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if that was aimed at me Michael i’ve hardly done that..i’m recording new material as I type this and write in 5 styles..my gripe is i’ve done everything they tell you to do there (and my stuff sells other places)
Nah…not aimed at you Jay. Without hearing your tracks, it sounds like you’re doing everything right. I think this phrase “and my stuff sells other places” holds a bit of a key, which I alluded to.
Selling well elsewhere and not so much at AS, is something I’ve heard from a number of writers. IMHO there are several possibilities.
1) Size of catalog: We’re all a needle in a haystack,
2) Price point competition: A buyer has multiple choices: song “A” for $109.95 in one library or song “A” in several other libraries for $39.95. where are they going to go? Plus, you have to factor in the arrival of Musicult and gratis licenses. There has to be a certain percentage of previously paying customers, however small, who are now receiving gratis licenses. I’m guessing that the thinking is that this effect will be offset by new MC customers who do pay. Time will tell on the one.
I’m not going to argue with AS pricing policies but, in the retail world mega stores, like Walmart, tend to offer lower prices than boutiques. With 500K tracks, AS is definitely in the megastore category.
A few years ago AS top artists had catalogs of about 300 tracks. Now it seems you need 900 tracks to get there. I think that it will take more tracks a year from now to do well than it does today. Another change in the landscape.
One of the first posts of Mark Petrie’s (when he was “Matt) that I remember reading, was that he determined AS was not worth the effort. Many feel that way. I’m sure that you’ll hear differently from Denis Woods or Erwin (50 styles). As Art says YMMV.
The jury is out for me, because I’ve only uploaded a few tracks. It’s way too soon to tell. But….different buyers have found the same obscure track twice, which tells me the system works. That’s all I need to know… for now.
Cheers
_Michael
I would suggest that anyone having difficulty with sales at AudioSparx, or a drop in sales / plays, go into their Knowledge Base and track what genres are selling well.
It could be that your genres just sell better in other libraries. If you’re in a top selling genre then compare your tracks to the top sellers, and compare your metadata to the top sellers.
The AS Knowledge Base is a great resource.
_MIchael
It could be that your genres just sell better in other libraries.
That’s true for one of the libraries I’m in but for a couple of others the genres that sell are all overIn other words, there’s no magic bullet and no secret formula. The libraries have different models, different clients.
With AS, I think the needle-in-a-haysrack factor is one issue. The other big issue is merely being another face in the crowd. If someone searches for hip hop “Jingle Bells” and 50 hip hop versions of Jingle Bells pop up, what can you do? What are the chances that the buyer is going to listen to more than a few versions before picking one?Arguably, that’s what PPC is for (their argument). But, there’s an old saying in the advertising world…”Advertising works half of the time. We just don’t know which half.” My guess is that PPC, like all advertising, will work for some writers, some of the time. So, what’s new?
Maybe MusicCult will be different, for some, because the crowd is a bit smaller. As with everything else, time will tell.
_Michael]
Even though PPC was taken away, my plays have now started to increase once again, in fact very regularly. No sales for 3 months so far but my hope is that with MusicCult, there’ll be several broadcast placements. I guess with unpredictable changes like these, I need to start looking at the game differently. My backend payments have been increasing rapidly with other libraries and hopefully with these gratis deals on MC, it could boost em even more. So, maybe there’ll be way less upfront but more backends to come for 2013. Well, we’ll see.
AxD
Yes #tag, that is absolutely right 🙂
The market is already flooded by low quality music. Sometimes I think everyone who now has a keyboard and computer wants to sell his tracks. That is
not good for the market and not good for us.I don’t see why everybody is so up in arms over the “quality” of songs. Any great song can be topped by another. Sometimes quality isn’t what a client is looking for. I always hear songs on TV and commercials that are not hit songs. But they work for the videos in which they are used.
If an artist cannot get his songs in DeWolfe, Extreme, Megatrax, etc, should the artists just quit? No. MichaelL made a statement about the different tiers within the music library world. If an artist doesn’t have a good fit with one company, he can go to another.
All of the talk about quality sounds a bit pompous anyway. There are many songs on AudioSparx that do not get used. Does the fact that a song doesn’t get used make it a bad song? If that same song gets used by another company, is it automatically good? How does knocking another person’s work make you to be a better composer?
I sense a bit of hostility towards AudioSparx and that isn’t called for. They are just one business out of many that composers can use. Publicly trashing a company is unprofessional and unfair. Why not just call up the company and talk directly to them? They have the answers.
