Why Is Dealing With Performance Royalties So Hard?

The problem of having missed revenues lies mostly in the extreme complexity of the process. But Trqk’s Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer David Della Santa shines a light on how to take control and embrace automation and data visualization as a tool to open a whole new world of opportunity.

After realizing how difficult it can be to understand and manage performance royalties, composer David Della Santa conceived the idea for Trqk to make it simple and give creators and rights owners a way to analyze and gain insights.

I’ve been in the music game for over two decades as a producer, composer, and music supervisor, and for much of that time, I completely overlooked performance royalties while I focused on creating more tracks. I had always figured I could leave it to music house administration or agencies to ensure everything was taken care of to get properly compensated for my works. But after the transition from broadcast to digital and later the growth of subscription or royalty-free licensing, sync fees started shrinking. So I decided to dig in and take control by really learning how to maximize this income stream. What I discovered is that there is incredible value in getting the data and reporting right, and shortly thereafter I added nearly 25% more to my total performance income.

Taking Control Increases Performance Income

For songwriters, producers, publishers, and other rights-holders, now is exactly the time to focus on maximizing your collections. Performance royalties can add up very quickly and often come from unexpected places around the world, especially sync placements in ad campaigns, TV shows, and films from both broadcast and digital entertainment. You’re entitled to royalties for your music every time a commercial or other sync is played, not just an upfront fee. And yes, you can go back to your PRO with evidence of usage they may have missed, and claim the money that’s yours.

Navigating Complexities

The problem of having missed revenues lies mostly in the extreme complexity of the process. You’d need to be a data scientist to get actionable insights from your raw performance-royalty data. But if you want to answer questions like, “what kind of tracks tend to earn the most and for how long,” or “what sources pay the best and where tracks tend to be played,” you’ll need to learn those skills quickly. Also, the claim and payment process for royalties is extremely complex and fragile, relying on manual reporting that often leads to missed payments — and that’s not even counting unlicensed uses.
It took a long time for me to get the hang of managing my own performance royalties, but now that I’ve come out the other side, I’m dedicated to simplifying the process for everyone. So how to do it?

Automate, Automate, Automate!

Let’s face it, musicians don’t get into the industry to work out complex data analytics: we want to make music and get paid for it. And honestly, that should not be so hard. Given all that tech can now automate for us, why can’t we feed our royalty statements into a system and get results we can understand?

Data Visualization

Many musicians are visual learners, so a service that can automatically create heat maps, graphs, charts, and more from our data is crucial to success. This “data visualization” allows us to take one look and instantly pick up key information that can guide our decisions and juice our bottom line, like which markets are bringing in the most royalty revenue, which genres tend to get the most syncs, which music users and projects are the most lucrative, and much more.

Automation can also detect usages of a track that standard detection may miss. For example, if your track is synced in a major commercial campaign on a prominent TV network, it could be played hundreds of times a month. Even with current systems that use a combination of consensus, sample, and user-provided survey information to find performances, there are bound to be a few that slip through the cracks, and that lost money can add up.

Real-Time Digital Performance Detection

Trqk offers an automated way to connect the dots between detection results and PRO reported performances. We created features that pick up uses at the point of performance in order to help composers get you much closer to full detection and payment. That includes unlicensed, overlooked, or mistakenly registered uses, which include, but aren’t limited to, illegal piracy. Sometimes, syncs are played by accident after the license term has expired, and you can take steps to get paid. For illegal uses, you have other options to collect depending on the platform. 

I’ve always been one to put my money where my mouth is, which is why I decided to embrace automation and co-found Trqk so we can bring these ideas into reality and help songwriters and other rights holders take control of their royalties and future. While I’d sure love you to use my service, the point is that more automation in the performance royalty space is better for everyone. Now go get what’s yours!

David Della Santa is Trqk’s Chief Creative Officer and a producer, music supervisor, and composer with 20 years of experience and over 500 sync placements for clients including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Nike, Reebok, Audi, Wells Fargo, and Quaker Oats.

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