Your Royalty Sources!
Here’s a pre-release preview from my upcoming book:
“INSIDER SECRETS TO HIT SONGWRITING IN THE DIGITAL AGE”
Chapter Ten
Your Royalty Sources!
Most of the money we earn as songwriters comes from the performing rights area. There are organizations that collect royalties for us in the USA and in foreign countries throughout the rest of the world. These organizations represent most songwriters, film and TV composers, and music publishers.
The performing rights societies are: the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), SESAC (the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers), and Global Music Rights (GMR). You need to join one of them.
Together, those four societies collect more than seven billion dollars for us a year. Beats workin’.
Performance royalty income continues well beyond the lives of many writers. In fact, the copyright for our work is the life of the writer plus seventy years.
Though the royalty figures vary for any given type of use, based on many factors, the information below shows you the type of monies that can be earned in this field.
l. Number One Billboard pop song of the year: Writer and publisher income: $2,400,000.00
2. Ten minutes of underscore per episode on a network TV series airing for ten years: Writer and publisher income: $1,656,000.00
3. Theme song for a network TV series on the air for five years: $460,000
4. Song performed on a primetime network TV: $7,000
5. Hit song used in a commercial with a two-year broadcast run: $400,000
6. Number one pop chart single: $1,400,000
7. Number ten pop chart single: $500,000
8. Number fifty pop chart single: $90,000
9. Fifteen minutes of underscore on each episode of a television series airing for one year: $44,000
10. A major popular song’s lifetime of copyright earnings: $7,000,000
11. Worldwide foreign performances of a top ten chart hit: $1,600,000
12. Foreign performances of the underscore from a number one worldwide blockbuster movie: $1,000,000
Plus..
There are three more single-spaced pages of income streams listed in the rest of Chapter ten. Wowza!
©2022 Molly-Ann Leikin