Performance Royalties
How are performance royalties tracked and calculated? Remember that performance royalties are tracked and paid out by the performance rights organizations like ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and SoundExchange.

The royalty trail begins when the song is registered with one of the three performing rights organizations mentioned above. Once a song is registered, it becomes part of that PRO’s collection and is available to all of its users. Most of those users have a “blanket license” to use any or all of the PRO’s music, however some users license on a per program basis and only pay for the music they actually use. (This is good for users who don’t use that much music.) The PROs deduct money for their operating expenses and the rest goes to the songwriters and publishers.

PRO customers include just about anyone who plays music in a public place — even those who play “hold” music for their business. These include television networks, cable television stations, radio stations, background music services like MUZAK, colleges and universities, concert presenters, symphony orchestras, Web sites, bars, restaurants, hotels, theme parks, skating rinks, bowling alleys, circuses, you name it — if they play music, they have to have a license and pay royalties.

Tracking the playlists
The difficult thing to imagine in all of this is how these organizations track all of that music to get an accurate record of how much royalty money needs to be paid to which songwriters and publishers. Each of the PROs use a slightly different system for calculations; we’ll use the ASCAP system as an example. ASCAP uses two methods for determining performances: it either counts them or does a sample survey.

For television performances, ASCAP depends on cue sheets that program producers provide them, as well as program schedules, network and station logs, and even tapes of the broadcasts. ASCAP developed its own computer program to help studios and program producers report performances.

For radio performances, ASCAP does a sample survey of all radio stations, including college stations and public radio. To do this, it uses a digital tracking system, station logs provided by the radio stations, and recordings of the actual broadcasts.

For live performances, ASCAP reviews set lists provided by concert promoters, performing artists, and others. In the case of symphony performance information, the printed programs are submitted.

Licensed Internet sites, circuses, theme parks, etc. provide ASCAP with their own music use data.

Others that use music, like restaurants and bars, are not surveyed and simply pay a flat rate that is distributed based on trends in local radio stations (based on the type of music).

Show me the money!
ASCAP’s royalty calculations are based on a system of credits. Here is an example of how the money is calculated based on the ASCAP system.

First, some general information: ASCAP weights different factors in order to come up with a song’s total “credits” and a fair royalty calculation. For example, the song is weighted based on the type of performance (theme, underscore, or promotional); this is known as the use weight. A song that is featured and sung by a recording artist on TV or radio gets more weight than one that was played as background music during a radio commercial. The licensee (radio station, TV station, etc.) is weighted based on its licensing fee, which in turn is based on the licensee’s markets and number of stations carrying its broadcast signal. There is a weight applied to the time of day the music is performed (particularly in television). Music played during peak view/listener times receives more weight.

ASCAP also uses a follow the dollar factor, which means that songwriters and publishers are paid based on the medium from which the money came. For example, money paid out from radio stations is paid for radio performances. A general licensing allocation is figured for fees that ASCAP collects from bars, hotels and other non-broadcast licensees. These fees are distributed to songwriters and publishers based on similar radio and TV broadcasts of the individual songs. In other words, they estimate that restaurants and bars are playing the songs at a similar rate as the local radio and TV stations.

Here is an example of the calculation that ASCAP uses to determine the number of credits a song title has:

Use weight
X
Licensee weight
X
“Follow the dollar” weight
X
“Time of day” weight
X
“General licensing allocation”
+
Any radio feature premium credits (bonus credits for top played songs that reach a specific threshold within a quarter)
= Total number of credits

The total number of credits is multiplied by the shares for the song (how the royalties are split between writers and publishers). This number is multiplied by the credit value for the song. The value of one credit (credit value) is arrived at by dividing the total number of credits for all writers and publishers by the total amount of money available for distribution for that quarter. For example, if there are a total of 10 million credits for a quarter, and there have been 35 million dollars collected for distribution that quarter, then the value of one credit for that quarter is $3.50.

The final number is the royalty payment. Here is how it works:

4,000 Credits
X
50% (.5) Share
X
$3.50 Credit Value
=
$7,000 Royalty payment

Royalty payments are made quarterly.

