Choosing Between A Few Great Tracks and A Lot Of Decent Tracks

[NathanW]

I’m not new to recording music, but besides submitting a couple tracks 2 years ago, I’m basically new to the music library industry (though I’ve read a lot about it).

Something I’m pondering right now is, I could spend a bunch of time recording say, 5 of my best tracks at the time, and be a perfectionist about the sound, or record maybe 8 or 10 decent songs with ok production quality.

I know if I were an artist, the answer would be to go for quality over quantity. However, when you consider how many more markets you can appeal to by going for quantity, coupled with the fact that alot of this is only going to be heard in the background, and that music supervisors probably keep this in mind, I’m not so sure.

But, I can also see how going for sheer quantity might be a lot more work when you consider creating edits, tagging, uploading, 16/24 bit versions and everything else.

What are your thoughts on this? Right now, I think I may be leaning towards making much fewer works just because of the work involved with each file after recording is finished. Also, better songs could tend to sell a lot more.

[Mark Petrie]

Quality definitely allows you to charge more per track, and potentially make more sales per track.

That said, one of the ways you can get discovered is to have lot of good tracks. It increases the odds of someone stumbling upon your music, and then looking through all the music you’ve given to that library.

 

At the highest end of the library business – licensing for big budget films and trailers, quality is a prerequisite. Just one amazing track (think the quality of ‘Two Steps From Hell’) getting licensed again and again for trailers could easily make you six figures a year. You’re competing with the best in the business there, so be patient about getting into that league.

Quantity on the other hand makes all the difference in the world for the performance royalties business, where just a handful of library tracks will barely make you anything. You really need to have 100’s of decent tracks out there to start thinking about quitting your day job with what you get from royalties checks.

[GaryW]

I have found in the royalty-free biz, it is a numbers game. The more tracks you have, the better chance you have of getting some decent sales. As my catalog has grown, so have my sales. Also selling  through multiple libraries.

With just a few track you are going to get lost in the shuffle.

[Andrew Potterton]

Write lots, write often. Do the best quality you can.

I’ve got much quicker at writing edits and various versions over time. It used to take me along time, and felt like a hurdle to get over.

Now, pretty much every tracks I write, the cut down versions and edits are fun to do and do not take too long.

I don’t think, “I’ll write some rubbish music today”, but I don’t analyse the process as much as a used to and just get busy writing.

 

Good luck with it all.

 

 

[axiomdreams]

I’ve been doin’ this for abt 4 years now. I think going for best quality is a good move & I find that with time, the more you do the faster you get. Hence, quantity increases too IMHO. Keep on doin’ it, it only gets better… All the best!

-AxD

[NathanW]

Thanks for all the responses, everyone, and sorry I didn’t comment till now.

It seems the answer is to make good quality recordings as fast as possible without being a perfectionist. I think it’s often that last 15% or so of the work on the song that takes up a large part of the production time, so cutting back on doing the fine tuning you otherwise would have done could save a good amount of time.

 

[Rob (Cruciform)]

I don’t have as much time as I would like to work on music so I’m trying to make it count more by continually pushing at quality aspects, especially in production. I envy those who can churn out great material in short time frames. Anyway, my single-minded focus is starting to pay off and that’s the only thing that matters whatever your decision.

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