Performance Rights Organizations

Does anyone remember the (official) link on AJ that talks about Performance Rights Organizations / Performance Rights Societies?

For anyone who may not know why I am asking – Royalty Free doesn’t not mean copyright free, and though the music here is licensed and the user does not pay additional fees to use the song, if it’s broadcast on television say, there are fee’s that broadcasters pay that composers are eligible to receive when their music is registered with a PRO /PRS.

I can’t remember if there is a conflict of interest on AudioJungle or something about it, but I remember something vaguely and wanted to read more. I thought it was in the Wiki, but maybe it was just a thread. Either way, I am just looking for any official AJ docs.

Thanks to anyone who has a link

There is no official link as far as I’m aware (there should be).

But, Scott talks about it briefly regarding TRAX :

His response in his final paragraph of that seems to state quite clearly that non-TRAX = non-PRO-registered. TRAX = PRO -registered.

But I don’t know if this is official or not, there definitely should be something in the Wiki about this.

• waves flag * - Scott??

as far as I know, you are not allowed to upload any song that is registered with any performance rights organisation. So you won’t be able to receive any payment on any songs uploaded here except for the percentage of the sale for the royalty free license

aaah yeah, Gareth has found it! I didn’t know TRAX uploads could be registered with PRO ’s

Ah! Thanks Gareth, that is the one I remember. Thanks as well Liam!

Well, then yes definitely something needs to be added to the Wiki – that is major.

If this is indeed not allowed for RF tracks my next question is – Why not?

The broadcaster is the one who pays the other fee. The only reason I can think of is that AJ’s position is that the broadcasters themselves are the ones buying the license…but we know that’s not the majority of cases by any means. I mean, by authors offering their music here (and thus cutting the costs for buyers wayyy down for synchronization and master licenses that would be required otherwise) it only seems right to allowed registered music.

This has become a great point of interest to me as I am now running into a lot of my music on TV.

Maybe there is a point I am not seeing so of course will leave with an open mind while I wait to hear from someone with all the official AJ info

I’m also very much interested in this!

I know that some other “royalty free” music websites have the authors CAE # & song’s cue sheet information along side the track info incase they plan on using the music in broadcasting. Of course their songs are still “mechanical” royalty free but they’re not “performance” royalty free.

Right now AJ states that you are not allowed to upload music that is registered to a PRO . But I wonder how they could possibly police that…?

In fact (not going to drop names) but I’m 99% certain I ran into an author that has uploaded songs that are registered to BMI (same author name and song name is in the BMI index)

I’ve spoken about this a bit before as well. It seems that even though some royalty-free sites allow the composer to have the song registered with a PRO , AJ does not. I was unaware that TRAX music was allowed to do this though. Good to know!

Hey guys, seems like the question has already been answered – no, PRO registered music is NOT allowed to be sold as royalty-free music on AudioJungle. This has always been mentioned at the very top of our upload instructions page:

Tim asked “why not?” The main point from the very beginning was that we wanted AudioJungle customers to be absolutely sure that what they purchased was completely royalty-free and, if they purchase the correct license here, they have the secure guarantee that they will never have to pay anything again having paid for a license to use the music on AudioJungle. Some royalty-free libraries do this, some do not. We chose to.

With more and more AudioJungle music appearing on TV, radio and film however we do appreciate that we could improve our licensing to better accommodate these type of uses. This is something we have been discussing behind the scenes for quite a while but with most licensing issues on the marketplaces, changes occur slowly because they have to be managed extremely carefully and scrutinized very carefully by our legal team. So although I cannot guarantee if or when our licenses will be improved, I do personally hope that this is an area of licensing that AudioJungle will improve upon in the future for the benefit of both customers and authors.

That would be INCREDIBLE scott! I definitely hope that we move in that direction. Every time I sell an extended license I think about this. It would be great to get some royalties on top of initial sales, and I know that clients purchasing music for use in TV and film are paying PRO ’s anyway, so it would be no skin off their backs.

I look forward to the prospect of this (possible) change!

I agree that it makes total sense to allow music registered to a PRO on AJ. Surely more wonderful composers would join AJ if it weren’t for this very issue. It’s a pretty big one.