These calculations are quite difficult and vary somewhat between each of the three PROs. Visit their Web sites (links are the end of this article) for additional information on how these royalty payments are calculated.

Internet royalties
For Webcasts and other digital performances, SoundExchange was formed to collect and distribute those performance royalties. Just as in traditional media, broadcasters of digital performances of music must pay royalties to the songwriters and publishers of the music they play. Because of the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995, however, they must also pay royalties to the recording artists. SoundExchange collects electronic play logs from cable and satellite subscription services, non-interactive webcasters, and satellite radio stations. They then distribute the royalty payments directly to artists and recording copyright owners (usually record labels) based on those logs.

The climax track from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie sountrack “Total Recall”.

a-new-life-pre-alpha.mp3

The symphony has been re-arranged and re-recorded for Hard Rock Guitar by Raz. Jerry Goldsmith’s is the original composer who is renown for soundtrack compositions on TV and films such as Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, The Omen, Alien, Rambo, and hundreds more. 

The Broadcast Wave Format is a file format for of audio data. It can be used for the seamless exchange of audio material between different broadcast environments and equipment based on different computer platforms. As well as the audio data, a BWF file contains the minimum information that is considered necessary for all broadcast applications. From the BWF file, using an object-oriented approach, a higher level descriptor can be used to reference other files containing more complex sets of information which can be used for the different specialised applications.

The Broadcast Wave Format is based on the Microsoft WAVE audio file format which is one type of file specified in the Microsoft “Resource Interchange File Format”, RIFF. Some restrictions are applied to the original format. In addition the file includes an “Broadcast Audio Extension” chunk. A chunk is a basic building block of RIFF files. This illustrated below.

 

 

Audio Formats

Broadcast Wave Format

THE EARLY HISTORY OF SOUND

From the very early days of moving pictures, experimenters had attempted to add sound to the silent film. Pioneer Leon Gaumont was one of at least three exhibitors at the 1900 Paris Exposition, who demonstrated their own rudimentary movie sound systems to intrigued members of the public.

In 1906 Emile Lauste applied for a patent for his own process, which recorded sound directly onto the film strip. However, Gaumont’s first director, Alice Guy-Blache, like most of the other early experimenters, used discs to make sound recordings which she crudely synchronised to her films. Between 1906-7 she produced and directed over one hundred, one or two minute musical shorts, using a device called the ‘Chronophone‘.

During 1908-10, Oskar Messter produced hundreds of sound shorts in Germany and in the USA, also using a sound-on-disc system. But like Guy-Blanche, his presentations were limited by the lack of amplification for the gramophone and the short playing time of the discs. The insensitive nature of the recording machines also meant that performers had to mime to pre-recorded phonographs. To record them live would mean the phonograph’s horn would be in shot.

Technical breakthroughs by Ambrose Fleming, Lee de Forest and others led to the creation of microphone amplification and loudspeaker systems that solved many of the practical difficulties of recording and exhibiting sound films. Serious attempts by a number of experimenters at developing viable systems could now begin in earnest. 

Particularly notable was the research work of Danish engineers Axel Petersen and Arnold Poulsen (pictured above), who in 1923 devised their own method of recording sound onto 35mm film.
However, these experimenters worked in an atmosphere of hostility from the industry to the concept of sound films which continued until the late 1920s. Director Paul Rotha decribed the addition of sound as:

…a degenerate and misguided attempt to destroy the use of film

Acclaimed Director D.W. Griffiths said:

We don’t want and never shall have the human voice in our movies

Actor Charlie Chaplin said:

Moving pictures need sound as much as Beethoven symphonies need lyrics

Despite this sceptism experiments continued with much research work carried out in New York by Western Electric Research Laboratories (which became Bell Labs in 1925). In 1915, Harold Arnold was placed in charge of a project to improve the quality of sound recordings. He was able to take advantage of recent technological advances and use vacuum tube amplifiers, condenser microphones and balanced loudspeakers. 

