I found the interview I mentioned a while back.
magneticmusic.ws/Frame.htm
Electronic Music for Commercial Radio and TV Spots
Hale Smith is a black American composer who had a day job at Sam Fox Film Rights, publisher of background music for commercials. In 1968 Hale asked his friend Donald Erb to compose some electronic music for Sam Fox’s library. Don was not interested but passed along Hale’s request to me. I went to New York, met Hale, and learned that the most successful music was the easiest to use: tailored to precise 30- or 60-second durations and containing “little holes” for ease of editing. He told me that this library was known as “needle-drop” music, because it was charged at a flat rate per drop of the turntable needle onto the LP disk (i.e., for use in one commercial) without further royalties no matter how often the commercial was broadcast. It was also low-budget music, the fees ranging from about $7.50 to $45.00 or so (I would be paid 50%). It was directed towards the very large market of recording studios and radio stations that wanted hassle-free stock music for simple local commercial spots, without having to hire a composer. Sam Fox was a long-established company and their earliest libraries were issued on 78 rpm records. Now they were engaged in publishing two libraries of 33 1/3 rpm LP disks, Sam Fox for ASCAP music and Demeter for BMI music. Hale said that most of their music came from scores for films that had been produced but then encountered problems and were never released. Sam Fox wanted to release some electronic music, which was then in the public eye, but at that time there were no distressed films with electronic scores available.
Working for a few weeks in the R.A. Moog Co. studio in Trumansburg, I composed enough music for both sides of an LP disk, and gave the tunes suitably dopey titles (some of which were changed to dopier ones by Sam Fox Film Rights). The disk was released in 1968 with the title “Electronic Effects” shortly before I moved to Cleveland. In mid-1969 I began to hear my music on local TV commercials, so I hooked up a tape recorder to my TV. I used an old low-end half-track Webcor recorder (a prize for playing the opening to “Rhapsody in Blue” and winning the Michigan division of the “Music Man” contest in 1960) at 3 ¾ ips; I was looking for only the most basic quality, just to prove the use of my music if necessary.
Hale Smith seems to be describing SF 1022 which has yet to be added to the discogs listing for the Sam Fox label.
chevalierdesaintgeorges.homestead.com/Smith.html
This site also gives SF 1022 with a date of 1968. I wonder what the original dopey titles were.
There's another description for Sam Fox SF 1020 which was also released in 1968 for Reynold Weidenaar.
He describes SF 1025 released in 1970.
My second production for Sam Fox was one side of an LP in late 1970. I was then working full-time at Audio Recording Studios, Inc., and also using the electronic music studio at the Cleveland Institute of Music while taking composition lessons there from Donald Erb. I recorded the synth parts at CIM on an Ampex 300 4-track recorder. The drum parts were later overdubbed at ARS and were performed by George Stage, a recording engineer at the studio (cuts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11).
Working as a recording engineer in a studio which had purchased the Sam Fox Library gave me an insight into how the royalty process worked (or didn't work, to be more precise). ARS subscribed to the Sam Fox Library by paying a fee for each disk and also a basic yearly usage fee. ARS would then bill clients a needle-drop fee (per-use synchronization) when a Sam Fox tune was recorded on a commercial or some other soundtrack, typically $25. ARS was then supposed to file a form with Sam Fox, showing which music had been used and paying a scheduled per-use license fee, typically $7.50-$15--half of which was then to be reported and paid by Sam Fox to the composer. When I started working as Traffic Manager at ARS in April 1969, I saw that the required forms were not going out to Sam Fox. Naturally in my new position of responsibility I was able to rectify this little oversight. My colleagues and the owners at ARS were very supportive of this new policy; the money was minimal and they were happy that someone other than them was taking care of the paperwork.
The number of forms from ARS citing my music could not have been more than six or eight over the course of the year. For any one composer it is a high-volume business only when his or her music is widely used and faithfully reported at recording studios and radio stations all across the country. This proved to be unlikely. By mid-1970, a year's worth of royalty statements from Sam Fox to me showed precisely NONE of the needle-drops reported to them by ARS. The nice folks at Sam Fox had the good sense to be embarrassed by this and managed to "find" some hundreds of dollars in missing royalties. However, without a way to research uses of my music in local markets around the U.S., most such uses probably escaped royalty payments to the composer.
The use of music in national TV commercials, however, is another matter entirely. ASCAP monitored the broadcasts of TV Guide and other commercials, and paid royalties to Sam Fox and to me. Needle-drop fees in this context were irrelevant.
SF 1028 is described as finally having official cover art and released in 1973.
The third and final production for Sam Fox was released in 1973. FOr the first time it was dignified by a printed cover, in color! My friend and colleague David Peelle collaborated with me on this project. By this time there were hundreds of electronic-music studios, thousands of composers, and millions of MiniMoogs, so the competition was fierce. There were just a few brief uses reported by the ASCAP survey and Sam Fox.
