Moderated by Michael Laskow
Live at the TAXI Road Rally, November 5th, 2022
L to R Greg Carrozza, Jeff Freundlich, Craig Pilo, Michael Eames.
Everybody who came into this ballroom for this panel is a genius. Seriously, give yourselves a hand. I literally thought for hours to come up with who I wanted on this panel. And I’m really happy to have these gentlemen up here on this stage.
All of us in the industry see mistakes on a daily basis, and we ask ourselves, “Why, why, why are you making these incredibly stupid mistakes? Your music is so good, but you are literally killing your chances by just not being aware of things that you shouldn’t do,” and it’s heartbreaking. We all want everybody we know who wants to be successful in music to be successful. And these stupid little mistakes really can kill careers.
Let me introduce you to our panelists.
Greg Carrozza is a TAXI member who didn’t figure it out years ago, but re-joined TAXI, and all of a sudden everything clicked for him. He got the music side, and he got the business etiquette side—the whole thing just became crystal clear to him. So that’s why I wanted him up here, because he’s one of you, and he’s figured it out.
Jeff Freundlich is the COO of Wild World Music and Fervor Records. He’s a ball of energy. He’s highly intelligent, and he’s hyper-ethical. If I were a musician, and I was going to sign with a catalog, I would want to be signed to Jeff’s company.
Craig Pilo is an A-list jazz drummer, a composer, and he’s also one of the best screeners we ever had at TAXI. He’s currently the Head Screener at TAXI. So, he sees a lot of mistakes, and he sees it from the perspective of TAXI members making mistakes.
And last by not least, we have Michael Eames. Michael’s a publisher that knows more about the legalities of publishing than any music attorney I’ve ever met. Seriously. And he articulates in plain English better than any music attorney I’ve ever met, and he doesn’t charge $500 an hour for his advice. [Laughter]
Thank you all for joining us for this. And thank you, people who are in the ballroom for this, because this could literally save your career someday.
I’m not asking a lot of questions on this panel, because I asked these guys to jot down what they think are some career-killing mistakes.
Greg started out with one of the most obvious, which is not doing what you said you’d do and misrepresenting yourself. Would you please elaborate?
Greg: Yeah, don’t do that. The key is that it’s a long, long process to get your first “yes.” And once you do that, the next thing to do is to continue to develop the relationships that you have with that person that said yes, and the next person that said yes, and the next person that said yes.
You absolutely can never tell someone that you will do something and then don’t do it, because they just won’t call you back. They won’t think that they can rely on you to be a person of your word. And that sounds kinda simple, and I don’t think it’s just this business, it’s probably any business at all. But it’s absolutely imperative that if someone asks you, “Hey, can you send me three more tracks by Friday?” Say “yes,” and then do it! Send it Thursday if you can. If you can’t, then say, “You know, I can’t do it by Friday; I’ll do it by Monday,” and then do it on Monday. And that person will say, “No problem,” right? Jeff, you’d say, “No problem,” right? Because everybody’s got things going on, and if you just do what you say you’re gonna do, that’s pretty much the whole battle. And certainly, don’t ever misrepresent what you can do, so don’t do the opposite of what someone is asking for. Don’t offer to do something like, “Hey, I’ll have five tracks by Friday.” And then on Friday at four o’clock and you have only one, you can’t make a phone call or send an email and say, “You know what? I’m not going to really have that.” You’re not going to get called back, you’re just not. Again, it seems really simple, but it’s really what you have to do!
Great advice.
“It’s so tempting to stretch the truth, and it’s the worst thing that you can do, because the cost will always, always, always be significantly higher than whatever the benefit is.”—Jeff Freundlich
Jeff, your first bullet point was “Misrepresentation of ownership via retitling. The Internet will catch up with you.”
