Organization attempts to track down film and TV musicians who are owed money, some of whom are unaware of it.
The Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund every year pays thousands of musicians for their movie and TV work when it appears on cable, free TV, streaming services or home video. But not every musician is aware of this benefit when they begin their recording career, and many who have left the business are still owed money – sometimes, a lot of money, FMSMF officials say. The fund website (www.fmsmf.org) lists thousands of musicians (and in some cases their beneficiaries) who are owed, in all, several million dollars in residuals for movies and TV shows but have somehow dropped out of the system. Even FMSMF executive director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth discovered, to her surprise, that she was on the list. “My dad was a musician, in New York. It turned out my father had done one or two small things that generated teeny-tiny residuals, and I was his beneficiary. So there was enough money for me to buy a couple of lattes,” she says with a laugh.
