If you are in the entertainment business at any level, you understand the importance of royalties; however, finding the mechanisms that protect your rights can be a tedious process. One company that does exactly that just hit a very impressive milestone, Talent Clearing House, a 7-year old company providing full service royalty services for the Music, Entertainment and Media Industries surpassed the processing of $20 Million of music sales through its royalty administration system. It has experienced consistent growth throughout its life and recently, while processing Mechanical Royalties for The Redwalls’ self-titled album on Mad Dragon Records, it reached the milestone.
Paul Barretta, Founder and President of TCH, was recently quoted in the NEPA Business Weekly edition of the Scranton Times-Tribune, stating “We’re like the smart kid in school who sits in the back of the class. We don’t always get invited to the best parties, but everybody comes to us to do their homework.”
Since its inception, TCH has used its proprietary system to handle not only digital music sales, but also physical, ancillary and even merchandise and tour revenue to calculate, track, report and prepare royalty statements for record labels of all sizes. The process is easily applied to any royalty structure, from traditional to net profit and compilation deals. NEPA Business Weekly points out that according to Terry Tompkins, President of Mad Dragon Records, the label “tried in its infancy to calculate royalties by hand. With just two artists, the task took an entire day. Now… calculating royalties the old-fashioned way is out of the question.”
The system’s payment module provides the option for TCH to initiate royalty and related payments on behalf of clients, and was developed with modules for television program licensing, book publishing and filmmaking as well as music royalties.
Mr. Barretta points out, “Although we offer both fee-based and percentage-based pricing, the overwhelming choice of our customers is fee-based. Because our royalty services are automation-based, fees are quite low, and there’s no reason a label should give up a percentage of its revenue. We had nothing to do with creating, marketing or distributing the music… Why should we have any right to a portion of its revenue?”
Tags: administration, entertainment, entertainment business services, financial, liz roz, mechanical royalties, media, music, paul barretta, revenue, royalty, services, Talent Clearing House, TCH, vcorp services