240 !!Chapter 13
plagiarism. What do you do to protect yourself from that
responsibility?
Russo: Basically, what you have to do is have an indemnity clause
in your contract that fits your comfort level. Indemnity clause
means that you will be responsible for a track only up until what
level of litigation you are in. In other words, when we sign an
indemnity clause we like to include the phrase ‘‘finally sustained
in a court of law,’’ which means that we are not responsible for
any possible infringement up until it’s finally sustained, which
means going up to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Honestly,
the best way to stay clear of that is to know that you shouldn’t
be close to something to begin with.
MZ: Since demos cost the music company money, what percentage
of the jobs do you have to ‘‘win’’ in order to make that invest-
ment prudent?
Russo: Typically, with a jingle demo, you are doing really good if
you can win one in three. Typically, a company or person will
win one of five or six, and that’s a good company. It’s not so
much how good you are or how much better the next guy is—
it’s a question of whose track really seems to reach into the cre-
ative direction that’s most endearing to the creatives. So it’s a
very subjective process, and you can’t let it get you down if you
lose a demo. You have to understand that you’ve done the best
job you could and that, frankly, you have followed the assign-
ment and you’d love to hear what won. On an underscore side,
you need to win one of three or four to be able to stay in busi-
ness. Jingles carry a premium in creative fees—triple that of an
underscore—so you could afford to lose more underscores
because they don’t cost as much to make. Jingles, you have to
really know that you’re placing your bets, in that you don’t want
to be involved unless you know you have a really good chance
of winning, which is a one in six, let’s say—I mean anything
more than five or six music companies I think is too scattered
and honestly not necessarily a bona fide job. It may be more of a
hunting expedition, and even if you won, would result in a final.
So you could win and lose by being involved in the wrong job.
Typically, we win over 50 percent of our demo submissions for
underscores, and we win about one in four to one in three of our
jingles.
MZ: On average, how many demos do you submit on a job?
Russo: On an average, we give a minimum of three and a maxi-
mum of five. We are trying to show that we are being sensitive
to different aspects of the assignment, and we want to include as
much as possible in the overall presentation.