Under assistant chief engineer Edward B. Craft (later vice president of Bell Labs), two research groups were created in order to develop the most effective means of recording sound for the motion picture industry.

One team headed by I. B. Crandall experimented with sound-on-film, and the other led by J. P. Maxfield was charged with developing a working sound-on-disc system. Englishman Stanley Watkins had worked in the research labs from 1911 and was second-in-command under Maxfield. In 1946 in his Bell recollections entitled Madam Will You Talk, he stated that sound-on-disc was adopted as Bell’s preferred system because of:

…forty years of experience in the commercial processing of the discs, whereas the past experience in the developing and printing of motion pictures was not much help when it came to processing the soundtrack.

The sound reproduction from disc was also, at that time, of a superior quality to sound recorded onto film. Ultimately this decision would prove to be a mistake, as by 1930 sound recordings made directly onto the film strip alongside the pictures, would become the industry standard.

But on December 1st, 1923 when young George Groves was leaving Liverpool to sail 3,140 miles across the Atlantic to join the research team at Western Electric Research Labs in New York, all efforts at 463 West Street were being made to create a viable, synchronised sound-on-disc system to give sound to the silent film.

Music, sound and voice overs are almost mandatory for a video or DVD production. Audio will become common place in web design as the Internet enters a new phase of maturity.

The Mp3 file format changed how listen to music. Video and Audio will change how we use the Internet. The synchronizing music, sound effects and voice overs with video is not a new idea. The first movies with sound appeared in the early 1900’s. The addition of sound spawned the era of motion pictures. Hollywood has transformed sound production into a sophisticated art. A great soundtrack can make a great movie.

Video Games have given birth to a new evolution of sound. Interactive characters talk to you while you control your own virtual character that makes it’s own sounds. The environment in which these characters exist is filled with various sounds and ambience. Soundtrack music often plays in the background. And, the Internet will see similar adoptions of sound in websites as web design continues to evolve.

Video Game sound can be get very complex. But it all starts with the basics.

Pro Audio Production

What is Pro Audio Production? Let’s Google it and find out.

Music and Sound in Web Design

Music, soundtracks, sound effects, voice overs, etc., are an integral part of our lives. Complimenting sound and music can enhance a web site and improve the overall user experience. On the contrary, poor usage of sound can weaken the overall appeal of a website design.

And selecting the most appropriate sound for your web site can be difficult, as people tend to have broad variations in personal music taste. Select a sound that effectively portrays or represents your website’s image, while not distracting from the message you intend to communicate on your web pages.

Music does not neccessarily need to be used. Ambience, or background noise, can be used to set a mood amongst your web site users. In many cases, Ambient sound can often be more effective than music, has little resistance with a person’s personal music taste, and is less apt to distract the web site user from the intended message.

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Sound adds a whole new dimension to media. Subtle ambient sound can fill a sensory void with website visitors, significantly enhancing the appeal of a website, video, animation, presentation, etc.

[MYPLAYLIST=3]

Playing sound effects with interactive buttons provides sensory feedback to the website visitor and adds realism to the website’s overall interactivity. Voice narration can improve the effectiveness of your website presentations by better informing and guiding your website users. Music can add life to your website presentation by establishing an emotional connection with your website user. Razworks owner, Michael Rassel is an accomplished guitarist, singer, composer and recording engineer and has been employed by recording studios, post video facilities and professional rock bands.

Music and Sound in Web Design

Music, soundtracks, sound effects, voice overs, etc., are an integral part of our lives. Complimenting sound and music can enhance a web site and improve the overall user experience. On the contrary, poor usage of sound can weaken the overall appeal of a website design.

And selecting the most appropriate sound for your web site can be difficult, as people tend to have broad variations in personal music taste. Select a sound that effectively portrays or represents your website’s image, while not distracting from the message you intend to communicate on your web pages.

Music does not neccessarily need to be used. Ambience, or background noise, can be used to set a mood amongst your web site users. In many cases, Ambient sound can often be more effective than music, has little resistance with a person’s personal music taste, and is less apt to distract the web site user from the intended message.