Why am I a Composer?: Tunesat vs PROs


AFX Industrial (film scores)

Tunesat is a great idea http://www.tunesat.com but are the PROs ready to part with their money? I recently took Tunesat for a 30 day spin, and this is what I found out ...

According to Tunesat a staggering 80% of the TV performance royalties generated by an artist's music never reaches the artist. What happens to this money? Well, unclaimed royalties undoubtedly languish in the PROs' bank accounts for as long as they can get away with it. But eventually this money will be divided up among the major record labels - even if the artist has no connection with these labels.

This is an incredibly unfair and unregulated system especially as it relies on TV stations submitting (often physical) cue sheets. Which according to Tunesat they fail to do around 80% of the time.

The cue sheet submission system has now reached saturation point, resulting in the PROs sitting on millions of dollars of 'unclaimed' artists money. Thankfully one company has developed an incredible system to check and report on the usage of an artists repertoire. That company are Tunesat. Over the last month I've been testing Tunesat's TV channel analysis system, and the results have been very interesting indeed.

How does it work?

Tunesat call it 'digital fingerprinting'. The audio waveform of every single piece of music submitted to them is unique unto itself and matched in real time by streaming and analyzing a large selection of major TV channels worldwide. I would imagine that to pull off such a Herculean task requires some pretty robust software. Which begs the question, if a small company like Tunesat can develop and launch such a groundbreaking analysis tool, then why haven't the PROs? They could easily adopt Tunesat's model or (considering their level of income) develop one themselves.

The Test

Tunesat offered me a thirty day trial of their system, and as I'll explain, the results were empowering and damning at the same time. I figured it would be more productive to concentrate on pieces from my catalog that I know are popular and used regularly ... So, after the audio fingerprints were finalized I waited for the results to stream back to me. Sure enough, after a few days, usage was detected on major channels in the USA, Germany, France and various other countries. One interesting and unique thing about the Tunesat model is their software automatically records each section of the program that contains your work. And the system appears to be extremely accurate, even detecting music playing beneath dialogue and foley. It also gives you the time of broadcast, the channel and the TV show your work appeared during. You can actually hear each piece in place during the show. Amazing!

"if a small company like Tunesat can develop and launch such a groundbreaking analysis tool, then why haven't the PROs adopted Tunesat's model?"

The upside

Armed with this information, which is available as an XL spreadsheet, you can now approach your PRO and demand they add each usage to your royalty list!

The downside

Ahh, the downside. Well after I had gathered a fair amount of data about one piece (which was used for a total duration of nine minutes) I approached my PRO and submitted a PDF of the data including the tunecode, time, channel, duration, show name ... And what was the response?

Well, the PRO that I sent it to (the PRS actually) finally responded (after I had emailed the information to them three times) and they didn't accept it. The reason they gave was that the broadcaster should supply a cue sheet for each cue used. But hadn't Tunesat already determined that 80% of these cue sheets are never filled in, let alone returned? I did call the PRS to clarify the situation regarding accepting Tunesat data and again I got a conflicting response. This time they said they did accept the data. Worryingly, it seems it all depends on how knowledgeable the agent dealing with your submitted data is, as to how much attention they pay to it. So, how many months do you leave it before you contact them to verify they have accepted the submitted information and investigated the claim? It's a flawed system to say the least.

Where does this leave us?

In theory and even in practice Tunesat's software works. And if Tunesat were offering this service for free (and frankly why should they) I would of course be happy to continue receiving usage reports. But this service isn't free, there's a paid subscription which is dependent upon the size of the catalog you wish to submit. For 100 fingerprinted pieces you are looking at a monthly subscription fee of around $300 which is a fairly substantial whack. And, depending on the mood and staffing competency of your PRO you may never see a return on this investment. It's a risk for sure.

I already know that I'm probably earning a lot less than I should, you only have to deal with the PRS for a few years to realize that. But, paying Tunesat to continually tell me that I'm not getting paid for my work? Hmm ... Unfortunately, the only result I can see from this is the debiting of money from my account for information that only serves to wind me up and confuse the PROs even more! Undoubtedly the information Tunesat provides is a useful business tool, but is it really worth paying for? And, although I like the Tunesat model very, very much it still seems like another level of bureaucracy another middle man who wants paying for information that should be freely available. If I were to list all of the middle men taking a cut from my music I think you would be very surprised ... It's 60% here and 10% there and to be honest Tunesat would be just another drain on this already dwindling income.

Unfortunately, many companies operating within the music industry prey on the vanity of musicians and composers, and the data Tunesat provides could be construed as more vanity oriented than anything else. It should be my right to know where in the world my scores are being used and I shouldn't have to fight for royalty payments, but I also have to accept that as my scores are on sale internationally I'll never keep track of every single usage. To think I can is simply naive.

It seems reasonable to suggest that the PROs have failed to adopt this software because it will impact on their seemingly parasitical business practices. I don't say this lightly, as without fail every time I contact the PRS I receive either incorrect or conflicting information, it's almost as if they deliberately train only half of their staff. It may be cynical to imply that they rely on a certain level of confusion as part of their business model, but I'm yet to see consistency within the organization. Naturally, after a while, you can't help but speculate about the real motives that drive them to run their company so erratically.

Tunesat, you rock! It's simply everybody else that doesn't.

- David