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Newbie Questions

One of our readers, Ev, came up with the suggestion to have a section devoted to newbie questions regarding music libraries, music licensing, copyright, music publishing etc. There a lot of experienced people on this site and many are happy to share their wisdom. So, if you are a newbie (or not), and have a question, try leaving it here.

Of course many questions have already been answered here. First try searching in the search bar in the upper right hand corner. Also Google is your friend! I have found one of the best ways to search a site is use site specific criteria at Google’s web site. In other words, to search for a specific keyword, say “contracts”, type it in at Google like this “contracts site:musiclibraryreport.com”. Do not use the quotes.

If you still can’t find your answer then leave a comment here and someone will most likely come to your rescue!

1,260 thoughts on “Newbie Questions”

  1. Hey all.

    I got a dilemma and would appreciate any advice. I’ve had 15 tracks accepted into a publishing house (i could call it a library – but they’re more into publishing known artists and such – they needed some hip-hop beats they could sell cheap licenses for – thats where i come in).
    I got two options – 200 dollars a track, forfeiting any publishing or license cut (i still get the writers share)

    or

    1000 dollars re-coupable advance (will be recouped from future royalties), with a 25% cut of both the licensing and the publishing.

    Something tells me the latter option is better, but I would love any advice on the issue..

    Cheers

    • $200 seems reasonable Mikhail. You do however know you can’t use beats/loops unaccompanied from buy-outs.

      • If anyone is interested in selling tracks for $200 each on a work for hire basis, please email me immediately, I’d love to take advantage of you….i mean…take advantage of this great opportunity.

        • He’s talkin’ “beats” oontz oontz. One can purchase a package of beats for less than two bills.

          • By “beats” I dont necessarily mean simple loop-based stuff. Think Dangermouse – lots of layers, instruments etc. One beat takes me about 7-8 hours from scratch. 200 dollars for 8 hours of making music is pretty good to me. Mind you, ive worked some terrible jobs and Im 25 with no family. But the question is, which would you prefer, out of the scenarios? If anyone had experiences with similar offers, Id love to hear what you think.
            Oontz – Id love for you to take advantage of me by paying 200 dollars for a song. Id be making a comfortable living and you’d be living off the royalties. Lets partner up – I got 100 tracks ready to go.

            • @Mikal Go for the $1,000 advance, i don’t understand why the $200/cue would be a better deal. Maybe i missed something? It’s quite possible i mis-understood the original post..

              $1,000/cue > $200/cue and a co-pub is more favorable than a buy-out.

              • I agree. I would go for the $1000 advance too, unless there is some other info that is being left out.

                Yeah, it means giving up some sync fees and royalties for a little while until the $1,000 is paid off, but it sounds like a better deal and you really want to jump at up front money like that when you get the chance. You won’t get offered a $1,000 advance on instrumentals all that often IME. Take the advance, it could literally take years to make $1,000 on each track anyways. Might as well have the money now to help you jump start things instead of letting it trickle in.

                • Sorry guys – I think I havent made it clear enough. The 1000 advance is for all the tracks – as opposed to 200 per track up front. So its a question of 3000 dollars upfront, or 1000 dollars upfront with a chance (really hard how good of a chance) of making more in the long run. The trick is – should I gauge by the 200 per track offer, that the company is expecting to make much more? That’s the crux of my dilemma. I really wish I could simply look at their licensing history, but I cant…

                  • Ah… Well that is a little different then.

                    The $1,000 dollar advance might still be a better deal, but I think it depends on your individual situation:

                    If you are doing music mostly part time now and have another source of income, I would probably take the $1,000 advance. An extra 2 grand isn’t going to make the difference between you going full time and not going full time. It will take a couple of years to build things up. In a couple of years time you will have hopefully recouped the advance and then will have a co-pub on those tracks when you go full time, which would be nice.

                    If you are like me and are making the vast majority of your income on music and are still early on in your career, it might be best to take the $200 buyout. An extra $3,000 pays a lot of bills, and with the way this industry rolls you need to grab the quick cash when you can.

                    This, of course, is assuming that they will get you placements and make some money. If you don’t have a whole lot of faith in this company making you money, I would take the $200 per track fee. Its only 15 tracks. That is really just a drop in the bucket.

                    So I guess it depends on (1) what your job/finances situation is and (2) how much faith you have in this company.

