The Association of Music Producers (AMP), which now has chapters in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, is a two-year-old national trade organization for commercial music and sound design houses that, among other issues, has recently begun to explore the concept of a uniform bidform for music. The form would be similar to those used by the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) and the Association of Independent Commercial Editors (AICE), in that it would be a line-by-line breakdown of the elements that can go into the cost of producing a particular piece of music for a spot. Sound design will be a part of the form, but down the road there’s the possibility of a stand-alone sound design form also being developed.
"I’m embarrassed to say that I bid a job the same way I have for ten years," says Lyle Greenfield, partner/ executive producer of bicoastal Bang music + sound design and the current president of AMP. "It goes out on Bang letterhead with approximately ten or twelve lines. Of course, I had experience on the agency side of the business, so it’s not like I made it up completely." Greenfield points out that music is a fundamentally important part of the commercial production process, but from a business standpoint, it hasn’t been treated in a formal manner with the same kind of importance as the production or postproduction side. "Some companies bid jobs in an extremely informal way," he says. "Some smaller companies and individuals coming up into the music business may not even know how to bid a job."
The underlying benefit of a detailed, itemized bidform would be to show there are components in the production of music. And just because a bidform exists, it would not necessarily have to be followed to the letter on each job. "It would acknowledge the existence of expenses that might otherwise be easily dismissed by the agency," says Greenfield. "Now you may choose to negotiate within this. But at least we’re all on the same page here. This page contains all the potential ingredients and components of a music production—from the creation of the original music, acquisition of rights, right down to the talent and the CDs they’ll be wanting to send to their office in Alaska."
The changing nature of music production also demands a more business-like approach to bidding, says Jan Horowitz, VP/business manager for David Horowitz Music Associates, New York, and secretary/ treasurer for AMP. "We’re all acting now as music production houses, not just the source of the great song," explains Horowitz. "We don’t just go into a studio and produce [a piece of music]. More often than not, we’re the studio and we’re providing a lot of the services that the editors used to do because they had the equipment. The editors never did that for free, but unfortunately the music budgets didn’t grow to encompass all of those technical, facility-minded things [now done by music houses]. I used to do a music demo, send it to the editor and he would put it up to the picture, make dubs and ship them off to the client and agency people. Now, that’s very rare. We have to lay it up to picture ourselves, sometimes with several stripes with voice-over, sound effects, everything. So we’re doing, essentially, little mini-film-mixes here."
The pace of production today and last-minute revisions also put music houses making a simple bid at a disadvantage, says Horowitz. "We used to be able to wait until final cut to do final music," she says. "Now, if the cut changes, the client wants to hear the music changes too. The editor is getting paid by the hour to change the cut, but we’re not really covered in that process. If you do five layups to film for them and ship them out, there needs to be somewhere that’s covered in the budget. Right now it all comes under the same standard demo fee."
A standard bidform is something the AICP did years ago, says Dain Blair, executive creative director/ owner of Groove Addicts, Los Angeles, and president of AMP’s West Coast chapter. "Every AICP member uses that," he says. "And the ad agencies know exactly what they’re looking at when they get one and everybody’s talking the same language. In the music industry, with no association until the last couple years, everybody has basically used their own bidform."
Wish List
The members of AMP have started comparing notes and hope to have a proposal to present to the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) this summer. The line items that some of the AMP executives suggest include creative fees, arranger’s fee, musicologist fee, studio time, engineering, equipment rentals, cartage, shipping, tape, and American Federation of Musicians scale units.
The challenge is to come up with a well organized form that makes it easy to locate costs and that can accommodate the so-called out-of-the-ordinary jobs that the players say are all too common. "Probably pretty much everybody does put these same things in their forms," says Blair. "But they may lump some costs together. They may line them out differently. If everyone were looking at the same form in an ad agency, they would immediately know where to look for the creative fee, where to look for the talent costs and where to look for the production costs."
Greenfield isn’t so much concerned with just how the cost items are presented, just as long as they are complete. "What matters is that people in the industry understand that these are ingredients in what it costs to produce music," he says. "Breaking out the hourly rate of the engineer on a separate line on a form is an important thing to do, as is the studio rate itself. [Also important is] identifying in a somewhat more formal way the fact that there may be an arranging fee for each of the commercial lengths, a production/editorial fee that may cover the creation of a fifteen second version, a sound design fee, the possibility of re-records."
