Looks like dinner….
Is on me! That’s right, just got an email saying that the quarterly payments from BMI Music have been posted. For those that don’t know, BMI is a service that registers musical works and keeps an eye on them when they get played in public. That eye they keep generates payments to the artists whose “works” are being played. In our case, let’s just call them songs and it really is a fantastic service. As mentioned, each quarter you get a very detailed printout of songs that are registered in your name that have gotten played in some way, shape or form, and depending on the amount of plays, a dollar and cents figure is generated and a check produced (they even do direct deposit). I mention “cents” because that can often be the sum total of how much you actually get from a particular place. In my case, I have had the luck to have had a few songs placed in a couple documentary movies and those movies eventually got played around the world and you do actually see real money come in from these performances. I should explain that if it is a film made in the USA, you typically get paid up front, and that number can be all over the place, depending on the size and budget off the film. It also seems to matter a lot if you happen to be a signed to a record contract artist (alas, I am not), aka, you get a lot more. Once that film goes overseas, however, the BMI eye kicks in and they start monitoring. And no complaints here, I think it has been a great thing and it is so very cool to get “residuals” for music I have composed and I dare say that there are probably a very large number of artists who never actually see a dime in this manner, and for that, I am truly grateful! And due to Netflix and the many other movie streaming services available, seems someone is always showing a movie somewhere, aka, I haven’t had a song on one for a few years now, but we keep seeing revenue.
Of course that revenue unfortunately is not always very much, especially if it was a fairly low budget release, and does indeed seem to dwindle through the years. I think my last quarterly statement was in the neighborhood of 2 dollars! Fingers crossed for a movie festival playing all of the doc’s I have been associated with (trust me, not that many). Again, however, such a cool experience and if today’s payment outcome is a little light (their website crashed so not able to see the amount just yet) dinner is still on me as I still get a thrill every time I see the email saying the quarterly statements are available!
Still cooking away on the Pulp Porch, avoided near catastrophe when we found out there were no more Pella series 150 windows in town (double hung of course) but we did mange to source them a little further down the road as they say so getting set to do the road trip. Progress pics on the New Pulp and Pulp Improvement pages. Still aiming for an early October finish so let’s hope all the rest of our needed materials are available (we already have the floor tile so good there)!
Off to get more material. See you all next week!
