Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here...

A brief public service announcement: in going over the “opportunities” on the YouLicense.com site, I just came across this little tidbit from Pureplay Music:

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WE ARE CURRENTLY LOOKING FOR ARTISTS THAT ARE NOT REGISTERED WITH ANY COLLECTION AGENCIES, I.E. ASCAP, PRS, PPL ETC. ALL GENRES CONSIDERED. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR A RANGE OF NEW INSTORE MUSIC CHANNELS.
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Now, if you don’t have long experience licensing music to various sources, that “not registered” phrase is something to really watch out for. For those that might not know, I’ll try to explain this as simply as I can:

When a licensing house wants unregistered music, it’s not because they’re going to get some “better deal” where the licensee doesn’t have to pay performance royalties. EVERYBODY PAYS. All stores in America pay. All radio stations. All nightclubs. All TV networks. Virtually anywhere that commerce and music intermingle, that business pays royalties to BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC. That money is already there. Your job is to get your share of it.

What this licensing house wants to do is register your music as if they wrote it. It’s a common scam at the low end of this business, and the sync fee isn’t where the money is; it’s in this fact. There are two halves to performance royalties: the publisher half and the writer half. If you’re your own publisher (like me) you get both halves, and thus receive at least one check from ASCAP/BMI/SESAC a month.

There is no earthly reason to give up this money, as it’s just sitting there waiting for people to claim it. If you wrote music that is worth getting licensed, and you take some $50 one-time payout for it, rest assured that the entity that licensed it registered it with whichever service their publishing company is a member of, and are busily collecting both sides on your behalf.

So please, please, please take the time to learn about how licensing and its attendant royalties and buyouts work. This is a fairly consistent and easy way to make money as a musician and what Pureplay Music is doing is the equivalent of 3 Card Monty. You can’t win with their method. Pureplay can take their “empowering artists” catchphrase and ram it right the fuck up their own anus.