Anyone done the ‘Music for Income” course

[raffi586]

Hello, all.

This is my first post, so please be gentle!

I am wondering if anyone has done Michael Kruk’s ‘Music for Income’ course on making library music. Or if you have any knowledge of or advice about this course based on information from other people you know who may have done it. It’s quite expensive, so I’m wondering if it’s worthwhile. I am new to this game, been writing and not finishing lots of music and feel quite overwhelmed and at a loss with regard to the business side of things.

Any advice about this course would be much appreciated, or feel free to recommend other courses, or to say not to bother with any of them!

-raffi586

[Art Munson]

Hi Raffi,

Yes it can be overwhelming when first starting but success is achievable. You could find all you need to know just on the free forums here but you would need to do a lot of digging. I’ve never taken a course but that’s not to say they are bad. I just don’t know about them. As we like to say this is marathon not a sprint. So, take a deep breath, listen to a lot of music on the various libraries, do a lot of research and believe in your self!

[LAwriter]

Those who can, do. Those who can’t teach. I can’t comment to ALL the various “courses” out there, but many are being taught by people who are really not getting that many placements. Check the person’s cred’s on IMDb and see how many placements they are getting.

Paying out a lot of money is not necessary IMO. The reality is all the info you need – or at least most of it – resides on this site. Isn’t there a summer sale going on right now? Well worth the price even at full price.

Honestly, hard work, persistence, and keeping your eyes/ears open is all you really need to do. These courses prey on people who just want everything dropped into their lap – “Do A, B, C and then you will be working full time in the biz”. This is ABSOLUTELY not reality. Every path is unique and different. What works for me will not work for you, and what works for you will not work for Art, and etc., etc.. You’re got to find your own path, and that is done with persistence, long standing stamina, and sheer will power in spite of the odds.

Before paying out for a course, be aware – you are entering an industry that is contracting and in decline vs. expanding and offering exceptional well paying opportunities for newcomers.

Best of luck.

[MM_Musicworks]

I don’t know anything about Michael Kruk’s course. It seems way too expensive to me.

I was a member of Jesse Josephson’s Sync Academy and found it to be useful. Its relatively inexpensive. There’s tons of tutorials on subjects ranging from “How to finish Music Tracks” to “How to pitch to libraries”. He also has a service called sync Edge where he recommends libraries for newbies to submit their music to along with the genre that he thinks would work best for that library.

Having said that, the most useful resource I have used is MLR… there’s a full list of libraries and lots of comments on many of them. There’s a forum full of extremely detailed discussions.

Then, there’s the Facebook group called “A Composer’s Guide to Library Music Discussion”. These 2 are by far the most useful.

As LAwriter mentioned what’s most important is hard work, persistence and lots and lots of research to find the library that works for you.

All the best!

[markparr]

Raffi586,

I have taken Michael’s course and found it very, very useful.

Michael is a very successful Composer as well as a Music Publisher owner.
He has scored a number of David Attenborough documentaries among others and he certainly knows what he’s doing.

If you are thinking of joining Taxi (which I highly recommend when you’re first starting) he will also give you a year’s free membership.

The course is expensive but very, very informative. I know that I learnt an awful lot and it is very comprehensive.

To me it was worth every penny 🙂

Good luck in your new career 🙂

[Art Munson]

I would have to disagree with the Taxi comment. I joined them three different times over the couple of decades they have been around. I never found it useful but YMMV.

I generally don’t let MLR get involved in Taxi discussions as I have learned it can quickly descend into chaos.

[rfelse]

Hi all –

I took Michael Kruk’s “Music For Income” course a few years ago when I was just starting out and it was VERY useful to me, and totally worth the $$. Michael is a successful composer himself, and also runs the Platinum music library (platinummusic.co.uk), so he speaks from experience. The course is very comprehensive and includes interviews with music editors and other composers. It came with discounts on some sample libraries and some other goodies. I would recommend this course to anyone starting out who wants to become more familiar with the terminology, ins-and-outs, and requirements of the industry. I keep going back to some of the material for reference and as a refresher. I’ve met Michael in person and he is a for-real guy. Yes it’s relatively expensive but it was worth it for me.

Robert

[DavidM]

I would dispute the ‘those who can, do, those who can’t, teach’ argument, simply because there are loads of examples to the contrary, such as Mozart and Oscar Peterson – both great teachers, but were also compositional and performance geniuses and legends.
I used Sync Academy to get started and found it useful and supportive.
One final point; it’s a pity Art has taken away the dates on the forum, because you’ll see dissenting voices from 10-12 years ago and further back also saying theres not as much money as there used to be, or there’s too many people in the game.
Nobody says ‘I’m not going to be lawyer, because there’s too many lawyers’. They might say ‘this is a competitive field, I’d better be at the top of my game’, but that’s a positive aspirational stance to take for any endeavour in life. Stick at it, and remember Art’s words; it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

[MaxPower]

It’s WAY too expensive and I can guarantee you this guy won’t be able to tell you anything you can’t find here or on YouTube.
When I started out I made a promise to myself that I would never hand over any money in exchange for some self proclaimed ‘industry expert’ to listen to my music, critique me, give me advice and direction or a ‘hack’ or ‘the insider secrets’ or whatever else they promise they can do. I never handed over a penny and I advise you to adopt the same rule for yourself. Spend your money on some great VST’s or hardware instead.

[HelsinkiFades]

I’m relatively new to the business, although I’ve been a part-time musician for well over four decades. I started delving into library music/sync late 2019 and found a publisher in my country that deals with about 70% of music contents in the national broadcast field. But I decided that I needed to expanded my business and not put all my eggs into one basket. So I joined the course about 8 months ago and found it remarkably useful. Michael is an experienced composer and has worked for BBC documentaries, among other things. What I found very useful was that he is also a library owner himself, so you get the perspective from both sides of the business. He’s a great person and makes himself available. MFI is very well laid out and detailed. All the necessary topics regarding the sync business are covered in a logical way. There are topics about how to best create cues, for example, so that they are immediately appealing to Libraries and editors/Music sups. Well, the list of topics covered is too long to detail here. You also get a one year subscription to T**I. I decided to try that route as well and over the course of a few months I subbmitted a total of 11 tracks for 5 requests and 8 tracks in total were forwarded. I got 2 responses: one from an award winning library asking me to write a 10 track album for them. And one from another library asking me for more songs of the genre I submitted. Not just that: Michael regularly adds contents to the course. He emailed a few times all the course’s members, with links to him reviewing libraries who were potentially looking for cues in specific genres. I sent four tracks to one of them, a six grammy awards winning music lib, and, after a long process of editing to meet their very high standards, two of tracks were finally accepted. I’d advise to join the course to any beginner to intermediate level composer. It’ll save them a lot headheaches and many, many months surfing the web and trying eventually to make sense of all the info, let alone having a working method to approach the business of sync. Anyway these are just my two cents.

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