ChiefsPlanet - Movies and TV Australia: movie soundtrack a ripoff?

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud (Post 5224002)

Here's the way it works:

A studio hires a composer for a film. The composer is generally paid anywhere between $250,000 to $4 million per film (for blockbusters). This fee includes the hiring and recording of the musicians, copyist, orchestrator, etc.

It's called Work-For-Hire and the studio owns the music. The writer receives 50% of the performance income that's earned from television and radio but not from movie theater showing in the U.S.

So, since the studio owns the music to each and every film they produce, they're free to re-use the music anyway they see fit. Often times, you'll hear music cues from other movies used in television commercials for upcoming movies because it saves the studio money.

Since a movie trailer is edited and cut much differently than a film, there may not be music available from the film to use in the commercial. At that point, the option is to go to an outside production house that specializes in movie trailers, but the minimal cost is about $100k per trailer. So the most effective way is to find something in the existing catalog.

In addition to saving money by not hiring an outside company to score the trailer, the studio actually earns money on the Publisher's share (the other 50%) of performance royalty income.

Only thing I'd add to this is that you'll frequently see soundtracks from other films promoting other films prior to the scoring. And as Dane notes there are companies that exist only to supply trailer music. Coincidentally my last movie used the same music from Pirates of the Caribbean in the trailer.