So what are new use payments? Residuals? Clip Use, Re-Use, Jingles Cycles? What impact to these concepts have on working musicians, and the AFM as a whole? |
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Different forms of compensation for recording musicians are specific to different industries. |
Payments for the use of our music are often more valuable than session wages.
In jingles, the vast majority of payments come not from original sessions, but from payments for the use of the music. |
When you play on a jingle, your basic scale is for the recording session. But AFM and pension records show that for every dollar of original session wages paid, musicians are paid 6 to 8 dollars in dubs and reuse cycles. That is, every new 13 week cycle of use triggers a new payment to the musician, and those "cycles" may far outweigh your original wages. Without new use payments, we would be getting only a tiny fraction of what we make now! |
Residuals make us economically competitive. |
In the motion picture industry, everybody up and down the line, from big shots to the middle class, get paid a mix of relatively low up-front wages, and residuals. The residuals are a gamble, a form of potential delayed compensation based on the performance of the film in the marketplace. Musicians are paid by the distributor if and only if there are secondary markets profits - otherwise the residuals for us are zero. Residuals are determined and paid only after the film has been released, so they don't come out of production budgets.
Allowing the employer to defer payment until after profits roll in means that more upfront money can be spent on live musicians. More players get health care. More players get pension. More players make a living.
Working within a system based on residuals ties us to the business model our employers use with all of our sister guilds and unions. It allows more musicians to be hired because it is more economical for the producer. It ensures that musicians who work for relatively modest wages up front can make a good living.
The AFM competes extraordinarily more successfully in motion picture scoring than in any other recording area. Only low upfront costs combined with residuals can allow us to compete successfully in this global business. |
New Use Payments Protect Employment |
New Use payments are the mechanism for protecting theintellectual property rights of musicians. When we play for a record, film, jingle or live TV show, that music cannot be pirated by the producer or anybody else as long as new use payments are collected by the union. If your music is used in another medium, the contracts call for you to be paid appropriately. This doesn't just ensure that you are fairly compensated - it is a work preservation mechanism. If the producer has to pay to bring a TV theme into a film, or into a jingle, it might be worth his while to re-record it, creating new employment. If the music from a hit TV show you play on is being ported to the Internet, it should be worth their while to either pay you for your performance, or pay you to re-record it for the new medium. |
The work dues rate on New Use payments is 15%. This is by far the highest percentage of work dues in the AFM |
Clip use is a different type of new use altogether. The AFM motion picture agreement gives the producer the right to use short "clips" of previously recorded music for production purposes; such as when a TV is being shown onscreen - the music you hear coming out of the onscreen TV might be "clipped" from a record or different project. The employer is then required to pay the original musicians what amounts to a relatively small amount of money. |
What we call New Use is often called Re-Use by other entertainment unions. For example, the AFTRA Videogames agreement contains strong language about the use of AFTRA member's work outside of the game for which it was recorded. In AFM contracts, we call that New Use, AFTRA calls it Re-Use... It's all intellectual property rights that belong to you! |
What is our intellectual property worth? |
- Millions of dollars in wages from new uses, along with all the associated AFM work dues.
- Future employment across all the AFM recording contracts, with all the associated work dues.
- Solidarity with all of the other entertainment industry unions, that have sacrificed to stake their future on intellectual property rights - particularly in new media.
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What do we need? |
We need the AFM to protect our intellectual property, to protect the new uses of our music. We need the AFM to commit with strength and purpose on behalf of our residuals - and our livelihoods. |
Knowledge is Power. Stay tuned for more knowledge! |
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