Hello all

I recently did some music for quite a few of 7" to 10" sponsorships and interstitials for a UK broadcaster. I found out that all cue sheets are handled by Soundmouse. What is a composer expecting to fiscally received out of these? (They have aired for quite a few times). Does a composer register with Soundmouse similarly to PRS?

Hi Nemo Sonics,

My name is Mark Vermaat. I work for Soundmouse in the UK.

Soundmouse is used by broadcasters (such as ITV, Channel4, BSkyB in the UK) to report music cue sheets to PRS for Music and PPL. You don't need to register with Soundmouse, although we do advise composers to send us their music. Soundmouse use audio recognition to automatically detect a piece of music and create the cue sheet. The cue sheet will then be reported to collection societies in the UK or abroad. Soundmouse works for 450 networks and channels in the US, UK and most of Europe, so it's definitely worth the trouble to send us your music. Send me a private message and we will follow up with you.

Whether you will be paid performance revenues by PRS depends on many factors. For examples: Is it a large or small broadcaster, How is the broadcaster licenced (sample days or 24/7 reporting), Number of performances, etc. Follow this link for more information: http://www.prsformusic.com/creators/membership/PRSforMusicroyalties/prsroy altysources/Pages/prsroyalty.aspx.

I hope this helps.

Kind regards,
Mark Vermaat

--------------------
www.soundmouse.com

I saw this via a PCAM newsletter. I'm curious if any other writers here have had any experience using Soundmouse? Anyone, anyone...?

I'm always slightly unsettled by reading about these audio fingerprinting services (PPL mentioned recently that they'd be taking data from Soundmouse, and PRS in the past have announced they take data from Neilson)...

...the reason being that, as a liddle unsigned guy, Soundmouse and Neilson don't have my tunes, and so would never be able to match them.

The more PRS & PPL use fingerprinting services, the less chance indies have of ever getting paid - ironic, as the whole point is to increase reporting & distrubtion accuracy.

I did look on Soundmouse's website but there's no clear mention of how to get your tunes fingerprinted.

None of the digital aggregators I use currently submit to any fingerprinting services - seems to me it would be highly useful if they did, as then anything I released would automatically get onto the fingerprinters' databases.

--------------------
~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

So, if I get this correctly:

Fingerprinting service rep says "send us your music" and two posts later highly respected, successful composer-with-own-fab-website-dedicated-to-helping-artists-get-their-dues says he cannot work out how to send said fingerprinting service his tunes.

This is what the US military call a SNAFU and I hope it is not indicative of why we (as persons in music) are being thrashed in the marketplace by the gamers.

Dudes, save us some lost sleep please...

Quote MC Deli:

---

So, if I get this correctly:

Fingerprinting service rep says "send us your music" and two posts later highly respected, successful composer-with-own-fab-website-dedicated-to-helping-artists-get-their-dues says he cannot work out how to send said fingerprinting service his tunes.

This is what the US military call a SNAFU and I hope it is not indicative of why we (as persons in music) are being thrashed in the marketplace by the gamers.

Dudes, save us some lost sleep please...

---

Look you bold wee bism,
I said I looked on the Soundmouse website a few days ago and it wasn't immediately obvious how folk would submit tunes to them. That was before the rep above gave his invite.

If you really want a laff I could send you the World-of-Fail style correspondence I had with Neilson & PRS about 4 years ago asking how I might submit stuff to them (which basically reduced to PRS not understanding the difference between a musical work and a recording of a musical work, and "er, well I know we announced it a press release but that was just to sound good, you can't *actually* do it." Or something.


--------------------
~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

Feeling your pain

My *what*...?

Oh, my pain.

--------------------
~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

Well this month PRS announced that they'd ditched Nielson and also gone with Soundmouse.

So, it seems ever more that you need to be in it to win it, it being Soundmouse.

What was their website URL again...?

--------------------
~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

So "M" (PRS members') magazine Issue 44 June 2010 says

Quote:

---

PRS for Muslei was able to out radio royalties with increased accuracy in the April distribution, thanks to fingerprinted data from Soundmouse. The music recognition technology helped the society process 21% (!) more radio performances during the quarter

---

Has anyone managed to get their stuff fingerprinted by Soundmouse yet? Following this thread I had some correspondence with them on email where they said "oh it's just a beta at the moment, get back to us in a while" and then stopped replying to correspondence.

--------------------
~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

Quote feline1:

---

The more PRS & PPL use fingerprinting services, the less chance indies have of ever getting paid - ironic, as the whole point is to increase reporting & distrubtion accuracy.

---

More chance than sampling!!

I agree but for different reasons. The technology is rubbish. It fails a LOT as witness by Youtube time and time again.

Well, at least on YouTube, I know my aggregator has submitted my catalogue to their fingerprinting system, and it HAS identified my tracks! It does work! (albeit in a way which led to my aggregator telling me I was infringing myself )

However I have yet to find a way to even submit catalogue to Soundmouse in the first place! I'm excluded from the whole system. We tried to at least get them to fingerprint some tracks of ours that were used in a BBC3 sitcom (and believe me, I've seen the mess of an Excel spreadsheet which the BBC were calling their "cuesheet", which was an error-ridden mess... fingerprinting would be a vast improvement) and we still haven't managed even get that fingerprinted. Hopeless!

--------------------
~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~