        • Hey Oontz, give me an email – can’t contact you. You can take advantage of me – I’ll do a few tracks for you for $200 each if you’re interested in my piano music 🙂

          Give me a shout

          Emmett

  2. ** Recapping my first year **

    I posted this on the Taxi forums and thought it might interest other newbies who frequent here, primarily because MLR has been such a valuable resource in my travels thus far. Under *NO* circumstances will I enter a discussion debating the merits of Taxi. I’m just sharing my journey in the hope that it’s interesting and maybe encouraging to others starting out. I don’t proclaim any special talent or huge levels of success. This is just about where I’ve come from and where I’m going and the sights along the way.

    ————————–

    I’ve always felt music and had many ideas but up until 2010 never really looked beyond being a guitarist and playing in a church music team. I initially wanted to start writing music for my church and in Feb.’10 bought a midi controller keyboard and between my guitar, Absynth and Drums-on-Demand loops started working on demos for church. But all I got there was polite disinterest. I have to look back now and laugh at the way things are turning out. I don’t mean laugh as in “so there, you should have used me!” but in a “it’s weird the way things work out very different to how we want them to” way.

    Having those few tools sparked a lot of ideas for me. One day in Apr.’10 I was watching TV and zoned out to the picture and really started, maybe for the first time, listening to the music on shows and commercials and movies. I wondered where it came from. There was really good, moving orchestral work, quirky instrumentals in ads, cheesy 15s clips here and there. Some of it was clearly out of my league, but a lot of it, I thought, “I could do better than that” (egg of Colombus anyone?). So I spent a lot of time with my friend Google trying to work out where the music is sourced and how one would go about writing it and getting it used. I found a lot of gibberish and useless information. Some interesting and insightful stuff (such as the Starpolish site) was around, but mostly I found links to various royalty free sites. At the time I didn’t understand what that even meant.

    Somewhere in there, I found Taxi and began to read the forums. I eventually registered as a forum member and put up a few pieces for feedback to see if anyone thought I had what it took. I received some positive and encouraging replies and after some deliberation joined Taxi in early May.’10. I hit up a lot of their listings and was consistently rejected. Initially I didn’t mind, because I was after the feedback and to learn how to pitch to a listing. After awhile though, the rejections got annoying and frustrating. Sure, a lot of stuff was below par, quality wise, but there were pieces I was comfortable with and couldn’t see why it was being rejected. I felt like the screeners were deliberately trying to frustrate me.

    As an aside, since then I’ve accepted the realisation that the screeners are just people too, with their individual biases and perceptions. Here’s a point where I have to disagree with Michael Laskow – the screeners are not objective. If post-modernism has taught us anything, it is that objectivity is a myth. There is no such thing as an “ideal observer” free from all prejudice and able to consider only factual data. That would be a robot. But then a robot probably couldn’t ‘feel’ the art of music. What is more the case, however, is that screeners have a distance from the music (they didn’t create it) and an understanding of what the client is looking for (sometimes though the rejections still don’t make sense and I have to wonder if it was just a bad day or a gut reaction to a submission). As an another aside, quantum physics has taught us that observation changes reality!

    Nevertheless, what a reporter said about Joan Rivers holds true in a broader context. “People who fail in show business get rejected all of the time. Those who succeed, like Rivers, get rejected most of the time.” The simple fact is, this is a business with an oversupply of product creators, so we really need to stand out in some way – that doesn’t necessarily have to be in terms of innovation, but simple things like professionalism, consistent quality, timeliness, easy to work with and so on. That may not be the case in the world of pop and rock stars. 😉 I think too many production musicians still consider themselves artists and don’t conduct their work as a business. Of course, there is an artistic side but I get the feeling that is not close to the top of the list of prioritised qualities in successful production music professionals.

    Off track a bit, so…. one thing I committed myself to was the development of skills – composition, production, mixing. Each of those could be a career in themselves but normally as solo operators we have to learn all of them, and learn them well. (At some point, collaboration just makes sense. The old buzzword: synergy. Complementarity in operation can create greater things than the sum of the parts.) I spend time learning how to use my software and equipment, I listen to lots of reference material and practice my mixing to work towards the sound I need. And very importantly, I’m getting less precious about my music. Rejection and criticism can be taken in many ways. But the best way is, “Does that have merit? Can I learn from it?” If yes, great. If not, shrug and move on.

    With respect to skills development, I’ve found the peer-to-peer forum and A/Bing reference material to be the most valuable tools. I haven’t found much value in screener feedback – just being honest. Others will have different mileage. In peer-to-peer, it’s not only feedback on personal material that’s useful, but reading critiques of others work. It helps develop a critical ear and the ability to listen for many factors. When things are pointed out, you start to listen for them and you can hear it in the work of others and understand what the critic means, so that’s useful when critically listening to your own productions.

