[Fmpro] is it smoke or mirrors

[Chris Alpiar]

And not to mention its ONLY in the US that we get 20 cents on the dollar so
of course a European is not a very good place to open this conversation with
:p I think its great dialog you have going tho, it's a great way for you to
learn past what Berklee can teach you (not knocking it either, its my alma
mater as well, class of 94) Keep up the good work, I haven't seen so much
activity here in a while

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: fmpro-bounces+chris=alpiar.com at nxport.com
[mailto:fmpro-bounces+chris=alpiar.com at nxport.com] On Behalf Of
Kirbyko3 at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 8:01 AM
To: fmpro at nxport.com
Subject: Re: [Fmpro] is it smoke or mirrors

I've been watching these threads the last couple of days and part of me
loves 
that Lynne is making an effort, but part of me cringes at the Pollyanna-ness

of the whole thing. 

Lynne, the simple fact is this:

If you have 2 clients who have music placed into a TV show -- one is a 
songwriter, one is an instrumental composer -- and both of them have music
placed 
into the same scene of that show -- let's say it's music coming out of a
jukebox 
in the background -- and each song plays for exactly 10 seconds -- the song 
with words will get paid $100 (arbitrary # for example purposes only) and
the 
instrumental piece will get paid $20.    That's a fact.   There's no 
justification for it.    Chatting with a friend in another country and
finding out what 
GEMA does isn't going to do anything to help this situation.

What Mark continues to do (and he's unpopular with ASCAP and BMI for it) is 
to be the squeaky wheel on behalf of composers. He keeps raising the issues
of 
these inequalities, and the problems with the system, because it is
something 
of a monopoly and if an artist wants to make ANY kind of living at all,
ASCAP 
and BMI are the only options to have as a PRO.    One cannot act as one's
own 
PRO because you could never get a network to negotiate with you -- they
would 
just say "join ASCAP or BMI." As it is, the networks pay the licensing fees
to 
the PRO's begrudgingly -- they do it because they have to.

So it's great that you want to learn about this process, because you should 
know about it if you have clients whose work appears on TV or on the radio.

But when your composer client says, "How come Mr. Songwriter got $1000 for
his 
song, but I only got $200 for my orchestral piece?" you can explain to him
why 
that's the case.

Kerry


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