Comparing Companies that offer Music Library Websites for composers

[ScottMunsonMusic.com]

Hi Echoplex,
I hear you!
One idea I tossed about was having a main site that composers on my platform (ComposerSpace.com) could “push” tracks to with one click. (I have the domain “ComposersMusicDirect.com“)
One idea, in the main site, ComposersMusicDirect.com, was to just link the track back to the composers own site….not really ideal, but it eliminates massive accounting that I wouldn’t want to deal with. So…instead of the “buy” button adding the track to a cart, it would take the buyer to the tracks page on the composers own site. Like I said – not really ideal at all….the pitch to the clients would be – “we’re tired of getting ripped off by the middleman, buy direct from us!” But many probably don’t care, as you said. Of course you still have the filter issue – who decides who gets to push tracks to the main site?

[echoflex]

Hey Scott, sorry, I ended up writing a book…

From my experience with creating promos, branded content, commercials, etc… the producer, creative director, myself, whoever … will download a bunch of watermarked tracks from one site. If the ad agency has a relationship with a library, they go with that one. But many do not care where it comes from.

The watermarked tracks would generally come from the one site. If I clicked and was sent to another site to download or buy, I would abandon that library and move on. Maybe it’s possible to have watermarked tracks come from the main site and then the jump only happens at payment? That would be better but still unacceptable. Many projects I work on need multiple tracks. So imagine needing four tracks and you had to buy them at four different sites entering your payment info four times.

I just got an email from Audioo for lifetime membership for $199. I’ve checked out the music and there are plenty of tracks on there for an ad agency to get their money’s worth. WHY do composers allow their music on there has been debated on MLR quite a bit. I don’t get it. But, it’s super easy to deal with for sure. So the site needs to be easy and convenient.

What I would love to know is how hard it would be to create a site that is largely automated. I have no idea if this is possible since I’m just savvy enough to run a square space page.

* Each composer has their own login to manage their music, enter their payment info, answer questions from potential clients, etc…
* If a client searched for happy corporate music, it would pull up music from all composer’s tracks with those tags.
* Watermarked tracks could be downloaded easily with one click.
* All tracks would cost the exact same amount that would be agreed upon.
* A client chooses 3 tracks from 3 different composers, loads them in the cart, pays for all 3 as a single payment, and that payment is automatically split in 3 and deposited into each composers account.

Issues I can think of off the top of my head:

* Can payments be split out to multiple accounts. I have no idea if that is possible.
* Client had tracks from multiple composers and they wanted to know if they could get custom work done. The email would go to multiple composers and the client would get multiple answers and be annoyed/frustrated. This is not a big deal probably but….
* The small number of tracks would be a BIG turnoff for many clients. We all know how many tracks libraries have. Obviously the more composers, the more tracks, but also more management and then the automation part might not be feasible.
* Tagging. What if a composer is over tagging and causing their dark tension tracks to show up in happy corporate searches? Who is dealing with that? Maybe just limit tags to a small enough number that it would be impossible?

I could go on. My thumbs hurt…

[ScottMunsonMusic.com]

Hi Echoflex,
Yeah – for sure, like I said not a good solution. It would be easy enough to have an “add to cart” button instead of a link to the composers site, and one checkout flow with multiple tracks from multiple composers in the cart – I just mentioned the first way because I didn’t want to have to deal with the accounting. The payment has to go to one account initially, and later split out….the automatic split out part may be expensive to set-up.
Other then the automatic split out the first bullet points you mentioned are not that difficult to set up.

[angopop]

Many of these companies seem good, but the one that seems to offer what I’m looking for most is this one called Stock Music Templates, they’ve been around since 2003.

http://stockmusictemplate.com/

Anyone know anything about them or have any experience with them?

Thanks,
A

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