Making my dream come true

[Michael Nickolas]

At the moment I am also looking for indie filmmakers to include my music for free

Giving away music for free is not going to jump start your career. You are basically saying your hard work has no value. And once the bar is set to free, these filmmakers will always expect your music to be free. When it isn’t, they’ll just move on to the next guy giving away music. Don’t start out this way.

[Kallin]

Giving away music for free is not going to jump start your career.

I wrote “for the love of the art”, where did you get jump starting my career from?

[Michael Nickolas]

I wrote “for the love of the art”, where did you get jump starting my career from?

From your original post:
“Dreaming of one day working 100% with music so now I’m doing my research.”
“Haven’t sold any of my songs, but we all have to start somewhere!”

[Kallin]

At the moment I am also looking for indie filmmakers to include my music for free, just for the love of the art.

Much easier if you just would have read the complete sentence, maybe?

[Michael Nickolas]

Yes, it does seem like it would have been much easier. Please ignore my post/advice.

[Kallin]

No worries! The advice itself was actually good and something I’ve considered before. However, still haven’t even been able to GIVE music away so I am aware that I have a long way to go. 🙂

[LAwriter]

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.

[Art Munson]

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!

[NY Composer]

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.

[Music1234]

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.

[Author]

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