Recording - April 2017 - 56

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Bob: Well, "screwed" is a relative term. [laughter]
Bob: Well, no, I'm just saying there are some people that, you know, if you've got 5,000
instrumental pieces of music, and those 5,000
pieces of music are stellar-and I know you personally know some of these people. They make a
lot of money, even if it's a gratis license on MTV,
because the performance income makes up for
where there is no sync income. So that same person may go, "I'm gettin' screwed."
So what are you saying? I'm doing a quick translation, if I may.
Bob: Sorry.
Somebody could do a blanket license-all you can
eat-with MTV. And I'm just using them as an
example; I'm not saying they do this, necessarily.
Here you go: Here's 10,000 tracks; use whatever you
want for all these shows for this entire season for
the next three years' worth of seasons. And let's say
they get a check for 20 grand for that, they [the publisher] may not send any of that 20 grand to the
people whose music gets used, and the musicians
and the composers are then relying strictly on getting paid their backend performance royalties that
come to them from ASCAP, BMI or SESAC, or
whomever their PRO is. So yes, they consider themselves screwed because the publisher took the
whole 20 grand and didn't apportion out sync fees
to each person whose music got used. So a lot of
musicians feel that's a skanky deal, but sometimes it
may not be.
Bob: I feel what I would be more concerned
about is people doing direct license blankets.

"It takes about five to 10 seconds per
song [to listen to music] that people
submit to me. I probably get about,
I'd say, 200 to 500 songs a week."
-Frank Palazzolo
message about the first message about being
really excited about getting to know you." I'm
pretty sure that you're not going to go on that
date. It's just not gonna happen. The same goes
with when people treat me that way.

...get screwed-in the vernacular.

So I get a lot of emails from people that send me
music, and I look at the email and I think to
myself I've got 10 scenes that I'm working on
right now and three scripts that I need to read by
tomorrow. And I've got this one person that I met
at a convention this weekend whose music isn't
going anywhere. Which do I do first? I'm gonna
do my work first, and tomorrow I might have just
as much work and I'm gonna do my work first
again and again and again, and over and over
again this email will be unread. It doesn't get
read, it doesn't go away. It's still in my unread,
and once I'm done with all my work, I'm gonna
go back and look through all that. And if I have
four emails from you in that same unread email
before I got a chance to read it, I'm not responding to it. But if it's just that one, and it's just
maybe an MP3 in there, "Hey, it was great to
meet you. Here's the song we talked about; would
love your input." I'll check it out; if I like the song
I'll hit you back. Probably gonna want to use it.
I'm gonna ask you all about it; hopefully your
metadata is in there, so I know that you own the
whole thing one-stop [meaning that the person
who sent it controls the master and the
copyright]. If I don't like it, maybe I'll get back to
it. But it's not the music supervisor's job to tell
you all the stuff we don't want to use. It's not my
job to tell you when your song didn't go in the cut
after we asked you how much it would cost if we
decided to. That's just the game, because if I had
to tell everybody all the songs that I didn't use,
that would be my job. [laughter]

Frank, I want to talk about pitching etiquette.
Frank: All right. The most important part of etiquette is you have to treat your relationship with

That may be the single most important thing that
you learn in your entire career. I kid you not.
Frank: I can't do it. [applause] But you guys need

OK, explain what that is in short, please.
Bob: Well, direct license blankets would be
where-and there are certain networks that that's
all that they do, so I don't even do business with
them-where they say for the year we're gonna
give you 50 grand, 100 grand-whatever the heck
it is-and we can use as much music as we want
from your catalog for that year. The problem is,
for that 50 or 100 grand or whatever the
publisher gets, there are no cue sheets generated
[by the shows], so there's no PRO money, there's
no performance money on the backend, so that
50 or 100 grand goes into the coffers of the publisher, and there's no way for the publisher to
know what does or doesn't get used. There's no
way for them to apportion that money out to the
writers. So yeah, the writers...

a music supervisor as a relationship as if you just
got somebody's number at a bar last night. So if I
got somebody's number last night at a bar and I
text them the very next morning, I could say, "It
was really nice meeting you. I look forward to seeing you again. Maybe we can go out sometime."
They don't respond, so then the next day I write,
"Hey, just following up on that text message that I
sent you yesterday when I was explaining that I
just met you and I had a really good time and
would like to get to know you." Then the third
time I come back and go, "I would really appreciate some sort of a response to the second

to know going into this that I'm here for you guys.
I'm counting on you to write good music, because
when you write good music, I look good. I put it
in the show, you make money, I help the industry
continue to make money, and everybody goes,
"Damn, Frank's really good at music supervision."
And I get to speak on panels and stuff. [laughter]
So keep writing good music; keep letting everybody hear it; don't focus on one person. Grind
and grind; try your best not to be annoying. If
you want to follow up with somebody, follow up
in two weeks and you say, "Following-up on what
I sent to you. Hope you checked it out. Let me
know if you need anything else," and forget it.
Just forget it. And I know that you love your
music. We all love our music. I do too, but you
can't be insulted when somebody doesn't critique
it for you, because they might be busy trying to
make their career happen too.
So when everything lines up, it's perfect. But this
is why I say get an intermediary for this, because
if you give it to these guys [pointing at Michael
and Bob] they'll follow up. They know when it's
time to follow up. They know when it's time to
sneak it in the next pitch, and they can give you a
little wink, "Hey, I put this in the last time you
were looking for Blues Rock. I snuck it back in
there, let me know if you want to use it." And
maybe I go, "Damn, I never knew about this."
Tell them how many songs you listened to shortly
before we saw each other in Hawaii a few months
ago... You listened to something like a thousand
songs in an hour or something insane like that?
Frank: Yeah, it takes about five to 10 seconds per
song [to listen to music] that people submit to
me. I probably get about, I'd say, 200 to 500
songs a week that people ask me to listen to. I
probably have five to 20 people a week that ask
me why I'm an asshole. [laughter] Seriously. Like,
"Hey, I sent you this music. I don't understand. I
don't understand following up, again. Some people have even made AGAIN in caps.
You can't back somebody into a corner and then
have a good working relationship. You gotta be
delicate. I've got publishers that ask me if I need
anything, but they do it perfectly. "Hey, Frank,
hope you're having a good Monday. Let me know
if you need anything." And then they go away.
They don't follow up, they don't ask me why I
didn't respond, they don't call me. Don't ever text
a music supervisor, "Hey, do you need anything?"
That's probably the most annoying... I put that on
my block list when people do that to me. It's
really annoying. I'll be out drinking with my
friend at seven o'clock at night, "Hey, dude, do
you need anything for the show that you're working on? Let me know?" And I type back, "Who is
this?" Because it's rude. You don't bother people
during their personal time.
So just be chill, let it happen. If you see that
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