The drummer holds up a pair of black spray-on jeans and asks if they have anything skinnier to a bewildered looking store attendant in H&M when they hear The Song kick in over the shop floor speaker system.
“Now then, that’s us that is!” they announce to the now-even-more-confused part time shop worker. Throwing the jeans back on the rack, they walk towards the nearest speaker which just happens to be situated slap bang outside the changing rooms and stand, staring at the ceiling with a ginormous grin on their face. Ninety seconds later and a security guard clears his throat from the employee handbook recommended distance of two metres away.
“Excuse me. Is everything OK?” the guard asks in a tone that suggests he believes everything indeed isn’t OK. As they were posed the question, the drummer at this point had their eyes closed with a finger in their ear, concentrating on getting the harmony for the backing vocal spot on.
“Hold on, just four more bars.” They hold up an index finger on their free hand in the direction of the guard, requesting just a few more seconds of peace. The song finishes and they applaud to no one in particular. “You want me to leave, don’t you?” the drummer asks.
“I certainly do.” replies the Guard.
So when do they get paid? – approximately 9 months (publishing income) to 18 months (neighbouring rights income)
Delivering music to a cacophony of high street shops and pub jukeboxes is something we’ve been doing here at Sentric for years now in conjunction with our partners at Rhiza Music. Since 2018 alone, our artists’ tunes have been streamed in public over seven millions times to date in anywhere from H&M to COOP to Boots to Superdry to British Airways and boatloads more. From hearing your song in your local New Look to receiving payment takes around nine (publishing income) to eighteen months (neighbouring rights income), and here’s how it all happens…
Guest post from our friends at Rhiza Music – How To Get Your Music On In-Store Playlists
If you’re finding yourself reading this post then no doubt you’ve already started to release your music and you’ve found yourself a solid distribution partner to help place your tunes on all the key streaming platforms, download stores and, let’s not forget, into the amazing Shazam database (more on the value of that later when it comes to in-store playlists!)
You will also be actively promoting the release yourself or via a PR agent. You will possibly have scored a play on your local radio station or BBC Introducing, a review from one of the respected blogs in your genre, a premiere on one of the relevant online mags and a post from one of your chosen social media influencers… And just maybe, the holy grail in these days of streaming, a spot on several in-house Spotify playlists.
So, just how can you get yourself onto that in-store playlist and help promote your music and generate some much needed royalties at the same time?
At Rhiza, we believe pitching to in-venue and in-store playlists should sit alongside promotion to local and national radio stations. Our established network of pubs, bars, student unions, restaurants, stores, cafes, fashion brands, hotels, gyms, airlines and anywhere else music may be played means we can offer artists and catalogue owners the chance to reach over 50,000 venues and therefore prospective 50 million monthly listeners. Consumers in these public spaces connect with your music through advanced in-venue media technology (overhead speakers, visual product screens, digital jukeboxes etc.) and combined with potential Shazam engagement, present the artist with an alternative avenue of airplay promotion to support a new release, touring schedule and promotional campaign.
And as you’ll have already read in these informative blogs by Sentric, every time a song and a recording are played in public, then you, the songwriter and the performer and/or owner of the recording, should receive royalties for those plays.
How does it all work ?
One of the most important administrative tasks you will have taken is to make sure you as a writer, and your copyrights are 100% correctly registered with the PRS For Music (and also with the relevant international society equivalents). You’ll have also ensured that you as a performer plus the recording/master are registered correctly with the PPL (not forgetting also with the relevant international society equivalents).
But how do you do that? Well, the team over at Sentric Music are brilliant at making sure these somewhat tedious administrative duties are completed, god bless them. By working with Sentric, Rhiza can then ensure to all of our in-store clients that all necessary registrations have been taken care of, which also means that you, as a songwriter and copyright holder, will receive all the money you are owed if your music is picked up and added to an in-store playlist.
Once you have all your ducks in a row, so to speak, you can pitch your new music to us via Sentric if you’re already using their services and if not, via this link here.
Remember though that not all music is suitable for public airplay. If you’re a death metal band for example, it’s very unlikely you’ll hear your music overhead in Marks & Spencer’s. Sorry about that! Epic, fifteen minute ambient excursions which explore the depths of the human psyche are definitely not for Costa Coffee either. Also, it’s worth noting that if you do have a penchant for using the odd swear word, then it’s probably wise you supply a clean edit of your music as well. We don’t want to offend little Johnny and his mum, whilst supping their hot chocolates now, do we?! Alternatively, some of our clients are fine with explicit language, but just make sure you mark it as “explicit” somewhere in your track title or metadata.
Other than that we love pitching unique artists and great sounding commercially released tracks from a plethora of genres.
The life cycle of a track from pitching and then placement into a playlist database is usually between a month and two months. If the track then gets selected for a venue playlist, it will then take several months for any plays to be reported to the societies. From there it will be up to a further quarter before distribution is made via the PRS. In relation to plays reported to PPL, that will take even longer due to the fact that the PPL only distributes twice a year.
But rest assured once it’s in a music database then there’s a chance for it to be played anytime and in any number of venues!
Other than that you can leave the rest to us.
NEXT: Month 6 – The Song Is Played On Sky Sports Over The Football (UK TV Blanket License Sync).