    Reality check 1: your music is probably not as good as it could be.
    Reality check 2: not everyone will like what you do.
    Reality check 3: two different people who matter (ie. publishers/librarians) could have wildly conflicting perceptions of your work
    Reality check 4: your friends and family will love what you do. That’s their job. Unless you’re fortunate like me – my wife is brutally honest!!

    Getting back to the journey, after reaching a point of sheer frustration with screeners, I wondered what other avenues there were. I won’t go into those details here but I’m now at a point where I have more work opportunities than available creating time. [EDIT: it was in this period I discovered MLR and absorbed the accumulated knowledge and wisdom here]. However, in my hiatus from Taxi submissions, my production skills have improved exponentially, thanks in large part to getting a great DAW and taking the time to learn about K-system level metering, and general mixing practice. So I think it’s no coincidence that 4 months after my last submission, I submit again targeting as well as I could and I get a forward! The irony is, I already have more open doors than I have material and time – I’ve reached a point where I would probably start to get the forwards but I may not even need it. Well, I find it ironic.

    Late last year, I signed several tracks to a trailer library and that really narrowed my focus as to what I want to do. Not long after, I was offered an album deal by a different library and I did 16 tracks for them. It turned out that two other writers had material in that collection as well, but that was another lesson – publishers have their own business plan and goals. Within the last month I’ve now been offered another album deal. This time I’ve chosen my collaborator so I know what to expect…I hope. I’ve also attracted attention from a large production library and additionally am in negotiations to create material for two leading trailer houses. What a ride! Trailer music is a microcosm of a movie/tv show/video game. It has to be powerful, emotive and often intense because it’s about advertising. It’s not there to support a scene or just be a background blip that is largely overlooked by viewers and quickly forgotten. It’s designed to hook people and help draw them into wanting to see/buy whatever the trailer is advertising. My goal now is to become the best trailer music composer I can be. I love it, and I’m really not interested in anything else at this time.

    So coming up in May will be one year with Taxi and for the busy reasons above, I’m not sure if I will renew this time. I’d probably wait until there’s a listing I absolutely must submit to and renew then. Right now, I don’t have back catalogue needing homes and I don’t have time to write to listing. Wish that was translating to dollars sooner, but I accept that’s just a question of time. My aim is to keep the pipeline full, and the dollars will take care of themselves.

    The truth is, I’m still a noob….. but now I’m one with a goal, a plan of how to get there, and a commitment to learning and development. And I know that will set me apart from the other unknowns looking for a break. These are some things I’ve come to accept along the way:

    1) The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know
    2) My music is to fit someone else’s vision. If I want to do art, do my own releases.
    3) Rejection isn’t personal. What is useless for one company might be absolutely perfect for the next, thus….
    4) Targeting accurately may well be more important than anything else. The cheesiest, most cliched sounding piece probably has a home somewhere. Your job is to find it, not get p***ed off at the publishers who don’t want it. If they can’t use it, why would you want them to sign it and have it sit on their shelf doing nothing???
    5) This is a business. Be professional.

    For anyone who read this far, I hope it was an interesting excursion. 🙂

  3. Just had my fist piece on a TV show! Brewmasters S01 E04 on Discovery. Saw the cue sheet filed on BMI.

    Anyone know where I can look up to see how often this episode has been aired?

    Thanks.

      • Thanks, not a clue. The sale hasn’t shown up with any of the publishers I use. Some of them only give statements a couple times a year though. The only way I knew about it was the BMI statement.

    • It’s sometimes hard to know how often it aired and the best reflection will be your BMI statements down the road– typically you get paid 2 quarters after the quarter of airing.

      First thing to do is Google Brewmasters Season 1 Episode 4. That usually will get you the title of the episode. In this case, it was “Grain To Glass”.

      If you want to VIEW the episode, if you have a DVR (or equivalent) you can set it up to search an automatically record a show. If you set up automatic recording for all episodes of Brewmasters, you can check to see how often it shows up, if it does.

      Some shows can be purchased very cheaply on iTunes or Amazon. In this case, the episode is available on both for $1.99. So, at the minimum, you can see how your music was used.

      Congrats on the placement!
      🙂

  5. hi all
    could anyone suggest a good place to put up effects? whats a good site which is easy to upload and then easy to put into categories ? dont know if anyone can help. i know there are loads of music sites in the list but i wasnt sure which are good for effx
    thanks

  6. Where can I hear examples of stingers, bumpers and transitions? I have to submit alternate versions of my cues one of which is a stinger. I think I know it when I hear it but I’d like to hear a few examples to base it on to be sure.
    tia.

