Why am I a Composer?: Cue Sheets ... What Are They?

AFX Industrial (film scores)

In this blog I'd like to get you up to speed with what cue sheets are, how they work and how they relate to you.

If you are a professional film maker then you will have licensed music for your productions on a number of occasions. If you are new to licensing then please see my blog: 'Mozart is very, very dead'.

What exactly are cue sheets?

I do like sharing my knowledge with you and again this is a grey area but one that needs to be discussed. I hope you are up to speed with licensing music for your film or TV show, but after you have paid the composer then what do you do? First I will explain what cue sheets are then I will go on to explain how the 'royalty free' model works and also how the term 'royalty free' is a misleading term.

So your film has just been broadcast on TNT or CBS or Channel 4 but did you fill in a cue sheet? If the answer is no then you are about to make another faceless corporation like Sony even richer at the expense of your composer/s and you wouldn't want that ... would you?

Under the law, before they can broadcast your film or documentary, TV channels must purchase an obligatory music license from royalty collection agencies such as the PRS and ASCAP . You fill in something called a cue sheet with all the details of the music cues in your film, and send it off to either one of these bodies depending on which country you are in. Each country has its own body.

'By filling in a cue sheet you are supporting the people who supplied the music for your film'.

Royalty free?

Once you have filled in a cue sheet then a portion of the license fee that the TV channel pay to the royalty collection agency will be paid to the artists who own the music that appears in your film.

This is known as a 'Performance Royalty' and it can be pennies or it can be a larger sum depending on which channel and what time of day your film or documentary is broadcast.

The downside is, that if you don't fill in the cue sheet then eventually the performance royalty that should have been allocated to the artist will be divided up among the major record labels like Sony, EMI & Warner Brothers. Surprising eh? Surprising and grossly unfair. Filling in a cue sheet correctly ensures the composers and musical artists get to keep this performance royalty, as they should.

But what is 'royalty free'? Well if you see the words royalty free this simply means that you as the purchaser of the license to use a particular piece of music will pay no further royalties. Don't worry, unless otherwise stated most pieces of music fall into this category. However, the term 'royalty free' is a little misleading because as I mentioned earlier each time the program is shown the composers should get a royalty, it just wont be coming from your pocket.

It's estimated that between 70 - 90% of performance royalties never reach the composers or artists whose music drives TV and Radio ... This is usually due to cue sheet errors. However, there is a solution called digital audio fingerprinting go here for more info, but it has yet to be adopted by the performing rights organizations.

Simply put, by filling in a cue sheet you are supporting the people who supplied the music for your film, and that has to be a good thing.

Any questions on this? Please feel free to ask :0)

- David.