a week.