Horowitz admits that music houses are behind the curve on developing a standard bidform. "For business people, this would have been normal a long time ago," she says. "But we tend to still be operating as artists and artists are notoriously lax about things like this."
One expense that isn’t generally spelled out in bids that may find its way onto an AMP-created bidform is a musicologist’s fee. A musicologist authenticates a track as not being too similar to an existing piece of music. Blair notes that most major agencies now require that a musicologist review everything. "We use the same musicologist all the time unless the agency has one they want us to use," he says. "You really have to do it, but it’s no guarantee that somebody out there isn’t going to say, ‘That sounds like something I wrote in 1968.’"
Horowitz is hopeful that a line item for a musicologist might help clarify the issue of indemnification of music houses against plagiarism lawsuits, which can pose a major threat to them. AMP has already started exploring an indemnification clause in the contracts signed between agencies and music houses. (SHOOT, 8/13/99, p. 19) "We are looking to the agencies on this one as well," she says. "What we’re trying to do is limit everyone’s exposure."
Horowitz emphasizes, too, that the whole standard bid project is one that AMP is doing with much agency input. "We are working together to make more sensible bid guidelines available to all," she says. "We’re not going to do a Martin Luther here. We’re looking to find mutually helpful things to keep a sane working environment for the future." She notes that AICP bids are not always followed to the letter. "There are guidelines and conventions. In our business, no two jobs are the same, even at the same agency. You can’t have a rate card." Or, as Greenfield puts it, "Everything is negotiable on some level when you’re bidding a job."
Cost
The AMP executives say firmly that a standard bidform is not a tool to increase music house income, although Greenfield suggests it could have long-term benefits. "I want everybody in the United States to pay more for music," he says, only half kidding. "There’s nothing in this that is going to have a measurable impact on the cost of music production, but I think it could have a soft impact that would be positive for our industry over a period of years." Horowitz is similarly inclined. "Obviously, certain line items have not been considered before," she says. "They were just losses that we had to absorb. In some instances, if something has to be redone and laid up to picture and shipping charges incurred, they’ll actually be billed for a change."
Some agencies don’t seem to be resisting the idea of a standard bidform so far, although they don’t yet know much about the AMP effort. Josh Rabinowitz, a music producer at Young & Rubicam, New York, says that Y&R has its own comprehensive bidform with items as detailed as instrument rental fees and ISDN charges. "I’ll relate that to music companies sometimes and they say, ‘Oh, we never get that from anyone. Why don’t you just tell us what the basic numbers are?’ I’ve had that [happen] a few times."
Rabinowitz’s personal opinion is that an AMP bidform "isn’t critical," but he does say some provision is needed for the atypical job. "Music is usually an afterthought," he says. "People work on their picture and then they re-edit it, they send it to the client, who demands changes, and they re-edit it again. Then they have to change graphics and this and that, and the music stuff is always gotten to at the end. So it’s, ‘We’ve changed our mind, can you do this now?’ That happens all the time, and I hate to make that phone call."
Rani Vaz, VP/director of music/ radio production, at BBDO New York, says she was unaware of AMP’s efforts on a bidform, but she endorses it. "I get a lot of calls from independent music companies, startup music companies or people who are going out on their own, or even producers from different agencies, asking, ‘What do you do, how do you set up your billing, what do you think is appropriate?’ So I think it would be great if they had some kind of standard form."
Vaz sees the effort as a way to clarify the process, not pass on more costs to the agency. "What’s difficult is it’s a creative process," she says. "Often people are not sitting with the composer during revision number five at one in the morning. Having something to give structure and a little clarity to what’s often a last-minute, sort of harried, very flexible process, is good. It makes it easier for agency people to understand the process."
When presenting the bidform proposal to the 4As, Greenfield hopes to initiate a meaningful dialogue with the agency group. "We’re going to get the 4As’ input and share it with them, but it’s not like they have to ratify it," he says. "The learning we’re going to get is for everyone’s benefit by getting everyone’s input, but at the end of the day, no one is going to ratify it but the music industry. It’s not law. It’s a guideline. You’re going to use this as talking points. But right now, music companies as an industry don’t even have talking points. Everyone is doing it differently. And the younger, smaller companies don’t have a clue."´