  7. Is tinnitus a problem for many musicians here? Im writing music 2-3 hrs a day over the past year and tinnitus is becoming an increasing irritant. I want to turn my mixes and masters up louder to make more precise adjustments/EQs but i dont cos im worried it will get worse if i do. Im scared i could lose my good hearing!

      • I have a little bit also but it seems to be on the increase now that im putting more hours in. In my experience it tends to fade away if i stop writing for a few weeks or so. thanks for the link ill check it out.

    • dude, seriously dont turn up your music loud to make the mix right, simple solution, and this will work, turning it up will not, buy some acoustic foam – put it to the sides of the speakers , and behind, and most importantly behind you – i put mine on a piece of plywood on feet behind me on a stand so its really near, i am telling you, the one behind me makes the ULTIMATE difference, before that my sound was bouncing off the wall and i just could never be certain my mix was right, now i listen at a fairly low level, not loud at all and its just flat, i can hear it all clearly. in my case the foam cost 500 pounds, but im not using all of it, i could have just done with the one behind me to be honest, but i also like the ones at the side. this will get u great mixes, the problem is if you cant be sure a mix is right then this will sort it out

      • Thanks for the tip. ill check it out once I make £500 quid from licensing my music over the next 25 years or so 🙂

        • hi dude.
          ha. yes , well i got mine when i had a good job – saying that i really dont think i needed to spend as much, i cant say how much stopping the music coming out of the speaker and bouncing off the wall behind has helped me – ive always struggled to get things to sound as i want – if u can just get some foam to stop the rebounds suddenly its like a light goes on and the decisions u make create a balanced mix almost immediately – really sorry to hear about the tinitus , ive a friend who suffers and he has learnt to live with it now. i def would say to you though with a really low level the foam is so great. i know ebay has sellers doing some really cheap – like ten or twenty pounds, i got the exp stuff but bought a bass trap for a tenner off ebay and it looks almost the same. good luck , i have heard that your brain adapts to tinnitus over time and ignores it, like the wife ;-)).

          • heh. i never thot of using that technique with the wife. Adapt and ignore. What an awesome tip, this really is a great forum 🙂

            sounds like that foam is really worthwhile. Ill check out some deals on ebay. Thanks man.

            • yes – honestly, my girlfriend is one who never knows when to quit !!!

              i have learnt to switch off much to her annoyance.

              heres some foam – search for acoustic foam, i have them behind spk and to sides, but really they to me are only semi important, the one thats like a light going on is the panel i put on feet behind me, i got some wood legs i made, bought a piece of cheap plywood which measures around one metre by one metre, i put this behind my chair, only about two inches behind my chair, the music then just suddenly sounds enclosed, its fabulous ! the wall is some way away so this enclosed back wall i have made on some wood stilts does what i want, i honestly have always struggled with mixes, i dont know if god made my ears wrong or what ! but with this, i really have a low vol going, u know around the level of a human voice or a little louder, with this i can hear everything really well, i think sound bounces off the wall normally and confuses my decision making even though i am not aware of it one bit, somehow this works, and i have read so so many times people saying (pro people) they would rather have cheaper monitors and acoustic foam than exp and no foam.

              my friend has tinnitus, and over time it is still there but his brain has somehow learnt to ignore it. hope this link helps if you do decide, theres always the ‘old school way’ … EGG BOXES !! cover the room 😉

              http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_nkw=acoustic+foam&_sacat=0&_dmpt=UK_Music_Instruments_Microphones_MJ&_odkw=audio+foam&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313

                • Hey Art,

                  +1

                  A friend of mine is a well respected, Grammy winning engineer. He highly recommends Real Traps.

                  Michael

                  • I did a lot of research before settling on Real Traps. It’s a great way to clean up the anomalies of those “box” rooms most of us work in. Just sticking up some foam and, heaven forbid, egg cartons is not a good solution. I even went the next step and use a DBX DriveRack Studio Monitor system that emulates different speaker sizes. It also allows me to tune my room using pink noise (or was it white noise?). Hopefully I have fairly flat room.

  8. Hi Denis,

    >Unfortunately to take a long term view you need to be quite old<

    LOL .. I guess we are a bit "long in the tooth." 🙂

    Congrats on the windfall!

    Cheers,

    Michael

      • @Art and MichaelL Maybe so LOL. Actually Art you said some where in this thread about the library business being the toughest one. +100 I have done loads of other things, producing/writing/film/commercials etc but library music writing is a tough nut to crack.

        • Part of the difficulty with library music is that you have to do SO MUCH of it to succeed.

          Like you long lost commercial, two pieces of music that I wrote for television years ago have earned 100s of times more than all of my library tracks put together. If all of my library stuff paid as well I’d own an island somewhere.

