What is Soundmouse?
"Soundmouse is a company that provides music reporting services to the broadcasting industry. They develop and provide software that reports music usage directly to broadcasters and collecting societies for them to identify the use of the rights owners' copyright material on radio, TV, online and across other media."
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Many performing rights organizations (PRO's) rely on Soundmouse's fingerprinting technology to identify uses of recordings in various forms of media including radio, TV, commercials, etc. Soundmouse can even auto-generate cue sheets for TV shows. In a nutshell, Soundmouse puts a "face to the name" and matches your PRO registrations with actual sound recordings.
Some PRO's don't accept Tunesat data as valid performance information. Soundmouse on the other hand, is being used by an increasing amount of performing rights organizations each year. Anyone who composes music for sync would benefit from using the service.
Here is ASCAP's explanation of how they use Soundmouse (the section titled "Recorded Sub-Sample").
What can music creators do with Soundmouse?
It is pretty simple, especially if you have used Tunesat before. Below is my step by step process for registering my tracks with the Soundmouse app.
Upload tracks (it is preferred if the tracks are already registered with a PRO)
For each track you can input details such as track title, composer splits, publisher information, territories, record label, identifiers (ISWC, ISRC), and much more. You can also create templates to speed up this process.
Once you have put enough information, the track status will turn green.
That is really all you need to do. Once the tracks are in the system, Soundmouse will take care of the rest.
When Should You Register Tracks?
For royalty-free music sales, I register tracks shortly after they are sold. For exclusive library tracks, I register them as soon as they appear on my PRO dashboard. It is highly beneficial to register alternate versions as well. If you also use Tunesat, make sure that whenever you get a TV detection, you check that the track is registered on Soundmouse. Of course, you can register every single track you release, but it might be a bit time consuming.
Why Should You Use it?
If you like getting paid on time from your PRO, then you should use this app. The fingerprinting technology makes sure that uses of music won't fall through the cracks. Tunesat is great for detecting uses of shows, but Soundmouse is the more official service.
Cons?
Although I think you should absolutely use this service, the one con is that you can't see detections of your music! The reports are "hidden" from composers, most likely so that composers aren't emailing them all day, every day asking when and how much they will get paid for each use.
How to Sign Up
Luckily for creators, Soundmouse is absolutely free. Follow this link to sign up. Don't lose out on royalties anymore!
If you are an aspiring music licensing composer, learn all about this field and how to succeed in my new book: "Making Money with Music Licensing"
Email RandyMcGraveyMusic@gmail.com for more info, or to sign up.
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