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Hi all,
Effective production music libraries don’t just start up for free. Besides making a profit, they need to recoup their costs. Is anyone here knowledgable and willing to share ballpark figures of what it would cost to start up and maintain an effective PM library? What about staffing, equipment…? This is something we should think about as content providers. Just like we have costs, etc. they do too.
The answer to that question varies. It depends on the business model. You could be an individual setting up your own online RF library, for which you are THE composer (modest expense for web design and hosting).
Or, you might be a group of people who pay nothing for music, re-title it, and try to get placements. (somewhat more expense for office space, phones, web, maybe staff)
Or .. you can operate like a traditional library and actually pay composers for their work, hire live musicians to perform and record the composers’ music, rent office space, hire a sales staff etc etc. (the music budget alone….ah fugeddaboudit)
Of course there is every variation in between. At any level it isn’t cheap to do it well.
Thanks MichaelL for posting that. I was going to say pretty much the same thing but you said it so much better!
I’m still working on my library site. It’s been a couple of years and I thought I could get away completely free. It will probably cost me about $1k as there were a couple of features I wanted that couldn’t be met by existing plugins. The good side of my taking so long is that I am learning more and the site will be much better for it.
Here’s an article I ran across at Audiosparx about what they do as a music library. Certainly worth reading when contemplating starting up one’s own library. http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/faq_article.cfm/kbarticle_iid.2064
I’m currently setting up my own one. http://www.AudioforApps.net
So far, having a custom built HTML platform has cost me around $5k. Its not complete yet either. I’d imagine to get a fairly functional site that looks nice, and have it marketed/SEO etc. will be around $10k
Don’t forget about legal fees, graphic design, setting up bank accounts, book keeping, registering the company / DBA. An e-commerce site selling downloadable files is more complicated than most web designers are used to – the expenses mount as they figure out solutions to issues that seem to pop up every day. Also, consider the time you’ll be spending on it that will take you away from your income producing work…
Yup absolutely agree. Its pretty much a full time job no matter how small the site is. Hosting can add a huge expense also depending on how its done. I looked into Amazon S3 hosting – its relatively cheap per GB, but getting it implemented to your website can be pretty expensive depending on the complexity of your site. I was quoted $1400 to implement it on my site. Accounting fees also mount up fairly quickly.
I think its the small things that all add up to a pretty hefty amount when you look at it from a distance
“I looked into Amazon S3 hosting – its relatively cheap per GB, but getting it implemented to your website can be pretty expensive”
Hmmm, not the case for me. I use Synhosting to host my site for about $100 per year and use S3 to store all the preview and master files. S3 didn’t cost anything to set up and they charge for traffic which is very reasonable. Just set up your buckets on S3 and call the links from your site. Works great!
[Edit] To clarify. I set up S3 myself and it’s a bit tricky but not that hard. E-mail me and I’ll try to help you.
Is that through wordpress Art? My problem is that I have composer accounts, which have to all have privaleges to upload to the bucket, then any customer who downloads its should have to download it from that bucket too. Apparently in php, thats fairly complex.
“Is that through wordpress Art? My problem is that I have composer accounts, which have to all have privaleges to upload to the bucket…”
Yes, I’m using WordPress but I use S3 only for my own songs. I could imagine with other composers it would get complex.
Site looks great, Emmett!!
Thanks lots left to do on it 🙂
“Thanks lots left to do on it”
There is no end. Every time I get something figured out something else breaks! LOL!
Ha very true Art. Its never ending alright!
Before any of you spend another dime, check out Source Audio. It’s just what you’re looking for.
Doug R. (library producer from the evil empire)
And, hi, MichaelL!
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