Quote:
Originally Posted by
G.K.
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...because I've seen this happening to people I know (filmcomposers/songwriters) in the past.
And the more we (composers/musicians/artists) know about what can go wrong , the more we can focus on correctly claiming our rights and royalties , even then when there's no lawyer around who is able to check our contract.
Just to be clear to all reading this. Neighboring Rights ARE NOT royalties for composers or songwriters. A film Composer or a Songwriter are NOT entitled to any NR Royalties.
ONLY the featured artist performing the musical work and the secondary musicians performing the musical work are entitled to NR Royalties. If you are a composer, and you write an amazing orchestral piece... and then you send it to Eastern Europe to have it recorded with an 80 pc orchestra, you are no longer the performer... if you kept it all midi and played/programmed the parts yourself, then you are the performer.
If you are a songwriter and you write a song that someone else sings and another drummer, bassist, guitarist and pianist record for you... you are no longer the artist or performer, you are just the songwriter and are not entitled to NR Royalties. If you programmed all the parts but did not sing it, then you are still one of the secondary musicians. If you sang it yourself then you are the featured artist.
So keep that in mind. I think I mentioned it earlier, film composers and songwriters usually never get any NR royalties because they are never the artist/performer of their own works. As famous examples, how many film scores has Silvestri or Williams actually played/performed on themselves? Likewise how many songs has David Foster or Dianne Warren etc actually played on themselves? That is why they are not getting any part of the neighboring rights.
With library music, because most things are programmed, the composer BECOMES the artist/performer out of the sheer virtue that there is no money to hire other performers to record the music.