Thanks Anonymous,
Our clients love all kinds of music, and here is a sweet little buyout from yesterday:
http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/archive/Dramatic/Whimsical-Music/Toy-Piano/478925We try to help everyone get sales, but never know from day to day what our clients need for their productions. While our top sellers are Dramatic, World, and Corporate music, sales occur at AudioSparx each day in a wide variety of genres, so you can always enhance your chance for sales in this business by stretching your creativity and trying something new and exciting…
Cheers and Happy New Year to Everyone!
BarbieI’m pretty confident that AudioSparx knows what’s best for their clients. Instead of blaming them or their system, why not ask yourselves how you can improve your own game/strategy?
PPC worked for me before with a 350% ROI and becos of that, I’m willing to continue paying for it. Even without PPC now, I’m still getting constant traffic and plays. I can’t figure out why I’ve had no sales for the whole of this quarter but I believe that things will start to get better. Even if does not, I’m already preparing for plan b and c.
This game changes all the time, we just gotta learn to adapt IMHO.
Oh, Happy New Year Barbie! 😉
All of the talk about quality sounds a bit pompous anyway.
Anonymous, you are 100% correct, it’s very pompous. Sometimes ego makes up for lack of other things. Too often the discussion here devolves into a schoolyard shouting match of “my library is better than your library.”
If you want to hear some very good music on AudioSparx, search Jason Bradley Livesay, and David Gosnell. Very very good, accomplished and professional, composers like Jason and David are comfortable putting their music on AudioSparx AND they don’t engage in petty and, to a degree, irrelevant comparisons of libraries that represent different tiers and business models.
Likewise one can search DeWolfe http://www.dewolfemusic.co.uk/musicsearch, and depending upon your perspective as a composer, you can find some fairly mediocre material, as well. Particularly, if you search electronica or rock tracks, there’s not much, if anything, that separates DeWolfe from AudioSparx.
The problem with #tag’s analysis is that he/she assumes AudioSparx and DeWolfe serve the same clientele. AudioSparx clients aren’t just looking for music, they are looking for music with a perpetual license. They aren’t going to run to DeWolfe because it’s “such a pleasure to listen to their catalog.” Likewise, the editor, whose employer is paying a hefty annual blanket fee to DeWolfe, isn’t likely to buy music from AudioSparx.
Sometimes quality isn’t what a client is looking for. I always hear songs on TV and commercials that are not hit songs. But they work for the videos in which they are used.
Again anonymous, you are correct. Quality is in the “ear” of the listener. It is what meets the clients needs and works in their project, not some abstract intellectual principle of artistic standards.
My big question for #tag is, what do you mean by quality? ….harmonic structure, melodic interest, high-end sounds, live players? Classical music vs. hip hop? For some people “quality hip hop” is an oxymoron. For others, the opposite is true.
One thing that I’ve learned during 30+ years in this business, is to never second guess an editor/producer/director. I’ve seen “poor quality” music get used more often then not, when it serves the purpose. I’ve seen musical choices that made absolutely no sense. I heard one cue from DeWolfe in which the performance so shockingly sloppy my jaw dropped. I sent it to a session player friend, whose reaction was utter disbelief, yet the editor put it in the show!
You have to look at the big picture when it comes to this business. Different tiers. Different clients. Sometimes, different definitions of what quality means. Trashing others’ work isn’t a good practice.
Happy New Year to All,
_Michael
Yeah, it`s in fact that simple. The ones who don`t agree with PPC also don`t need to work with AS. There are different opinions about this topic and that is not a bad thing.
I personally tend not to like such systems because it`s not valuing the/my music. Of course the library bizz is primary a bizz like any other but we are musicians and we are slightly different.
And there`s a big difference between good made “easy”, simple and effective music and bad made simple production music. I didn`t talk about artist who might not get their music into Extreme or Universal. I talked about hobby dudes who flood the market with trashy music 🙂 Don`t get me wrong. I have nothing against those people but I also wouldn`t sell self construced board games just because I made some in school.
@Wildman..one of the things coaches teach competitive runners is to not look back at the other runners, but to keep focused on the finish line.
There’s a very “Big Blue Ocean” out there . I wouldn’t worry too much about the “hobby dudes,” making “trashy” music, anymore than General Motors worries about every kid who builds a go-kart in his basement.
Sharpen your skills and invest as much as you can in quality equipment and software. I don’t spend a second thinking about the “hobby dudes.” It’s composers who are better, and more successful, than me that I focus on.
With respect to PPC, it may or may not be something that benefits my business. As the “CEO” of my business, I will decide where its money should be invested. If buying another high-end sample library, adding more processing software, or hiring live players,will do more to improve my work and to give me a competitive edge, that’s where my money will go.
_Michael
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