THE BENEFITS OF A
PUBLISHER without
SIGNING A PUBLISHING DEAL

Vampr Publishing is an initially-no-obligation solution to finding a publisher or sync agent to represent your music, without having to enter into any exclusive contracts before an opportunity arises.

You start in a non-exclusive agreement that allows Vampr Publishing to pitch your music whenever a search/brief comes from a music supervisor. Up until that point, you’re free to work in any other non-exclusive sync pitching agreement.

As soon as Vampr Publishing secures a sync placement, your music will be entered into an exclusive 2-year Publishing agreement. This means it will no longer be non-exclusive, but also that as part of our exclusive catalogue we will work to find extra placements and opportunities for your music and you as a songwriter/composer.

We have an exclusive sync partner who works the LA market and a consistently growing network of around 300 music supervisors. Their primary locations are LA, London, New York, Toronto, Netherlands and France; but we’re always networking to expand the territories we cover.

So far, our network is strongest in film, TV, trailers and advertising. However, we’re focused on growing our network and work in the gaming industry also.

Sync is an extremely slow-burn industry. Most songwriters and composers are focused on specific genres, of which opportunities will only come around for when there’s a trend or a particular scene or project that needs that music.

There is no timeline on sync. It’s best to have no expectations and see it as an egg you don’t want to put in the same basket as all of your other eggs. Just have things ready and wait.

Have a diverse catalogue – one of the strengths of sync is that it presents opportunities across every genre. The tricky thing is that each film/game/media production will have different needs, so there can be a lot of waiting for the right production to be made that can fit your music in.

Vampr Publishing does a lot of that hard work for you by keeping an eye on new projects being started and what Music Supervisors are assigned to these projects before pitching. However, your catalogue still needs to be diverse. One way of doing this if you only work within the constraints of particular genres is make sure that your lyrical themes are diverse, and that you are writing music that would be useful in different types of media and scenes. For example, you might write and record some music to advertise certain products you think your music works well to represent. Or, you might make music with a lyrical narrative that could fit a scene you know films are likely to have, such as wedding scenes or high speed driving scenes.

Collaborate to expand the difference genres you work in – if you know you have gaps in your catalogue you can’t fill on your own – like you need wedding music but you make aggressive Dubstep or Trap, consider working on a softened version of your sound and collaborating with a singer songwriter who can write about wedding themes over your track. This presents an interesting twist on the theme which will hopefully cut through and increase attention to your song.

When it comes to sync representation partners, either work with somebody who specialises in your genre, or stay non-exclusive and spread your bets across multiple non-exclusive partners.

No. It’s extremely important that our music is one stop, which means we have full autonomy to sign off for any opportunities. Without this flexibility, we couldn’t act quickly enough in an extremely competitive environment.

Most syncs outside of the major hits come from “one stop” catalogues.

One-stop means that one person has all of the rights to sign off a sync. That means Vampr Publishing demands that all music we represent is 100% owned by the artist we’re pitching for including; publishing rights, master rights and there can be no samples or derivative works used.

A Performing Rights Organisation (PRO) collects “performance” royalties on behalf of songwriters/composers when a song is played on radio, live or anywhere in public.

Vampr Publishing requires that all songwriters/composers we represent should either be signed up with a PRO, or do so after registering music with us.

Our partner, SongTrust, is a Publishing Administrator who has a wealth of information about PROs on their site. You can also sign up with them for additional royalties using the code VAMPR to receive 20% off of their one-off sign-up fee.

It doesn’t cost you any money to register with Vampr Publishing. When you sign the contract and register your tracks, you’re giving us the right to represent your tracks and pitch them for sync opportunities to music supervisors.

We only take a cut of the fee and publishing royalties once we land you a sync. Unlike the industry standard 50-50, our split is 65/35 in favour of the artist.

Most sync agencies charge you a premium to pitch your tracks for sync opportunities regardless of the outcome. This is in addition to a typical 50% cut of the sync fee you’ll be offered to license your track. We offer this service for free.

Other sync agents and publishers may also ask that you work exclusively with them, whereas the contract you sign with us is non-exclusive.

Lastly, the industry standard fee when a Publisher gets you a sync is ~50%, we only take 35%.

Sync fees can be anything from 2 digits to 7 digits! We try to stay open across all levels of syncs because you never know where helping a Music Supervisor out for a low fee will turn into a strong relationship that gets immediately looked into for a bigger project from the same supervisor down the line.

On many types of sync, you will also generate “backend” publishing royalties, which Vampr pay you 65% of until 2 years after the sync when all publishing rights are returned to you.

Download the Vampr app and navigate to the Publishing section of the app. The first time you do this you’ll be asked for your legal name and address in order to digitally sign the Vampr Publishing Services Agreement. Once this is complete you are free to register details for individual tracks.

You can register up to 5 tracks for free with us, so pick your best stuff! If you’d like to register more you can do so by purchasing a Vampr Pro subscription. With Vampr Pro you’ll receive other benefits including in-app features to supercharge your search for collaborators and access to Vampr music distribution with the right to keep 100% of your royalties.

You have the right to remove any song from representation at any time before the song has been synchronised (and subsequently published). You can remove songs from representation directly from your Vampr app.

Additionally, if you wish to cancel your agreement entirely you can do so with a simple email to our team.

More on this can be found in our full terms and conditions.

After you register tracks to Vampr Publishing our A&R team will do their best to find sync opportunities by pitching them to music supervisors. The team may contact you for additional information about the track including the master audio files, instrumental and lyrics. Having this information ready to go will improve your chances of getting a placement.

You can opt out of Vampr Publishing at any time by removing your tracks in the app.