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Films are expensive to make. In terms of time, manpower, money, etc..
Getting your music into a film by “giving it away” is not a solid or workable plan. IME, it’s more difficult to get it in by giving it away than it is by doing your due diligence and developing a relationship and charging a reasonable fee for your music. Film makers want to associate with gifted pros who can take their projects to a higher level, not with amatures who will do anything to get a placement.
How you present yourself (first impressions and all) will set the tone of your future relationship.
Now, you can get someone to take your music for free easily. But for them to sync it to picture and keep it in the film all the way through post production is a different story. Even great music from gifted professionals that was licensed legitimately finds it’s way to the cutting room floor often.
Getting someone to take your music for free isn’t much better than your mom telling you you’re awesome. Finding a film collaborator that you can bend and make deals with is success.
It always blows my mind that people think that giving something away is a plan for future success. Only in the music business I guess.
Best of luck with your dreams and plans. My $0.02.
Getting someone to take your music for free isn’t much better than your mom telling you you’re awesome. Finding a film collaborator that you can bend and make deals with is success.
Great advice from LAwriter, Michael Nickolas and others here. Giving your music away is highly overrated!
Good point guys!
Here in New York, you would think it is the pinnacle of live music.
Years ago, I would play gigs with my Straight Ahead quartet at bars, clubs, etc and get a nice chunk of change.
It started to become very popular for some newer talent to post Craigslist ads to play shows for 100 bucks or even free to get “Exposure”.
What basically happened is that these guys set the bar for what a band should get paid.
Now, my band comprised of Juillard and Berklee graduates with over 100 years of combined experience, is worth 100 or so bucks for 4 hours.
Write 1000 high quality film/ tv/ advertising cues and render off stems for all 1000 (Probably 5000 audio files) Make sure they all sound great and can be used for today’s TV shows, films, and commercials or corporate videos. Then you should be making a livable wage. This is not sarcasm, nor discouragement. This is what it takes to make a decent living in this business. Oh, I forgot, Be ready to enter a ton of metadata onto spreadhseets and music licensing sites and upload constantly to companies who open the door for you and your music (Not all of them do!)
Then, in decade 2 of your career, repeat the above and march to 2000 cues produced. Then 3000.
Music1234 – I used to be right in line with your numbers, and even today I’d love to agree with you, but I think you’d better up that number to 1500. A single guy might be able to make it on 1000 now, but the target has risen IMO. 1500 should be enough to live on modestly for a couple. Add kids and…… 🙂 maybe 2k??? Oh, want to live in San Francisco…. LOL
1500 should be enough to live on modestly for a couple.
Thanks God for my Social Security! 🙂
Hi!
I have one suggestion as you’re moving forward: NEVER provide your music for free, with one rare exception — for a cause near and dear to your heart (that documentary on endangered polar bears or whatever). Even if you charge a new indie filmmaker a mere $25 per cue, or compose their score for $250, they need to get into the habit of paying for music. If they can pay the caterers — or McDonald’s to feed the crew, they need to show some respect for those who create the music.
Lot of respectable advices there and again each one of us has been doing a different journey to reach the way to step into this business, but one thing for sure, it’s a marathon not a race. It’s a road full of trial and error, tons of no and rejections, you gotta keep strong, patience and keep working, trusting your work and keep producing. You’ll improve the quality of your works day by day and constantly learn very small things day by day and you’ll feel inside and slowly discover what’s working better for you. Constance is the key, definitely. Again, take me easy, it’s just my humble two cents.
1000 tracks or 1500 tracks is quite a lot.
With around 500 tracks in 12 years, i’ve managed to get -to my european standard – rich.
If you think 1500 tracks is enough to live “modestly” , imo you either arrived too late in the business or you write average tracks or you work for bad / average music libraries.If I can be ”rich” (>150k USD pear year) with only 500 tracks, then it’s reasonable to think that 1500 tracks to live “modestly” (for me it’s around 30-40K USD ) is a bad signal.
IMO, the strategy of quantity in today’s world of library / production music isnt the right strategy.
You have to establish a close relationship with a great music library. The advantage to that will be that the library will have a tendeny to sync more your tracks, because they will know you because of the relationship i’m talking about.
Of course your music has to be awesome to establish a great relationship with a great production music library…Not easy in 2021. I think it will get even more difficult to live properly on library music, be prepared guys…
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