[Fmpro] ASCAP Cues and their great events

[Mark Northam]

On 11/24/07 6:42 PM, "Marinho Nobre" <marinho at manommg.com> wrote:

> Not quite sure the Global Media event was placed the same year, but the one I
> went I signed in through the ASCAP website as ASCAP members had a substantial
> discount to sign in. I found about it from one of their newsletters.  Their
> name was on every banner everywhere, so we are probably talking about
> different events. Just surprised I did not know about yours, do you remember
> if it was before or after theirs?

They do theirs in the spring (April), for the last 2 years The Composer Expo
was in July or August. In 2008 we're producing 2 events:

The Composer Expo East - New York City - September 20, 2008
The Composer Expo West - Los Angeles, September 27, 2008

We created The Composer Expo because, frankly, I was sick and tired of going
to "Film & TV Music" branded events and shows where, despite the vast
majority of music in film/TV is score, the vast majority of the time was
spent talking about and promoting music supervisors and songs. The
systematic minimization and marginalization of score music is just terrible
at many of these events, and we wanted to create an event that was all about
SCORE music - instrumental music for film, TV and videogames.

A perfect example of this is the "ASCAP Sundance Music Café" where 99% of
the music is songwriters and bands, despite the fact that the vast majority
of music in the films at Sundance is written by composers. This great
concept was originally pitched to ASCAP LA by agent Linda Kordek and
composer Mark Governor as a way to expose composers to a wider audience by
creating a coffeehouse atmosphere where every table would have a CD jukebox
full of score CDs from films at Sundance. Instead, in classic ASCAP style,
composers are rarely seen, and instead it's been turned into a song-fest.

It's sad when generic music (songs) which are dropped into films are now
being thought of as "film music" and paid top dollar while ORIGINAL music
custom written for films (score) continues to be marginalized, minimized,
and paid substandard rates by the PROs. I cannot imagine a single other
industry where custom product is paid and treated so poorly compared to
generic product. But you've got to hand it to ASCAP's ruling songwriters -
regarding composers they've brilliantly managed to devalue, demoralize, and
divide an entire industry. Now they're steadily working to redefine "film
music" as song placements. Brilliant.


Best,

Mark Northam