Who is this man?! Why is he on this site?!
Read below to find out…
We’ve been having a very interesting and informative dialog in the comments section regarding re-title publishing.
Re-title publishing is when a company re-registers your songs under a different name with a performing rights organization (ASCAP, BMI, etc), so they can license your music and collect a percentage of the publishing royalties, and track these royalties separately from any other licenses you may have given out for these particular songs.
Check out the comments section of a previous post on Re-Title Publishing, where you can read the opinions of someone who claims to own a re-title music publishing company. He argues that re-titling is a decent option for bands that don’t have endless hours of time to spend promoting their songs to online music libraries and music supervisors. His particular company seems to promote their catalog actively, spending money to create promo CDs, edit tracks, etc., which you certainly aren’t going to get from a fully-automated web service.
It’s an option.
Our Mystery Man Unveiled
Another reader likens choosing between online music licensing companies to a Cornelian Dilemma.
This man is Pierre Corneille. According to Wikipedia: “The Cornelian dilemma is named after French dramatist Pierre Corneille, in whose play Le Cid (1636) the protagonist, Rodrigue, is torn between two desires—that of keeping his girlfriend Chimène’s love and that of avenging his father, who has been wronged by Chimène’s father. Rodrigue can either seek revenge and lose the love of his beloved, or renounce revenge and lose his honour.”
Only a fool would sign songs to an exclusive music library on 2010!
The argument against non-exclusive retitle libraries is only made by exclusive libraries. These companies are losing money to retitle libraries and are scared that the exclusive libraries will soon be coming to an end. The exclusive libraries are correct; their days are numbered and rightfully so.
Every legal and ethical argument made against non-exclusive libraries are actively practiced by exclusive libraries. Exclusive libraries get control for a song into perpetuity. This means that the library has the right to use the song however it wants. Many exclusive libraries enter into deals with foreign publishers where the library collects fees that they do not have to pay to the writer of the song.
Non-exclusive libraries only retitle for the sole purpose of splitting up the revenue streams from music. Sending the same song to different libraries makes perfect sense because your songs compete against one another instead of competing against songs from other composers. It is a win-win situation.