          Like Erwin, it’s something that I do in addition to my other music business.

      • You mean, like if we’re old enough to remember that a sampler was once a box of chocolates and that aarp isn’t just an analog synth? 😉

        Ouch!

        • And like “booty”. Just read that in the “New American Bible Revised Edition” they have replaced “booty” with “spoils of war”! LOL!

                • Yes a bit classier MichaelL, but either way our bones are wearing out – not to mention the time we have left on Earth. 😀

                    • If you guys are forming a club of guys who have been around the block more than a few times, count me in! 🙂

                    • Well, now that the gray hairs have come out of the woodwork….back to my original post.

                      We should use our collective experience to provide newbies, of all ages, with a realistic understanding of the library business.

                      There’s a delicate balance between providing a glimpse of the harsh reality, yet still being encouraging.

                      From the library perspective, it’s got to be to their benefit to have writers who understand the business.

                      El Jol quoted his father as saying, “if it were that easy, everyone would do it.” Well it seems like everyone is trying to do it — probably because they have unrealistic expectations of what is necessary and what is possible.

                      Maybe we can help.

  9. hi michael.

    i really really think your point is so so valid. as a newbie myself my ideal situation would be to get honest info. my ideal would be to come to this website and see a list of the music makers and where there music is placed and the exact monthly figures they earn, I know we cant do that for a multitude of reasons , but that would be my ideal, it would give me something to strive for and also i would be able to guage where not to place my music.

    2 Eddy, i am in a similar situation to you. having begun library this year ive been doing it for chappel and atmosphere and have no idea what i m going to earn but yet i am doing it, i have my fingers crossed and today i wake again and am going to try and work hard and do what i enjoy. Good luck eddy, even if you decide not to make library your main income then at least you have an output for music in the future where you can make any type of music without the restraints of what a normal composer has to do, ie become a rocker or ambient person and always wake up and have to make the same music. if you love to make music then its a gift to enjoy and experience and you will always have that if you make music.

    • Hey Adam,

      That’s great that your writing for both atmosphere and chappel. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get connected with them? Did you contact them directly or did you know someone for either company?

      • contacted thro a friend – i had past exp of writing records and stuff, had a listen to there stuff which is all really good and did something i thought was completely diff to anything out there, really far out stuff, as far as i could anyway. i hit it from angle of doing something really different to anything else rather than immitate anything, tho saying that i am all for soundalikes as i think thats great stuff but with them i havent.

        • Thanks for the reply. I was just curious because neither company has a website and I’ve been wondering how to get in touch with them to submit music. They’re both good libraries, I’ve used a lot of killertrax and firstcom in various productions. Good luck with them.

  10. hello fellow music makers

    I was wondering if doing different edits ,stings and versions of the same tracks is such a big issue.I find it quite tedious and messing with my artistical concept of the work ,even though it finally ends up in library I still think of each song as something special and when it’s done it’s done. I’d rather spend that time recording new stuff instead of doing the edits of already finished ones.
    Are there any succesfull library composers which can do without , or is it something I have to get used to sooner or later,thanks

    • Afraid that’s something you have to just get used to.

      Now, without wanting to start another lengthy argument, ooops… I mean debate 😉
      Artistic concept and library music don’t really go hand in hand.

        • Ado,

          +1 to El Jol and Darstar.

          You’re concerned about you’re artistic concept. Well the libraries for the most part want the shorter edits. Ads can be 15 or 30 seconds long. It’s more convenient for the customer to not have to edit the track.

          If you don’t do your own edits, the library will likely have someone, who will not understand your concept, and who may not be very musical do the edits after the fact, and your tracks may be butchered.

          Take the time to do. Sometimes you’ll need a tempo adjustment to make it fit, or a few notes of intro. maybe repeating a bar, but it’s worth it.

          _Michael

          • Yeah, best to do your own edits. One library I used to work for murder your music. Audible clicks, cut off endings, 4/4 bars getting shortened to 3/4 so it all fits…..some crazy things. When you work hard on something and then someone does that to your work it hurts.

            • El Jol….ROTFL!

              I’ve had the same thing happen. Even had someone accidentally convert the bit rate, so speed and pitch went wonky.

              Had my jaw hit the floor more than once!

              Cheers,

              Michael

              • Thank you folks, I guess that the harsh reality then .Recently I ‘ve been actually recording short songs like from 30 sec. to 1min 50 sec. tracks ,but I didn’t consider them edits because there are no longer versions of them.
                As I mostly record real instruments sometimes I feel like recording various small versions of the same song would be more appealing then cut & paste task ,though that’s not always feasible

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