Thursday, September 30, 2010

toys and licensing

Being at the Myachi headquarters makes it pretty hard to stay out of the toy area.  Many of the things that Myachi does also applies to music - licensing agreements, in particular.  Myachi has international suppliers, and they are trying to break into the market in Turkey.  The interesting thing is that what David plans on using is the licensing agreement format for the venture, so it will be interesting to see how it applies outside of publishing.

David's been pretty helpful in drawing out charts and visual representations on how we're tackling certain things - for example, how the rights work with publishing vs. a label (aka knowing how much we own - the work I did a couple days ago).

Today I finished up my "internal audit" of our deposits and database filings that Chuks did.  We'll send them back to Chuks and he'll send it back by morning so I can see where our discrepancies are.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

freelancer.com

David's guy, Chuks, is someone who he found on freelancer.com.  This site is a useful tool for different categories, not just for accounting and data entry.  You put up a project that you need done, and potential works "bid" on them on how much they are willing to accept for the work.  You have the choice to set how much you're willing to pay, and also choosing which person you want to do the job - it's not based on the highest/lowest offer.  It can be based on their rating (stars), resume, price, etc. 

From yesterday's work, there were about 40 songs that didn't have any information on who owned what, who the artist was, or anything.  Skimming the royalty receipts don't help because these songs are the ones played internationally and are lacking an ID to search on the website.  Speaking of websites, Universal Music Group gives the run around on their royalties collection site.  Very barebones, and only useful if you are lacking a payment and need to contact them.  ASCAP's not bad, but I think they can expand their search options (advanced features, etc.). 

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

More cataloguing

I'm so ready to be done with this project, it seems to go in circles!  Today I focused on finalizing the song list (Cold Chillin'/Songs of Marl) that I set aside last week.  We were still missing artists, percentage of ownership, etc.  I had to go through and correct my work from the previous week.  There are 3 columns of the work that I dealt with today: % CAK owns, Cold Chillin' (CC), and Songs of Marl (MM).  The catalogs show the percentage that the label owns, so for example, if "XXX" song is owned by both CC and MM, then CAK owns 100%.  This time around though, I had to label how much CAK owns, and then on the CC and MM side, it would be the percentage that CAK needs to pay out.  So using the above example, CC and MM each own 50% (subsequently, that means CAK owns 100%), so they would each get 50% of the royalties (less our administrative fees and commission). 

So this is showing me how CAK, as a publisher, collects the royalties directly from the client (whoever is licensing the rights to the song - mechanical or song rights), and distributes the funds out to the artist they represent.  David says he has a pretty good idea how much will come in, and so he will pay the artists ahead of time and when the checks come in, he pays out the remainder.  Typically, he pays semi-annually (twice a year), so in the first half (Jan-June), they should expect their checks by August.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Cataloguing

I'm still working on the same excel sheet as previously.  Today my assignment was to check the songs of the Cold Chillin'/Songs of Marl catalogs against Chuks' work of calculating how much we get from clients as royalties.  Chuks is the guy in Nigeria that David outsourced to do his accounting for CAK.  So if a song on the song split list didn't have an artist listed for whatever reason, I went through and did a search in Chuks' file for the song.  The same row would have who the client was (aka who we were collecting royalties from).  If it was EMI, we knew it was Marley Marl's label, and if it said ASCAP, Universal, etc., I had to go through our files we made and check against the statements for the song.  ASCAP has "song ID #s" for each of the entries on a royalty statement (if it was collected in the States; if not, good luck finding the song info).  I would use the song ID (if listed) to search for the song on the ASCAP database, and find the artist if listed.  If not, then I had to do a song search by title and do the same deal. 

Friday, September 24, 2010

Diversifying

I think what's great about David and his work is that he's the epitome of "diversifying."  You know how brokers and financial people say that you need to "diversify" your portfolio in order to reduce your risk?  Well, I think David's a prime example: he has CAK - the music side and the consulting side to S Factor, Myachi, and then he's got his clients through his time as an entertainment lawyer.  In terms of his time, he's spread pretty thin and has to be organized in order to keep up with everything.  However, as business professional, these different endeavors give him a wide scope of experience and make him more attractive as someone to hire. 

There hasn't been very much for me to work on today besides getting the rest of the files finished and put away.  On Monday we're going to start with the song lists again and go from there.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Royalties and their calculation

It seems like all I do these days is work in Excel.  David gave me an excel sheet that should line up with our deposits up to day.  My job is essentially to do an internal audit of our holdings.  The excel sheet is a running tally with our clients (the companies licensing rights from us), the song, play counts, and the amount that we should have received for the play.  David outsources to a guy who keeps track of all of this and sends him the info (monthly?).

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

CAK Entertainment vs. CAK Music/Music Publishing

Today was focused on following up with what I did yesterday.  I spent the majority of the day going through and organizing all of our royalties, licensing agreements, and synchronization contracts from 2007 through 2010.  Mostly it was to get it ready to file away, but doing this allowed me to see how the business has progressed over the years.  I learned that there are two business entities: CAK Entertainment and CAK Music/Music Publishing.  CAK Entertainment was a joint-venture between a financial firm and Charles A. Koppelman, but has since been bought out by their partners.  Now the only artists under the "CAK Entertainment" portion are Michael Tolcher and Susie Suh.  Michael Tolcher can be described as having a blend of Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz-ish music.  Susie Suh is a Korean-American singer/songwriter.  The rest of the music and artists are under CAK Music/Music Publishing.  I even came across a contract between CAK and Michael Jackson!


Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Music publishers are the bankers to the music business.

I spent the day analyzing our royalty earnings from the 2010 year.  This meant that I was entering our royalty earnings into an excel sheet to see how much we earned, and to track who/where our royalties are coming from, and see the trends over the years.  It's a way to see who our major players are, and the typical earnings we receive from licensing.  By organizing and examining the revenue that's coming in, we can see how profitable we are to our clients. 

I also was charged with finding Casey James' manager.  You might recognize him from American Idol, Season 5 - the guitarist from Cool, TX.  David wants to send him some demos so I spent the evening trying to find a contact for him without any avail.

Monday, September 20, 2010

iTunes, how I love and hate thee

Today was a pretty long day in the office.  I spent literally the entire day going through the same song compilation list and checking if the songs were on iTunes, and if they were, to put the links into the excel sheet.  This way, we can see 1) which are on there 2) which ones we have to either put on there or track a different way.  Also, I received the licenses that the company is currently working on.  I learned about two new programs/companies: tunewikiand TuneSat.  Tunewiki puts lyrics to real time video or song, and is helpful in identifying songs you know the lyrics of but want to know the song title.  Tunesat is a cool program where it can identify songs by their unique "audio fingerprint," capable of detecting a song being played with a lot of audio noise around it, or even only using 3 seconds of a song.  This program helps music publishers track how their music is broadcasted so they can accurately charge for the airplay. 

Friday, September 17, 2010

Myachi...oh, she says he's just a friend...

Didn’t even know that I feel asleep when I did, but woke up and got ready to leave with Kathy at 9:30 for the office.  There’s some construction on the road, but it’s a pretty straightforward way to get to work.  It’s not too bad, though.  Anyways, we found the place as David told me, and it wasn’t as I expected.  Mr. Burke said that CAK was a good company and he made it seem that they had this luxurious place.  However, it’s a warehouse and the site of another company that David is involved in – Myachi Industries.  Myachi is a product that was developed by Steve Ochs, and is similar to a hacky-sac, but it’s flat.  You can play it with your hands and feet, but the only rule is that you can’t use the palms of your hands.  It’s pretty interesting to see it in action, and it’s a big craze among young boys ages 7-11.  Apparently it’s been around for about 10 years, and I think David said its through the product that I’ll learn about licensing, merchandising, etc.  Today David had me work on a song split sheet compliation.  CAK bought two record studios: Cold Chillin’ Studio and Songs of Marl (Marley Marl) Studio.  There are a list of songs that are on each excel sheet, and I went through to determine which percentage of the profits went to each company, and combined it onto one master sheet.  This way, we know which songs CAK owns, partially owns, etc. For the weekend, David asked me to google the songs that were without artists listed and record them for the next step.  This is an interesting project for me because many of the artists listed are old school hip hop/rap artists that I'm not familiar with.  I youtubed some of the songs, including Roxanne Shante's Bite This.  There are a couple artists that are on these lists that are more big name: Biz Markie and LL Cool J.  Biz Markie is famous for his song Just a Friend and well, LL Cool J is still around doing his thing in film.  

I also got my car today, this lovely, ginormous SUV, which, I found out, is owned by David's father-in-law, Charles A. Koppelman, the very prominent public figure.  I better be gentle with this sucker! 
This weekend is definitely needed for me to adjust to everything up here.  I think being away from everyone is taking a toll on me more than I expected, but I'm going to have to suck it up and deal with it.  I'm eager to see where these projects are leading, so keep reading!

Thursday, September 16, 2010

On the way to the Big City...

Today I left for NY to start my internship.  It’s been a long time coming, and something that I have definitely been counting down the days towards and anxiety has built up over.  Getting to my flight was an ordeal, with my overweight luggage and getting held up at security.  I don’t know how I’m going to survive without my vibe Jasper for 3 months, but I’m sure it will work out fine, and my dad will take care of him.  When I got into LGA, it was clear to me that I stuck out – flipflops and a tank are a sure indication that I was not from around there.  It started to pour when we were at the carousol to get our luggage, and getting a cab wasn’t as bad as I thought.  Rush hour traffic combined with tornados meant that everyone was backed up, and it took us 5 minutes to go from one street to the next (streets intersecting the one we were on).  It took me about 2 hours to get to my home (for the next 3 months) and almost a $100 in cab money (including the tip…was he deserving of it?  I’m still undecided).  David called while I was en route and was the one who informed me of the tornados – we could see the damage on the road, with blocked lanes here and there, and reports on the radio.  My car was all set, and he said he’d send out someone to bring me to the office – which has since changed.  My landlady, Kathy, will be taking me instead in the morning – she has to go around the Glen Cove area so it worked out perfectly.  I’m still anxious about driving up here – not so much now, but more when the weather changes seasons.  Currently, I’m a little worried about how the driving is different up here in terms of “road rage” or traffic laws.  I guess I don’t have much of a choice though…It’s sink or swim time.  I’ll find out in the morning how well I do navigating back to Kathy’s house.  Speaking of which, her house is legit one of the cutest places I have ever seen.  The outside reminds me of a Hansel and Gretel house – you will have to see it to understand what I mean (see above).  it’s a nice set up inside, but you can definitely tell it’s an older house (not in a bad way or anything).  My room is bigger than I imagined it to be.  The cable doesn’t work, which could be a good or bad thing (boredom and all).  I can’t get on the wifi because for some reason my wifi card isn’t detecting any wireless networks around.  I’ll have to work on that in the morning.  Time has flown by before I even knew it, and it’s already 12am!