Recording - April 2017 - 55

APRIL 2017
Part Four, TAXI Road Rally 2016

Music Licensing Basics With Frank Palazzolo and Bob Mair
Michael Laskow, Moderator
I'm gonna change course a little bit, now. This is
something that may not relate much to Frank's
world as much as Bob's, but I want to cover it
because these guys [in the audience] will hear the
phrase blanket license. How many people have heard
of blanket license? A fairly small percentage. So Bob,
can you please tell them what a blanket license is
and how it works. Sometimes they get paid if apportioned money is given out, sometimes they don't.
Can you explain all that?
Bob: Well, again-and we were talking about
this earlier-contracts are negotiable. It's two
people agreeing on something, and a blanket
license is a contract between, generally, publishers and an entity-MTV, VH1...
So it doesn't affect you guys, directly. Your music
goes into a catalog at a publisher and then they cut
what's called a blanket license deal with MTV, let's
say.
Bob: Yeah, and I would say blanket licenses, I
would assume, are less directly done with individual musicians, and most frequently with
publishers.
We get the question from our members, "Do I sign
with a library or a publisher that is well-known for
doing a lot of blanket deals?" People have the feeling that they're getting screwed by these blanket
deals. Sometimes they are, sometimes they might
not be, right?
Bob: Well, it depends on who they are doing
blanket deals with. I have a lot of blanket deals
that I deal with. There are blanket deals with
some people, and those are gratis licenses, and
there's a lot of that in the reality world.
Let's stick with blankets, and then go to gratis for a
minute.
Bob: So blankets are an agreement where you
negotiate... Say there's a production and they've
got 10 episodes, and they've got a budget of three
grand an episode. They may come to me and go,
"Hey, we've got 10 episodes, a budget of three
grand an episode, we want to use your catalog
exclusively for those 10 episodes. And what that

(Left to right) TAXI Founder, Michael Laskow, Black Toast Music CEO, Bob Mair, and Music Supervisor, Frank Palazzolo on stage during the Music Licensing Basics session at the TAXI Road Rally.

blanket would be, if we agree to it, would be-
I'm just throwing numbers... What it would be is
they could use music from the entire catalog as
much or as little as they want...
All you can eat on the user end.
Bob: All you can eat for those 10 episodes! But say,
again, for let's just say numbers' sake, 10 pieces of
music...
Per episode times 10 episodes. So you're looking at a
hundred licenses.
Bob: Three hundred bucks a pop.
OK, so it's a $3,000 check for the blanket. But what
happens if they use 11 pieces in one episode? Or 15?
Bob: You do the math. You divide $3,000 by 11 or
12 or...
OK, so the number doesn't go up, it just gets apportioned out over the larger number of pieces of music
used.
Bob: Exactly. And then as a publisher we do the
math, we do the splits, and send sync income out

to the composers, which is the upfront money.
The upfront money that you get...which you don't
always get...
Bob: We may want to get into that, because I'm
seeing heads shake.
Yeah, we've got 15 minutes, but let's do that.
Bob: OK. So then that money gets divided
amongst the writers. And then on the publishing
side, obviously, they'll see their performance
income from ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC at a later
date. So there are those kinds of blanket licenses.
Sometime people will do a blanket license for a
year. They could do a five-year blanket. I don't
think I've heard of anybody doing more than
that.
So let's talk about the so-called bad blanket license
where these guys would get kind of "screwed" in the
deal, where the money maybe doesn't get apportioned out as upfront money.
Continued on page 56
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