When it comes to music licensing, one size does not fit all. So while Getty’s acquisition of Pump Audio will streamline the music licensing process, a flat-rate, fully automated music licensing system will not work for all advertising projects. Acquiring the “synch” rights and other licenses for some songs will still require several phone calls to the larger labels and publishers. And negotiations can be especially tricky when it comes to online and mobile advertising.
Stephanie Diaz-Matos, executive producer, Search Party, a licensing, supervision and original music company, dares to dream of the day when industry standards are in place for music licensing and new media. “It seems that everyone is hip to utilizing all these new platforms that are available, but there aren’t industry standards in place yet so each time feels like the first time. But deals are definitely happening,” says Diaz-Matos. “I think that the more they happen the more standardized it is going to get. And then everyone will have benchmarks for how deals were made and what people paid for things.”
Plan ahead
Her advice to agencies is to plan ahead. Figuring out how to approach a campaign musically is now a discussion that should happen much more early on because it will affect whether or not you choose to score or license it. “We have to know beforehand whether the clients are going to go after these alternative distributions or if a project falls under the branded content category versus a traditional spot so we’re not trying to license a track that is ultimately going to make it impossible to offer it as mobile downloads or put it on iTunes, etc.,” Diaz-Matos points out.
All distribution platforms were accounted for early on for HBO’s new brand initiative, The HBO Voyeur Project, which she worked on via BBDO New York. So they decided to go with a score instead of licensing music. The project includes multi-media stories that HBO built around the theme of voyeurism. “See what people do when they think no one is watching” is the tagline used to describe the experience, which tries to get viewers to confront the question, “Do you like to watch?” The Voyeur Project came together in a film with no dialogue that offers a fly-on-the wall view of a four-story apartment building and the people who live there who are interconnected. To launch the initiative, the film was projected on the side of a New York City apartment building. The initiative extends to the HBO Channel, HBO on Demand and online at HBOVoyeur.com.
“We created six different soundtracks for the short film that appears on the site. You can click through different scores and select the score that you want to watch the movie to, but you can also download the film and pick what score you want to download it to for iTunes or your PSP,” says Diaz-Matos. “We have a lot of freedom to do that because we went with a score. I think creatively it enhanced the project a lot because it is something we have ownership of and it’s customized.”
But for Mini Cooper’s Hammer & Coop web series created in March via Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners, Sausalito, Calif., licensing was necessary. “There was one element that was written into the script that required having a song that you would hear on the car radio, then it went into this dream sequence and then it became a music video. (The song was In the Heat of the Moment by rockers Asia.)
“We went for YouTube and Second Life and other sites and that’s where it became a little bit tricky. There’s the argument that those sites get a million to a billion hits and therefore should be worth a lot more money, but that doesn’t mean that our piece is going to get that many hits. You can’t say the media buy is this big and therefore this many people are going to see it and its going to play this many times,” explains Diaz-Matos.
“It’s frustrating but it’s exciting because you have to get on the phone and work these things out. At the end of the day if it’s a big famous song, it’s a big famous song, and they are allowed to ask for what they want to ask for regardless. But still it’s our interest to protect the agencies and the clients so that they are not overpaying.”
With decreasing production and media costs for mobile and online, Josh Rabinowitz , senior VP, director of music, Grey Worldwide, New York, believes that publishers will parallel this paradigm in their fees. “If you consider that in South Korea, a song created by Samsung for their advertising, which was made available online as a mobile phone only download, sold three million units at $2.99 per hit. Or, that the download of a ring or master tone sometimes costs more than the actual single, I think the demand will create the incentive for the pubishers to price accordingly,” he said.
Dialogue is key
EMI Publishing Ltd. participated in a seminar at Cannes to show that it is poised to help simplify things for agencies. “It’s no longer simply a question of lets pick a song and put it against a 30-second commercial. It’s now lets pick several songs and do custom remixes of them or allow the audience of that content to do their own custom remixes and then send them in a viral e-card to all their friends. Or let’s take several different songs and allow those songs to soundtrack online content that’s both entertainment and brand message,” says Keith D’Arcy, senior VP, music resources and development at EMI.
“Agencies have to utilize a huge number of technologies to get the message across. They either have to choose to give up the tools that they are comfortable with–music being one of them–or talk to someone who can help them figure out how to continue to use what they find as effective tools on platforms like cell phones.
“I think everything is possible. It requires a constant dialogue between the business affairs and licensing departments of the agencies and the business affairs and licensing departments of the record labels and publishers.”
