Selling Songs Again

[KManXC]

Was running on the treadmill yesterday watching For All Mankind (Season 3 Episode 2), and Today was featured about 3/4 of the way through the episode. Most of the song was played too. How much scratch does that earn for an artist?

[Spaceboy88]

There's no set price. For All Mankind had to reach out to the controlling publisher of the song and they usually offer a "MFN" price for the song (Most Favored Nations)...basically says "we want to use the song, and we'll give you $X to use this much of it." The publisher can take it, or counter-offer. Depending on how important the song is to the show, they may be able to get more money.

They also have to pay a fee to the label to use the recorded version of the song (which they own). That's the sync license, and that too has to be negotiated. Again, depending on the same variables above, the price can range greatly. But ultimately, the labels and artists want to get some money as opposed to being passed over for another song.

This is a long-winded way of saying that we don't know and can't know unless UMG (Sync) and Warner Chappell (Publishing) tell you.

[topleybird]

Ron Moore took Billy out for a surreptitious midnight trip to Burger King, where Bill ate two Texas Double Whoppers, a large Chicken Fries, and a Hershey Pie Shake while moaning "Oh my God, you have no idea" and "I feel like I can actually scream again" and Moore just leaned further and further back from the table

Oddly this played out in exactly the same way as it had last year where Ashley Lyle wanted to use the same song in Yellowjackets

[houseofglass11]

Billy: ANOTHER WHOPPER

Brian: More chicken fries??

Billy: WHOPPER, WHOPPER… and yeah more chicken fries too

[Ram27]

he's on the same one now. it's all meatball subs until the machine reissue comes out

[TheAlter]

Corgan recently built a gearhead’s dream of a private studio in Chicago, with equipment from Motown studios and the kind of mixing boards used by Pink Floyd and the Beatles. To pay for it, he mortgaged his past, accepting a sum that can safely be assumed to be in the millions to sell the rights to “Today” — the Pumpkins’ first hit — for a Visa ad. He is unapologetic about the sale of a song he calls “sacred,” arguing that it completes his independence from the major-label system. “As I stood there with the white flag on indie island, everybody else blew by me, including all the indie bands that were licensing their music,” he says. “I realized I was living in the Nineties, still living up to those old codes. Pete Townshend basically told me, ‘Who gives a shit? Who gives a shit if Mary Lou lost her virginity in the back of a car to the song? What’s the difference between whether you sell it on iTunes or a CD through a commercial?’ ”

Corgan’s blue-gray eyes are glowing with indignation now, his voice rising. “I turned around and took that money and built a studio, and now it gives me the opportunity to give away my music for free,” he says. “If I had gotten the accolades that I deserved, if I wasn’t treated like some sort of pariah by my own musical country, if I wasn’t sort of caught between pop land and alternative land, if I had a country, then maybe I would have a greater confidence in those systems supporting me, but they haven’t. So at some point, I have to go in business for myself.”

God Interrupted Rolling Stone, January 3, 2011