Strange BMI comment...

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I called BMI to discuss a somewhat robust cue sheet I submitted this week and was told: "we don't like getting cue sheets from you guys (composers) and we often just ignore them."

What the heck? OK, I know some people don't get the cue sheet thing or are trying to abuse the system, but just ignoring it places the legit guys actually doing music and post (as I do for most of my productions) in a position to loose a lot of money if they don't follow up with BMI and get a real person to send the sheets over to operations. I've not seen some broadcasts reported and now I think I know why. Someone over at BMI decided the cue sheet was not legit.

Let the submitter beware!

[HCMarkus]

Thanks MIDI... just checked my account online. Looks like they consider me "legit". Whatever that means.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

My cue sheets are also in place, but the comment bothered me. Early distribution this morning was a nice surprise. Now I don;t have to wait until monday to pay some bills.

[kinnylandrum]

I have actually had BMI tell me we don't take submissions from composers because (and this is a direct quote) "composers lie". However I have now found a guy at BMI who will take my cue sheets (because no producer of any movie I have done recently will EVER make out a cue sheet). He will even see to it that I get logged and paid even when I have not been previously. In fact this just happened recently, and I got it made up on today's payout. And yes getting it a day early was a nice surprise.

[Tripi]

There are a lot of very helpful people at BMI in LA, and Nashville. You just need to speak with the right person. The person you spoke to probably was giving you their "official" answer... but we've all submitted cue sheets directly.

The one thing I've been told in the past by BMI about submitting cue sheets is to never do multiple ones for the same movie. This would be like having one for a domestic tv version, and one for an international tv version. A lot of times the end credit timings are different, and you'd think it would warrent having two cue sheets. But, BMI will often ignore them if they get multiple cue sheets for the same film (even if they are different timings). They told me to always just submit one with the longest timings on it. They don't really care about a few minutes here or there. Which is good for us. Just like getting our checks a few days early.