Legal Question in Entertainment Law in New York

Publishing royalties

Hello

I am being hired by a fitness video production company to create the soundtrack for a series of DVDs and possibly an infomercial. They are paying me a fixed fee for each of the 19 songs.

Today the person in charge of music licensing contacted me and I am not sure what to think of their proposal.

Here's part of her email: ''Basically, we ask for limited usage rights for the songs to be used in our workouts as well as the option to use them in an accompanying infomercial - should the producer of that show request some of your songs to be included. If one of your songs are selected for infomercial usage, your composer royalty payments would be paid directly to you via ASCAP or BMI quarterly. We ask all of our composers and music libraries to assign us the publishing royalties for infomercial -- which I'd like to discuss with you.''

Is it the normal procedure that the film company retains all publishing royalties for the soundtrack? Is this a fair proposal?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Marcos


Asked on 10/21/08, 11:47 pm

2 Answers from Attorneys
Daniel Pepper Pepper Law Group, LLC

Re: Publishing royalties

Marcos, many times a songwriter can demand to share the copyright under a co-publishing agreement. However it seems from your post that the video production company isn't seeking copyright ownership, but instead "limited use rights," which opens the options up a bit. Would you want to be able to exploit your music elsewhere in the future? Feel free to contact my office if you'd like to discuss.

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Answered on 10/22/08, 9:01 am
Steven Mark Steven Paul Mark, Attorney at Law

Re: Publishing royalties

I'm not surprised they ask and it's not a question of fairness. When the US was a capitalist country parties would bargain based on their leverage. I guess the video company hasn't gotten the message yet that capitalism is dead. But in the unlikely event they're still lurching forward on that mistaken impression, you should not assign what are referred to as performance rights royalties. To do so would, in effect, discount their flat fee to you. In other words what giveth with one hand, taketh with the other. But, hey, isn't that socialism? Pardon the editorial but the answers to your questions are maybe and no.

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Answered on 10/22/08, 10:23 am


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