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- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: GNR Annual Song Royalties
Every country has a music rights organisation that collects your mechanical royalties (i.e. your tunes played in pubs, clubs, radio stations etc).
Mechanical Royalities are the songwriter royalities on physical devices, ie CD, DVD, Toy that sings Thriller etc, so I think you mean the peformance royalities in relation to radio/pubs etc...but yeah there's an orginistion that collects both in every country.
They do this by charging a blanket license fee to venues for the use of music. Then at the end of the year, artists submit a return saying the times they know their song was played, while the venues/djs etc are also supposed to submit what they did. The momey is then divided up according to what was played most, how many heard it, and what percentage of that places license fee it comes to etc
So for example here. In my old band we played about 10 songs in a set, did about 6 gigs one year - at some of the smallest bars in melbourne...I got about 50% of the royalty...came to something like $30 I think 
But you imagine GNR who would get a cut of the fees of big venues, who get played on the radio classic hits type stations a lot to thousands of people hundreds of times a year and it would be big money.
Re: GNR Annual Song Royalties
A couple things.....
-I worked at a restaurant in Illinois, were the jukebox guy told us it was illegal for us to play our own cd's on the place's stereo during business hours. We either had to have the jukebox on random, a radio/satellite station on, or report what cd's we played, if no one was playing the jukebox.
-Back when Mike Starr from Alice In Chains was going to be on celebrity rehab...I read that he gets a $17,500 royalty check once every three months for his songwriting credits on AIC first three releases. Granted, there's alot of modern rock hits on those discs.....but they pale in comparison to GNR's worldwide stature. So, I would have to assume that the AFD 5 are well into the six figures for their annual royalties.
Re: GNR Annual Song Royalties
Does the old band get a slice of the pie when new gnr play the old songs live?
In most circumstances they would, but it probably depends on what kind of contract renegotiations and agreements they've come to terms with between Axl, the label, former management, etc.
Re: GNR Annual Song Royalties
Olorin wrote:Does the old band get a slice of the pie when new gnr play the old songs live?
In most circumstances they would, but it probably depends on what kind of contract renegotiations and agreements they've come to terms with between Axl, the label, former management, etc.
They should, but live covers would be substantially less than radio broadcasts. If GN'R handles everything legally, they should have to pay ASCAP for all of that.
Then again, I don't know if "original performers" have some sort of clause out of that. Like Axl being there performing songs he co-wrote. Or Slash performing songs with Myles.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: GNR Annual Song Royalties
Axl licensed his share out for 20 years for that $20mil a few years ago...
So going on Axl's deal, apparently his share was not lucrative enough that he didn't feel $1 million a year for it for 20 years, was not the better deal.
So whatever they make, i'd assume it's less than a $1mil a year.
I think i've said this before, but I'd be interested to know the terms of that publishing deal before we assume anything like that about it.
Usually in a publishing deal, the publisher gets a % of copyright and then the artist keeps the rest. Usually that split is something like 25% to the publisher and 75% to the artist.
The publisher then does it's job which is....administration of copyright: collecting royalty income on behalf of the songwriter for the use of his or her songs, negotiating licensing deals with music users, registering new musical works with collecting societies, tracking down infringement of the songwriter's copyright, and promoting new uses of songwriter's work etc
The theory is that having a dedicated person/company who's good at doing this is more profitiable than doing it yourself for the songwriter - even if you now only get 70% not 100% because of giving them their cut.
(That is, if you only have time to collect $10k worth yourself, but they have time to collect $1m worth, it's better to have 70% of $1m than 100% of $10k....see what I mean?)
Now artists are skeptical of what a publisher can do for them, as realisticly they are just kind of farming out 30% of their rights for the promice of more money overall...so usually to sweeten the pot - the publisher will pay them an advance - a cash payment upfront as goodfaith that they will do as promiced. They repay themselves out of the revenue they collect - but this way you know in advance even if they dont collect anything for you or not what they promiced - you at least get your advance.
So getting to the point. When axl did a publishing deal the $20m may have been an advance in order to secure athe license of a percentage of his part of the royalities, not necessarily the license of his entire share.
Now i forget the original song splits except that steven got screwed. But from memory it's something like Axl 35%, Slash 25%, Duff 25% and steven 15%. That might be wrong - but I know Steve got less than 1/4 and Axl got more. So for my example let's pretend it was 35% to Axl when AFD was made.
So then out of Axl's 35% there then could be a sub-split of 70% of Axl's share to Axl (ie 70% of the 30% of the overall figure the song gets), and 30% of Axl's share to his publishing company (ie 30% of the 30%), or at least something like that after such time as the royalities are over the $20m they paid in advance.
Now I don't know that to be the case, but I'm just saying that's how standard publishing deals go..and i've not seen anything that says definately that axl gets nothing.
In any event the residuals going to the rest of the old band would still be shitloads. Makes me want to try harder at songwriting...someone pics up your song one day and covers it and you could be a happy man.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: GNR Annual Song Royalties
So to explain my theory...
Say Jungle Earns $10.
So original song split is
Adler 15% = $1.50
Duff 25% = $2.50
Slash 25% = $2.50
Axl 35% =$3.50
Then say axl licenses 30% of his share, would be:
Adler 15% = $1.50
Duff 25% = $2.50
Slash 25% = $2.50
Publisher (30% Axl's share) =$1.05
Axl (70% of Axl's Share) = $2.45
Although because of the advance they would probably not pay Axl's part until such time as the $20m has been earned back....but that's the concept.
Maybe i'm wrong about all this, I'm just saying it's possible isn't it.
Re: GNR Annual Song Royalties
Another incredibly complicated GNR royalty equation!!!!?
Imagine having to figure out the royalties everyone gets on VR's Houston release...or when Slash sells "bootlegs" of his solo tour? I mean, I paid $20 for the Council Bluffs recording of the show I saw this summer...did Izzy & Steven Adler actually get like $.75 of that?
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: GNR Annual Song Royalties
^ Yeah...they should get their cut in peformance royalities from the song being peformed live, and then they'd also get a mechanical royalty from the manafacture of the CDs.
I can't remember the rate for mechanical royalities...but it's something like 9c per unit I think. So then you'd divide that according to the song split and adler would get like 2 cents or something...but it adds up eventually.
- Bright Eyes 2005
- Rep: 27
Re: GNR Annual Song Royalties
I am pretty sure I read that when Sanctuary was purchased/bailed out by Universal, and then Azoff renegotiated Axl's deal with Universal in 2008, that Axl regained his publishing rights. This was the same negotiation that then secured the Best Buy exclusive deal, which then allowed Universal to recoup the debt for fronting the costs of CD, thus eliminating Axl's recording debts to them as well. The deal cleared the deck, and Axl gained either part or all of his publishing rights back (not sure which--probably partial for a period of time, after which he gets all of them back). I also know that Axl still makes money from licensing the songs to movies, because he was able to give Sweet Child to The Wrestler. They typically make big bucks (lump sum payment) from films--I think they typically get paid over $1 million dollars for a song which is featured in a film. I believe The Expendables, which featured Paradise City in the movie and trailer, paid them big bucks to use the song.
