Mark Lewis, at Partners In Rhyme, recently finished creating a tool that allows people to easily build music playlists and add them to their websites without uploading files or editing code. They often receive submissions from composers who make it very hard to simply hear their music. Mark thought this might be a cool thing to offer composer and podcast creators, etc. It even has a place for a purchase link to promote the composer’s music. Mark thought some composers might find it useful so here’s the link. http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/xmlGen2/Free_Audio_Player.shtml

Partners In Rhyme has been distributing royalty free music and sound effects online for over 13 years now. Our main site receives approximately 24,000 visitors a day and 5 million page views a month. We generate approximately $500,000 in revenue a year and growing.

We have always had one goal in mind and that is to help musicians make a living at what they love to do.

Originally Partners In Rhyme was a loose group of composers who wrote songs and created music and sound design for Mark Mothersbaugh’s Mutato Muzika production company. When we submitted tracks for commercials and TV shows we always gave the client 3 or 4 options. The options the client didn’t go with we turned around and sold on our website.
We started taking on outside composers not long afterwards and also started purchasing libraries of music.

Today we represent more than 70 composers and last year we paid them more than $150,000. Our payout per month, per composer averages somewhere between $100 and $5000. The composers who have a lot of material in all of our websites and outside distribution channels make quite a bit of money. We also distribute the music catalogs of some of our “competitors” (owners of other royalty free music websites) who have all become good friends of mine.

Partners In Rhyme is a US based company but the Partners In Rhyme offices and recording studio are based in Barcelona, Spain. Our new goal is try to find talented musicians who may be too broke to record their own music and we give them a distribution/recording deal. We currently have a virtuoso theremin player, a classical cellist and a group of Gypsies that we are recording in our studios for possible distribution.

You asked:
“Does the proliferation of so much music and so many music libraries online detract from anyone making a decent income.”

Not at all. I think the new digital music landscape has opened up opportunities to composers who would have never thought they could make a living or even make any money from the music they create. Putting the power of distribution in the hands of people who care about the musician instead of faceless labels and corporations is incredibly powerful.

Our Websites
http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/
http://www.musicloops.com/
http://www.sound-effect.com/

My Blog
http://www.royaltyfreemusicclips.com/

You can submit samples of the music you are intending to distribute to us by:

1. Pointing us to any online previews of the music you are intending to distribute to: support [at] musicloops [dot] com

2. Mail a demo CD to us via the regular post (please do not email any samples to us):

Partners In Rhyme
att: Mark Lewis
Calle Martinez de la Rosa, 28 Bajo 1
08012 Barcelona
Spain