This is an interesting week. I'm rehearsing with three groups, playing different instruments for each. And I have two performances on Friday.
Sometimes, I truly feel like a professional musician. (I know, you're saying "yes, Peter, ahem, you ARE one, silly man" but when you live inside of me like I do, it can seem otherwise...)
And I also feel like a professional songwriter ("yes, Peter, ahem...") I just found out that I recouped my publishing advance from twenty-three years ago. It took forever, but now I get to actually see some royalties from my dB's songs when they get used in movies and get played on the radio.
Life is very good right now, despite my continuing unemployment. (Can Powerball be far behind?)
Comments
That's good news about the royalties. A word to the wise: my next-door neighbor in NYC was Leonard Bernstein's personal accountant until the composer died and the estate settled. Afterward, he went into business for himself representing musicians in royalties disputes with record co's and publishers, seeking accountings.
He told me one night, at our poker game, that nearly every musician he'd ever known and worked with got short-changed (and he represented a number of pop & jazz names you would recognize). At times, the co's couldn't even produce records supporting the royalties checks they were sending out. At other times, they were burying receipts or seriously undercounting them—even applying incorrect percentages to actual sales. Some miscountings were sinister and underhanded, others were merely due to stupid mistakes. Even reported actual sales were sometimes misleading—and always to the detriment of the artist. His point was that musicians could not, as a general rule, rely on the royalties accounting by the bigs.
Hope you have a good bean counter.
Best,
Jim H.