One of the most common questions I get from composers starting out in trailer music is: how do you actually get paid? The answer is simpler than most people think. There are two revenue streams: sync fees and royalties (also called writer's share). Let me break down both.
Sync fees: getting paid for placements
A sync fee is the money you receive when your music gets used in a movie trailer. Here is how the chain works.
You write tracks for a trailer house. That trailer house has a deal with a publisher. Your album, let us say ten tracks, sits in the publisher's database. Movie companies browse these databases when they need music for their trailers.
When a movie company picks your track for their trailer, the publisher gets paid a sync fee. Let us say $10,000 for that one usage. That is a realistic number for a major trailer placement.
Now the splits kick in:
- The publisher and the trailer house typically have a 50/50 deal. So the trailer house gets $5,000.
- You and the trailer house also have a deal, often 50/50. So you receive $2,500 from that single placement.
The beautiful part? Most trailer sync deals are non-exclusive. That means your track can be used again and again. Another movie company could pick the same track for a completely different trailer, and you get paid again. In an ideal world, you are seeing one or two placements a month. Some tracks never get placed. Others get used repeatedly. That is the nature of the business.
Royalties: the money that keeps coming
The second revenue stream is royalties, also known as your writer's share. This is the money you earn when your music airs on television, in documentaries, TV shows, and similar broadcasts.
Here is how this side works. A TV station licenses music from a publisher's database for their productions. Maybe they use your track during the end credits of a show, or as background music in a documentary segment. Every time that happens, the usage gets logged: the track name, the exact duration used, the time of day it aired, which station, which country.
All of this data flows to your PRO (Performance Rights Organization). If you are in the US, that is BMI or ASCAP. In Germany, it is GEMA. The PRO collects the money on your behalf based on all those logged usages.
Here is where it gets interesting. Your PRO tallies up everything quarterly. So let us say your tracks were used across 30 TV shows in one quarter. The total collected might come to something like $10,000. Depending on your deal with the trailer house, you might split that 50/50 (so $5,000 for you) or, in some cases, you keep 100% of the writer's share. That part depends entirely on the deal you negotiate, and it is worth paying close attention to.
Why this matters
Understanding these two revenue streams changes how you think about your work:
- Sync fees are lump sum payments for specific placements. They can be significant, but they are unpredictable. You might have a great month or a dry stretch.
- Royalties are the long game. A track that gets placed in a recurring TV show can generate income for years. The more tracks you have out there across different publishers and libraries, the more potential touchpoints you have.
The composers who build sustainable careers in trailer music are the ones who understand both sides and optimize for both. Write great music that gets placed in trailers (sync fees), and make sure that same music is versatile enough to land in TV productions (royalties).
The deals you negotiate matter just as much as the music you write. Know your splits. Understand what you are signing. And always pay attention to whether you are keeping your full writer's share.
