NRG is joining forces with production music industry leaders to make sure that production music artists receive the neighbouring rights royalties they are entitled to.
All it takes is slightly better metadata
At NRG, we represent over 1000 production music writers, for whom we collect over 1 million USD annually. Production music is unique in the way, that most production music writers are also the performing artists.
Currently, a large proportion of their neighbouring rights royalties don’t reach them. Often for the simple reason, that they are not mentioned in the metadata as artists, and the collecting societies don't know, to whom to send the royalties.
The royalties they are entitled to then end up in the so-called “black box” of the neighbouring rights collecting societies.
Why is this an issue?
The total black-box value of all music rights revenue has been estimated at over $2 billion dollars. Those royalties end up in a pool and are re-distributed among other correctly credited contributors. But production music artists are losing significant revenue.
If the artist doesn’t collect their neighbouring rights royalties, it does not flow to the publisher or composer! No other right-holders, such as original publishers, sub-publishers, or composers; will therefore lose money or lessen their share, if the artists in production music are credited correctly. The production music industry can only gain. It is a win win situation for all of us.
How to fix it?
Adding the Artists' information on each track explicitly will maximize the chances of production music artists to receive their royalties.
Original Publisher
As an original publisher, make sure to collect information on all artists (musicians) who participated in recordings, always ask your composers who the performers are, and also include non-featured and session musicians playing on a hire. To sum it up: just make sure you never distribute recordings with blank artist metadata.
Sub-publisher
Ask the catalogues you represent to provide you with up-to-date metadata that includes artists. And register those, along with other recording data, with the applicable neighbouring rights collecting society. Also, make sure that your online search engine, through which you provide the music to your users has the field for artist (or performer) and that it is always filled and available to your clients, especially if they are using it to fill cue-sheet information.
Distributors and other service providers
Make sure that your metadata templates include fields for artists (performers) and that it is listed as obligatory. You would not let tracks without composer information be distributed, so why treat artists any differently?
Artists (which very often in production music are the writers/composers)
If you are Composer / Artist / Session musician - ask your producer/original publisher if they are listing you as an artist and tell them about this initiative.
