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Exactly.
People often ask me, " I can't believe that they
want 100% of my publisher share, " or " It's basically
a 50/50 deal; is that fair? " Can you kind of
give an overview of what typical production
music library deals look like?
Yeah, it's a 50/50 deal. And I've heard that
before too, you don't want to give away your
publishing. Well, you know, yes, I do! And the
thing is, to the people that say that, I'd say, " If
you want to start your own production music
library, if you want to be a publisher, then you
will spend all your time getting connections
with music supervisors and ad companies and
all of that, and you'll do all the legwork. " I
don't live in L.A. or New York. I live in Seattle,
and so I don't really have good access to that,
although I considered doing that about 10
years ago. But really, the music libraries are
doing all that work, they have the connections,
so they are getting 50% of the monies that are
collected, and that's typical. With a 50/50
deal, we [the creators] keep all the writer's royalties,
and the libraries get the publisher's
share because they're doing all the publishing
work. And we just get to sit here and create
and don't have to do all that other business
stuff-the legwork and developing and maintaining
all those great connections.
So, yeah, and even beyond building the great
connections and maintaining those relationships,
it is, first of all, reviewing all the music, then
doing all the due diligence to make sure that the
music you want to sign isn't already published. A
common mistake these days is putting your music
out with an entity like TuneCore, CD Baby, or
somebody, checking that box that says, " Yeah,
make it available for sync. " And you don't realize
that by checking that box you have just signed a
publishing deal, or at the very least a publishing
administration deal, and that makes that music
unavailable and unable to be signed to a deal
with a music library, because you can't have two
publishers on the same thing unless it's nonexclusive,
and that's a whole other thing to talk
about.
Yeah, that's really true. And I am so willing to
give up a percentage of this... I'm not making
deals with Netflix and Amazon and ABC, NBC,
CBS, all the cable companies. They're out there
doing that work, so they deserve that money.
Just the tagging alone... When I talk to my
friends who own production music libraries, the
amount of work they do to get the stuff into
their system... First of all, some libraries actually
choose to master everything they put in the
library, they all have to tag the stuff, they have
66 RECORDING September 2022
to present it to their clients in formats that
they're [the clients] are amenable to-that they
will use-certain ways of delivering it. It's a lot
of work on the back end.
Oh, absolutely. There are a couple of libraries
that I work with that are mastering everything.
I have to send them stems that stem out everything.
They master because they want their
library to be consistent-sounding All the 50,
100 composers putting stuff in, they want it to
be mastered consistently. So that's a lot of
work... a lot of work.
I think some of the people who say, " I'm not giving
up 100% of my publishing, " don't really
understand that they're only giving up 50%,
which is the publisher's share, and you're keeping
the other 50%, which is the writer's share. I think
a lot of people develop that mindset because
they took a course in college, or they've got a
friend who is normally a real estate lawyer who
took a music law course in college or in law
school, and they go, " Oh no, dude, you never give
up 100% of your publishing. " Well, you're not
actually giving up 100% of your publishing,
you're only giving up 100% of the publisher's
share, and they work to get that money. So
everybody who has that notion that some real
estate or wills and trusts lawyer told them should
realize that they don't know how this aspect of
the music industry works, and what the norms
are, like an actual music attorney would know.
I mean, there are things where I've held on to
my publishing, because I have a connection
with a... I think there was a T-Mobile thing I
did, and there were a couple other things
where I actually have kept my publishing, but
that's because I already had the connections.
But as a general rule with production music
libraries, I give it up almost probably 100% of
the time to get what I want to get.
For people watching that aren't TAXI members
and don't yet know the difference between what
an exclusive production music library deal is versus
a non-exclusive deal is, can you please
explain the difference?
Yeah, exclusive is just what it says. You sign
your masters, your songs, your cues and they
have all the rights-they own the stuff. With
" Virtually everybody who goes to
their first Road Rally, your eyes are
opened. It's like going from blackand-white
to technicolor. "
-Dean Krippaehne
non-exclusive, they have the rights to pitch the
stuff that you send them, but you can also take
that music elsewhere and do other things with
it. You still maintain the rights to release CDs
or to pitch it other places if you want to.
Although, that can get really dicey if you are
signing non-exclusives with multiple libraries,
there is that potential problem that both
libraries pitch to the same show, they take it,
well, who gets paid? Library A or library B that
both had it non-exclusively? So that's a tricky
one!
Before this broadcast, I grabbed a few of my
recent contracts, and was looking them over,
where I've actually got the rights with the
exclusive deal to if I want to release a CD of
this material, I can, but that's about all I can
do with it. So, if you're an artist or a
songwriter and you want to produce a CD of
your music, but you also want to work for film
and TV, there are exclusive companies that will
allow you to do that, and they'll put that right
in the contract. I like both types of deals, but I
probably do a lot more exclusive contracts
these days for various reasons. But I am in
both exclusive and non-exclusive libraries.
How many libraries in total, give or take, do you
have your music in? How long have you been
doing sync stuff? Is it like 10 years or more now?
Yeah, it's more than that. Well, my first Road
Rally was in 2006, and through TAXI I got
lucky a couple years before that and I had gotten
music into a show called One Life to Live, a
soap opera that was on at that time, so I was
starting to get my first taste. So, it's probably
2005 or 2006, 15 or 16 years.
Virtually everybody who goes to their first
Road Rally, your eyes are opened. It's like
going from black-and-white to technicolor. You
learn so much, and I went, " Wow, this is actually
something in the music business that you
can build a career on, " and you can't say that
about some things in the music business. You
know, you've got to roll the dice; am I gonna
be an artist and a superstar? Well, you can't
build that career, per se. But with film and TV,
I saw that you can do these steps and build a
real business out of this thing and have a real
career out of it. So yeah, 15, 16, 17 years,
somewhere around there now.
I knew you were going to ask me how many
libraries, so I was trying to go through them. It
might be more than this, but I found contracts
for 39 libraries, but there may be some more.
That's a lot of libraries, congrats. Do you know
how many pieces of music you have out there in
the wild in all those libraries, give or take?
It's somewhere around 1,400 pieces of music
that I have in those libraries.
I don't know what it is. But I know enough TAXI
members who are succeeding at the level that
you are at. Once they get up over a thousand, and
it takes a couple of years obviously for the money
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