The Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund (FMSMF) works to serve the film, television and music communities and meet the needs of film musicians whose talents fuel the industry. To this end, the FMSMF is pleased to provide ongoing updates to Allegro for the benefit of Local 802 members:

A New Record! The FMSMF closed its 2015 fiscal year, which ended on March 31, with the highest level of contributions in the fund’s history! When the books closed, the FMSMF had received residuals of $92,315,936, surpassing the record of $89,282,621 set in 2013. The continued growth of contributions to the FMSMF during the seven years since the Great Recession is a testament to the continued growth of revenue generated by sales in secondary markets, such as pay TV, DVDs, basic cable and new media platforms – a good news indicator about the health of this segment of the industry and its ability to sustain a middle-class living for freelance talent working in film and television.

We Moved! On May 1, our offices moved from Studio City to Encino. When the fund moved into its Studio City offices in 2001, our staff consisted of 20 people. The staff has almost doubled since then, and our Studio City office became very cramped quarters leaving no room for needed growth. By the end of 2016, our staff will consist of 43 employees with the addition of new staff needed to support the fund’s collections and compliance work on behalf of musicians. The new fund offices will not only represent a financial savings with a significant reduction in rent costs, but the Encino location will provide more square footage to accommodate, more efficiently, the fund’s staff and operations today and into the future. You can find our new address at www.fmsmf.org.

Unclaimed Residuals. Thank you for helping to get the word out – we reached our goal for 2015! At the beginning of this fiscal year, we set a goal to find as many “lost” musicians as possible and distribute $1 million in unclaimed residuals. With your help, we met and surpassed our goal: during the 2015 fiscal year, the fund staff located 570 musicians and beneficiaries who had unclaimed funds, and distributed $1,173,000 in unclaimed residuals since the start of the fiscal year.

FMSMF is using our traditional magazine advertising in Music Connection to focus on increasing awareness to musicians who may have unclaimed residuals. We are deeply appreciative to the Federation and the AFM Locals, including Local 802, who have assisted with outreach to musicians who may have unclaimed residuals waiting at the fund. The fund will continue to put emphasis on finding musicians with unclaimed residuals, and will continue to ask your help in getting the word out. Please check the FMSMF unclaimed residuals list at www.fmsmf.org/unclaimedchecks to see if you or a fellow AFM member you know has unclaimed residuals waiting for them. In particular, as a reminder about AFM-covered sound recordings: if a covered sound recording is used in an AFM-covered theatrical or TV motion picture, the musicians who worked on that recording may be entitled to secondary market residuals.