Self Licensing via website for Royalty-free?

[soundslikejoe]

Has anyone here ever experimented with licensing direct via their website?   I have a store-front already setup to sell soundtracks and was considering creating a personalized music library to license directly.

Any thoughts on this or similar?

[Art Munson]

I’ve been working on my own site for the last few years and finally almost have it ready to go. My main challenge was to see how much I could do myself. I finally had to opt to get some programming help on a couple of features I just could not figure out.

Mark Petrie recently launched his site and hopefully he will weigh in.

[Mark_Petrie]

Bear in mind a lot of the work that a library owner does (and the money they spend) is in promoting the website. Having great music and a nice website is just the start – you have to show up in Google searches if you want to make any money. Search engine optimization is a huge job which never ends, as you constantly have to keep up with changes in the search engine algorithms (what worked great five years ago can get you penalized today), and you  should be promoting the site through social media daily.

[soundslikejoe]

That’s true…. but I think the goals you’re speaking of are different than what I had in mind.  I’m looking at it as an additional service for my local/regional market with some national/international spill-over.

I have several clients now who might benefit from having access to my larger catalog. Sometimes their budgets don’t allow for custom tracks, but they would license something. I was considering this to provide just one more option for them when they are searching for something. Since we already have a working relationship, I think they might check with my stock first before heading to the search engines.

With a web store front already in place, and the potential for random web traffic, it seems like having the option to license direct could be a benefit.  I could sell half as many tracks to make the same license fees. Granted, this wouldn’t lead to many national network placements or much back-end royalty.

[MichaelL]

I give TV producers, that already I work with, my catalog on a hard drive. Sometimes they call with a special request from my catalog, that may not be on the hard drive. which I send immediately via yousendit.(or something similar)

If you’re talking about non-broadcast local producers that you already work with, try to set up a “subscription” agreement. You could give them your catalog on a hard drive, or host it in a download situation.

[Zing Zing]

Hey, you could try YOULICENCE.com – I recently used it for a direct licence.  I paid to upgrade as it then doesn’t take a cut of the licensing cost, and allows you to upload loads of tracks.  I think the free version takes 10% and limits the number of tracks you can have. Anyway just a thought, sure there a more elegant options out there, but it works!

[soundslikejoe]

The concept of YOULICENSE.COM seems great but I’d like to host more than 50 tracks and $600 per year seems a bit pricey.  Granted the feature set and the ability to embed their licensing widget on my site is nice. I like this option though…. it would save a lot of time and produce a better user interface than what I’m capable of doing on my site.

[Mark Lewis]

Funny that this thread popped up today as I was just talking to my programmer about taking the musicloops.com architecture and separating it out into an installable white label music licensing platform that composers can upload to their servers, click a button to install (just like wordpress), enter your paypal email to accept payments and upload your music for licensing.
I am going to do this anyway because I need to start a few different licensing sites and though it might be a good thing to make the final product available to composers as well.
I did some extensive searches to find a ready made package like this and wasn’t able to find anything.

I was thinking a price point of $195 with future upgrades and plugins for special features, a variety of skins, etc.

Would you be interested in something that soundslikejoe if it was available?

[soundslikejoe]

I think this is a marketable tool that could have a customer base.  Obviously I am in the market for such a tool and would consider a purchase based on the features and cost.  My only problem with the YouLicense product is the price.  A monthly account with their pricing structure is too much IMO.  I think a one-time cost of $195 is reasonable with the right feature set;  Wordpress compatible, skin-able to match my site design, flexible licensing tools, etc.

Definitely interested! Please keep us updated. I’d love to be a customer for someone making useful and good product.

[Mark Lewis]

Great. Thanks for the feedback. That’s inspiring.
The package is basically built. Just need to make it slick and easily installable.
I will keep you posted on progress.

[Mark Lewis]

And yes. A flexible licensing tool. Since one size does not fit all.
Have to think about that one.

[Stuart Moore]

Hey soundslikejoe

I’m not sure where you got those figures for YouLicense.com from. I pay $29.95 every six months to upload as much as I like.

 

Stuart

[soundslikejoe]

If it helps at all…. What I consider flexible….

Something that can link variations of one track. Something that can provide variations of license type; 13-week radio (fixed price per track), 1yr of Regional TV  (fixed price per track) , Web  (fixed price per track), National/Exclusive buy-out (option without price which leads to quote form).  Hosting files locally through WordPress and my host-server.

These are just ideals but the more flexible it becomes, the more valuable it becomes to me.  Looking forward to whatever you come-up with. Thanks!

[MichaelL]

@ Mark, in addition to eventually working with ML/PIR, your package is something that I’d be interested in after we get settled in our new location, and start to roll out my catalog over the next 3 or 4 years. Please keep me posted.

All the best,

MichaelL

 

[Wildman]

Interesting topic. For me flexibility with the described hosting service would maybe mean that you can implement different artists or pseudos under one banner/account/label and the visuality of the page in the www is also very important.

[Author]

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