Tv3 music vids

Bicky

Why have tv3 stopped playing music videos at night?
Do tv stations have to pay a licence to play music videos?

Mossy Monk

i'm sure they do but not 100% sure

Elmo

I beleive they have to pay IRMA .

But I assume that most Stations do that anyway regardless if they are not showing videos.

byte

Wouldn't each video be subject to a Royalties fee payable to the relevant record company or something?

sceptre

Originally posted by byte
Wouldn't each video be subject to a Royalties fee payable to the relevant record company or something?

Oh good lord, yes (or at least kind of, see below). Nothing comes for free and obviously TV stations shouldn't be allowed to use music they don't pay for unless everyone says it's allowed.

Depending on the artist's contract, the record company may have a free promotional usage clause as part of a larger controlled composition clause. If this is in place the record company is essentially making any money that the artist would be making. Many artists are happy to give this one away as the videos are essentially being used to promote sales. Because TV play is so important these days (a quick look at the number of music channels available on satellite should be enough to confirm this), this one has fallen slightly out of favour in new contracts (nevertheless the first draft of every contract presented by a record company will include this allowance AND royalty-free recording usage on any commercial video format - if you're in the music business and your lawyer misses the latter, fire him. I'm a cheap replacement).

With regard to artist (read "record companies") royalties, there are few payments made for the playing of promotional videos on any channel. Videos don't make money. It's hard enough to get music stations to play a particular video without charging them an arm or a leg to do so. Most of the payments made by TV stations for videos are nominal to cover copying and shipping. The actual artist (as opposed to the publisher or songwriter) almost certainly doesn't get any money for these. They'll have worked out something on videos for sale (but see the bit below above about the controlled composition clause - there are plenty of bands who, thorough inept representation, don't get money for videos of theirs sold over the counter).

With regard to publishing rights, what generally happens with radio stations and TV stations is that for straightforward playing of songs (ie not as part of an advert or used in a TV show) the station applies for a blanket licence. In the US the application would be made to ASCAP or BMI, I assume in Ireland the application would be made to IMRO (note that I'm more familiar with US IP law so I'm not totally aware of the actual organisations here. It would be IMRO rather than IRMA though). In the UK the application would be made to PRS. The fee is a flat annual one depending on the size of the potential audience covered by the station. In return for this annual fee the station gets the right to perform /all/ compositions controlled by /all/ the publishers and writers affiliated with the licensing authority. Note that I've split the publishers and writers into distinguished groups. Writers join the relevant performing rights society in their own right and get paid directly by the society without the publisher taking an admin fee (though the society will take their own cut in any case - this is part of the reason that U2 cut loose from IMRO a number of years ago and started collecting their own payments).

Radio and TV differ in how this blanket licence money is distributed. Radio stations are required to keep a log of all the music they play on a rotating basis - each station has to account for the music they play for about a month or less a year. These figures are tweaked so that they cover the country and the royalty cut is decided on a percentage of this.
(this is the procedure in the US, I assume it's the same here)

TV stations have to keep a cue sheet with all music they play , how long it was lpayed for and how it was used. There's a specific amount paid for each type of use and this usage is used to calculate the blanket fee for the following year (during the actual year the total royalty amount may not tally with the blanket fee so each composition gets its amount adjusted acordingly to calculate the final payment).

In the US, bonuses are paid by BMI (but not by ASCAP) for compositions that are performed heavily so this can obviously make a substantial difference to the royalty paid. PRS allocates royalties based on concert play in addition to radio and TV. I believe IMRO do likewise here.

Understandably the TV companies don't like having to pay royalties to a small number of performing rights societies with the capacity to act like a cartel as opposed to negotiating rights with a large number of publishers that they can bargain with and beat into the ground. As far as I know, the last time they tried this in court was 1984 (Buffalo Broadcasting v American Society of Composers (obviously a US case) for the legal buffs out there). The broadcasters lost and rightly so.

Sorry for the long-winded and rambling nature of the post. "Royalties" and "the music industry" can't be put in the same sentence as "simple" all that easily. To put it simply, because the songwriters have to be paid, playing the videos costs each telly channel money.

Agent Smith

they showd some crap video's imo





but some were good.




innit!