Thursday, December 28, 2017

Announcement About My Pond5 Works Registered With ASCAP

Effective immediately, I have registered all the music in my Pond5 portfolio, except for certain arrangements of public-domain Christmas music, with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). I had previously registered selected works from the portfolio with ASCAP, but this week extended that to most of my catalog.

For those who aren't familiar with ASCAP, it's a performance rights organization, or "PRO." PROs like ASCAP and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) in the United States, or their counterparts in other countries, collect royalties when music written by their members (for example, composers like me) is "performed" in public. Performances can be live or recorded, and include film and television, radio, night clubs and the web.

What this means for you

If you're licensing my work for your personal, private use (say, for a family video), none of what I'm writing about here applies to you. You don't even need to read beyond this point. (But thanks for sticking with me this far!)

However, if you license my work for use in a film, television, radio, a website or other public setting, you need to fill out a cue sheet. This is a document that tells about your project and what specific music you're using for it. If you've never done this before, a good resource to help you get started figuring things out is this page from Pond5 on PRO tracks and cue sheets.

What it means for me

This is very important to me, because it gives me a better opportunity to share in the profits from public performances of my work. Except under certain circumstances, as a media producer there is no extra cost for you to fill out the cue sheet. For example, in film and television the broadcaster, not the producer, is responsible for paying the actual royalties. I suggest you do some research, starting with the link I provided, to determine the requirements for your specific situation.

I hope you will understand and support this decision. I feel strongly that my future viability as a musical artist depends on being able to collect as much of the available royalties for my work as possible. Again, if you're interested in licensing any of my stock music for personal, private use, this change has no impact on you.

As always, I thank you for supporting me and my work, either through licensing stock music, downloading or streaming my commercially available work, or just stopping by to read.

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