Posts Tagged ‘entertainment business services’

Knowing and understanding the standards in any industry is imperative for success, however I would argue this is the case even more so if you are wanting to break into the entertainment industry. It has been three years since the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) published recommendations for how distributors and theaters should handle movies distributed and exhibited digitally. The recommendations have since turned into standards and the Digital Cinema industry went through a burst of activity and growth. There are now over 6,300 digital screens worldwide and major movies are now distributed digitally as well as with film.

But, there are well over 100,000 screens worldwide and the industry has hit a momentary pause as it tries to figure out how to step into the next phase. As with any complex system involving hundreds of companies and dozens of steps, people began to uncover a few things along the way that needed to be addressed to make things run smoothly.

The DCI recommendations are now at version 1.2, incorporating hundreds of errata created in the beginning years. Some of these revisions affect the equipment that early adopters have already installed.  So get ready for a big push to digital across the board!

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?”