Cue sheet

No cue sheet means no royalty. The cue sheet is how composers and publishers actually get paid for their work being broadcast. It exists because PROs need to know what music played in what production for how long so they can distribute royalty pools to the rights holders.

Why it matters

If a song is in an episode of a network show but the cue sheet does not list it, the composer earns zero performance royalties from that episode. Forever. Across every rerun, every streaming play, every international airing in perpetuity. That is a lot of zeros.

Cue sheets are filed by the production company, but missing or incorrect cue sheets are one of the most common ways composers quietly lose income they never knew was theirs. Working composers learn to verify their cue sheet was filed correctly within 30 days of broadcast, because nobody else is going to do it for them.

How it works

A cue sheet typically includes: production name and episode number, broadcast date, total program length, and one row per cue. Each cue row has the title, composers and their PRO affiliation, publishers and their PRO affiliation, percentage splits between writers, duration in minutes and seconds, and a usage code (background instrumental, visual vocal, theme, etc.).

The production company's music supervisor or music coordinator builds the cue sheet during post-production. It gets filed with the relevant PRO (ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC in the US) within 30 to 90 days of broadcast. The PRO uses the cue sheet, combined with their broadcast monitoring data, to calculate royalties for the next quarterly distribution. Quarterly is also how slowly errors get noticed if nobody is checking.

Examples

1. A 22-minute episode of a comedy uses 15 short music cues totaling 7 minutes. The cue sheet lists all 15 with composer credit, duration, and usage code. Six months later, the composers see royalty checks reflecting those uses across every airing of that episode. The system worked exactly the way it is supposed to, which is rarer than you would think.
2. A documentary uses a public-domain classical piece for 90 seconds. The cue sheet still lists it with the arranger as the rights holder, because the recorded performance has its own rights even though the underlying composition is public domain. Bach is not collecting royalties. The arranger absolutely is.
3. A composer notices a missing cue from a show that aired three months ago. They contact the music coordinator, provide the original timestamp and length, and the cue sheet gets amended. Without that catch, three years of streaming royalties from that cue would have evaporated into the void.

Common mistakes

• ●Assuming the production filed the cue sheet correctly. They might have. They also might not have. Working composers verify within 30 days of broadcast and chase corrections immediately.
• ●Listing the wrong PRO affiliation. If you are ASCAP and the cue sheet says BMI, ASCAP will not collect for that cue and BMI will not either. Your money is now nobody's money.
• ●Forgetting to update splits when collaborators change. If the composer was 50/50 with a co-writer who left the project, the cue sheet still needs to reflect the original deal. The split lives on whether the friendship did or not.
• ●Confusing cue sheets with sync licenses. They are two separate things. The sync license is the upfront payment. The cue sheet is what triggers ongoing performance royalties. One is the lump sum, the other is the slow drip that pays the rent for years.

How DropCue handles this

DropCue lets composers attach cue sheets, license agreements, and other PDF documents to their tracks. When a placement happens, the supervisor can pull the document straight from the catalog rather than chasing the composer for it.

Related terms

Keep reading

• →Music metadata for sync placements
• →Sync licensing workflow: brief to placement
• →DropCue for composers