Jeff: We’ve learned this the hard way with two writers. I don’t know how much you guys know about Fervor Records, but we have this huge, massive collection of compositions and masters that are available for one-stop licensing, and they’re all period recordings, so it’s music going all the way back to 1921. And we work with indie artists too, and that’s a really big niche for us. And we find some of that music through TAXI. We had one writer who we found through TAXI who had some music from 1971. Their story seemed to check out. You know, and we do our due diligence on this stuff. We signed it, and this person got a really nice chunk of change [up front] from us, like five figures, and we licensed it, right? So, we’re warranted in representing to Warner Bros. or CBS or Paramount that we own this music, that we have the right to enter into a licensing agreement for this music. About two years after we signed it, we got a claim from YouTube. And I don’t know if you guys have ever come across this, but if you put your music out on YouTube, you’re not going to get a counterclaim by a third party. But if there is a third-party counterclaim, you’re gonna get a little email saying, “Hey, wait a second, somebody else is saying that they own this music.” Well, the Internet ultimately is smarter than you, right? I mean, it will catch up with you. So, it turned out that this guy had retitled all these songs from 1971, and we couldn’t find these songs. So, if you wanted to defraud us, you can. I mean, we’re smart guys, but there is an extent to how much due diligence that we can do. Copyright.gov only goes back to 1976, for example, and we’re not flying out to Washington, D.C., to look in their card catalog.
So, it turns out that this stuff was on a major label, and some fan of this obscure band that was on a major label had put these tunes up, and then A&M, or whoever it was, must have filed a claim. Point being, this guy not only had to make us whole [financially, by paying us back], but we had to make A&M whole, because this was a master recording that they owned, which cost thousands and thousands of dollars. So, not only did this writer have to pay us back, but they had to make us whole for the money that we paid for the master ownership as well as for our time. So, this ended up costing this person maybe $35-to-40,000 dollars, simply because of the fact that they lied [and mis-represented their ownership].
It is tempting to fantasize in the excitement of having your music in a film or a television show or monetizing that. It’s so tempting to stretch the truth, and it’s the worst thing that you can do, because the cost will always, always, always be significantly higher than whatever the benefit is.
Did A&M (or whichever label it was) want more money than your license?
Jeff: Well, in this particular case, we just handed over the master fees. They kind of gave us a hard time, but we just said, “Look, it’s never happened.” We kind of worked around it. But some of the record labels and publishers will give you a hard time and they’ll say, “Hey, that’s below what we would have done it for, and we’ve got you by the balls, so give us double,” or whatever. We keep our nose pretty clean, so we’re not out to deceive anyone, and we have a good reputation, and I think that counted.
Oh, for sure. Can you expound a little bit on due diligence? I talk about that fairly frequently on TAXI TV. People say, “Well, why do the libraries get half the money? What do they do? They just put it out there.” Explain how much effort goes into due diligence for everything. Not just the vintage stuff, but anything you sign. Give us the bullet points of things that you do…
Jeff: We ask a series of questions to the composer, or if it’s a band, because we’re looking at both the composition and the master, right? Those are two separate things. Does everybody understand that there is a difference between composition and master? Composition is the idea of the song; the master is the embodiment, it’s the recording of that song. And our value proposition for film and TV is that we have both the composition and the master to license, and we make their life a lot easier.
So, on the composition side, we want to talk to all of the songwriters; we want to make sure that they haven’t signed this music to someone else. If they had a management deal, we might want to take a look at that contract if they still have it, because maybe the manager actually has an exclusive right to do something with the publishing, you just never know. On the master side, was it union or was it non-union? Are there talent releases for everybody that recorded on that? If there aren’t talent releases, can they hunt down band members, and would they be willing to be a party to the agreement? Maybe we just have to throw some extra money their way. So, it’s not a “10 minute, check the boxes” process. What it really requires is getting on the horn with people and talking about them and making sure that they actually have the right to enter into the agreement that they’re about to enter into with us. And we always say that our warranties and representations in our contract are extremely long. These are the promises that you’re making saying that you own it free and clear, there are no hiccups, there are no problems. And if you can’t abide by those warranties and representations, then we don’t really want the music, because we want to sleep well at night, and we want you to sleep well at night, as well.
It’s like it’s really that simple. If you are signing something, and you’re kind of second-guessing, or maybe there was an acrimonious band split and somebody’s going to come out of the woodwork, well, then go mend those fences first, and then come back to us. We’re very patient, and we want everybody to feel good when they sign a deal with us.
So, imagine going through that process. Again, not just for vintage, but for every single piece of music that’s signed into a library. That kind of work happens before they sign it. It’s not just, “Wow, this music is cool; can I sign it?” “Sure, no problem.” It’s that entire due diligence process. So now imagine that a library has got 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, or even 100,000 pieces of music in their library. They had to go through that process for every one of those.
