Digital Licenses Lead to Profits
I don’t think it is a surprise that performance rights royalties are where the money is coming from right now. As more music is being consumed digitally, there is a dramatic rise in the places where it is being played - along with those new situations and contexts come increased performance license royalties for artists and organizations like BMI and ASCAP. As music becomes more ubiquitous, it seems like all the licenses (synchronization, performance, etc) will become more important (perhaps not mechanical since physical manifestations of music are decreasing) and I would predict that publishing houses at some point will begin putting pressure on BMI and ASCAP to let them in on some of their business. In the past it wasn’t worth their time to sort out royalties but as money becomes scarce perhaps now it is?Mechanical rights include both digital and physical sales as well as types of streaming and other new media. There is the decline in physical mechanical royalties, but you do see a rise in digital mechanical royalties.
I just don’t believe for one second that this is surpassing synch rights….no way in hell. Consider that every feature film that comes out doesn’t even gain performance royalties and that should be answer enough right there - and I can’t imagine there are enough TV shows right now that are reaping enough performance benefits for their theme songs either.
Yes, but keep in mind that performance royalties are also paid to songwriters that own songs that are performed on concert tours and nightclubs, bars, parades, etc all pay performance royalties for music that is played. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you kingofspills that Synch royalties make fair money but I would imagine that for the average musician they will make more money off of performances or songs they write than the limited number of musicians that get paid for the songs they manage to get into movies. Also, I apologize for misspeaking about the mechanical royalties - I should have specified better what I was speaking about, thanks for the clarification katieschenk.
