Cue sheets, and the money that depends on filling them in

A cue sheet is a plain, unglamorous document: a list of every piece of music used in an audiovisual production, in order, with who wrote it, who publishes it, how long it played and in what role.

It is also, for a lot of composers, the single most consequential piece of paperwork in their year.

Why it exists

When a programme is broadcast, the broadcaster reports what it aired. Music inside that programme is not obvious from the schedule — a documentary listed as one 50-minute item might contain thirty pieces of music. The cue sheet is what turns “one documentary” into thirty claimable uses.

Without it, the schedule shows a programme and the music inside is invisible. The use happened, the money was generated, and there is nothing to attach it to.

What a usable cue sheet contains

Per cue, the minimum that makes a claim work:

• Title of the work, as registered.
• Composers and publishers, with IPI numbers where you have them.
• Duration of the cue, not of the programme.
• Usage type — background, theme, featured. These are valued differently.
• The ISWC, if the work has one.

The most common failure is not a missing cue sheet but a vague one: a title with no writer, or a writer with a name spelled differently from the registration. That produces a conflict rather than a payment, and conflicts take work to resolve.

Whose job is it

Formally, the producer’s. In practice the composer often ends up chasing it, because the composer is the one who loses if it never gets filed.

Two habits that pay for themselves:

• Keep your own cue list as you deliver. Writing it at delivery takes minutes. Reconstructing it eighteen months later, from a rough cut you no longer have, takes days.
• Register the works before the programme airs. A cue sheet pointing at an unregistered work is a conflict waiting to happen.

What we do with them

Cue sheets sit alongside broadcast schedules in your client portal, and we reconcile both against your repertoire rather than waiting for a report to match itself. Where a cue cannot be matched, it goes into a conflicts queue and is worked until it resolves — not written off to unidentified.