Somebody came up to me the other day and asked me, “Why doesn’t TAXI do like super-quick turnaround stuff for supervisors for TAXI dispatch… Oh, no, for libraries that need stuff to fill an order from a music supervisor really quickly. And I said that it comes down to people not having all of this critical business stuff together. Because the libraries will reflexively—and rightfully so—go to the composers and artists who are already in their catalog that they’ve done business with already, because they’re trusted. They’ve gone through the due diligence with them; they know they are not going to try and BS them; they know they are not going to try and sneak a vocalist under the rug who they don’t have the right paperwork from… any of that stuff. So unfortunately, because people are people, and they don’t really dot their I’s or cross their T’s all the time, the libraries will take the easy, safer route, which I certainly can’t blame them for.
“When you’re pitching through TAXI, or if you are pitching directly to a publisher or a library or directly to a music supervisor, give them exactly what they want.”—Craig Pilo
All right, Craig says that pitch accuracy accounts for 95% of the mistakes he sees. I’ve always said it’s like 80% of the people who don’t get forwarded because of pitch accuracy, not mailing the brief. You (Criag) say it’s 95%; you’re more hands-on with the music than I am. Elaborate on that, please.
Craig: Yeah, this is a lot simpler than clearing a master. But I’m just talking about when you pitch to these listings or briefs, whether it’s a listing with TAXI or directly from whatever library you work for, it’s kind of an extension of what both these guys said, and let’s give them what they want. And unfortunately, as the Head Screener, a lot of what happens at TAXI gets funneled through me, and we’ve had to return some fantastic music [because it’s not what was asked for], and it sucks! I can’t speak for all the screeners, but when I was a screener, it was really difficult to return some music that you guys have created, and it’s really good. Now it’s way off-base, it’s not what was asked for and it’s useless in this situation, but it’s really good. And that’s a hard review to write, and it’s hard to hear it back, because you as members have created something that’s really good. But maybe you pitched a country song to a jazz listing, or you pitched a jazz song to a dramedy request, or you pitched something that was recorded in 2000 to a vintage listing, where they wanted something from 1976.
Again, this is a lot simpler than what these two guys covered. But when you’re pitching through TAXI, or if you are pitching directly to a publisher or a library or directly to a music supervisor—as an extension of what Greg said—give them exactly what they want. And make sure you read the brief and listen to the music, and then we won’t have to return great music. If you give them what they want, it’s a lot easier for us to get behind it before we send it to Jeff or whomever, to make sure that it’s what they asked for. And the pitch accuracy is something I’ve said in a lot of emails to our members, the screeners have said it to me, and I’m sure a lot of members have heard it in the feedback, but you really home in on what’s being asked and you can alleviate a lot of the problems. Read the listing carefully, [and make sure you’re sending what it asked for].
The person who writes our listings is very articulate about it, and does a very good job of digesting and translating what these supervisors and libraries and publishers want. We go to great lengths to make sure the listings are written pretty concisely; they are pretty accurate 99% of the time. So, if you could just improve your pitch accuracy and make sure you’re submitting what they want, I think you’re gonna see a lot more forwards, and we’re gonna give the clients better music.
I talk to a fair amount of our members, maybe more than most CEOs would talk to their customers. And I said to a guy not that long ago—maybe four or five or six months ago—he was having a fit on something that didn’t get forwarded because it didn’t match with what the listing asked for. And I called him up, because he had already been through three staffers and made them all feel exasperated, so I called him up. I asked, “Why on God’s green earth would you submit this piece of music for this request? Any stranger on the street would say it’s not the right kind of music, it wasn’t even close.” And he goes, “Well, I thought it was so good that when they heard it, they would use it anyway.” And I don’t think that’s an isolated incident. I think some people are so into their own thing—and I get that—they’re so proud of it and think that, “This is the one that’s gonna get me some huge placement, gonna launch my career.” Do any of you [on the panel] know anybody who has ever said, “Let’s re-write, re-shoot, and re-edit the scene, because that piece of music is so frickin’ awesome we’ve got to use it!”
Don’t miss Part 2 in next month’s TAXI Transmitter!