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My year was average. Sync, back-end and RF sales make about 1/3rd of my income also. Work for hire songwriting projects in the educational field is a big part of the the rest of it. A smaller part is made up of an occasional gig, article writing for Recording Magazine, and some work for clients in my studio. Our expenses are low here so in addition to the wife’s income I luckily don’t need anything else.
I’ve also recently uploaded a large amount of cut-downs to P5 and others. 15, 30, 60, loop and stings for many of my existing tracks.
Back end and RF numbers were increased this year,sync fees were almost the same.
I’m in the low 5 digits still but better than last year.
3/4 of my income comes from music now.
Some new,promising connections with exclusive libraries were made in the 2nd half of 2016 so,i hope 2017 will be fruitful.
My earnings from music alone more than pays the bills here (Athens,Greece) but in other cities (London,Berlin,etc) it would barely pay the bills (no party!) and in some other countries (Denmark,Sweden) it would barely pay just the rent!Hope everyone here has a great 2017!
Very productive year. At the start of 2016 I had a catalog of 97 cues. As of today 152 & counting. I hit my goal of creating 50 new cues for the year. Total earnings between PRO & RF just short of 4 figures. Nothing I can Iive off of but a passive income stream I hope to continue to grow. Placement activity has compounded each quarter according to Tunesat which has been highly motivating and helpful when deciding which libraries to focus on. hopefully will translate into a more lucrative 2017. Thankful for the information and connections made here on MLR which have made much of this possible.
I’m supporting my entire lifestyle, home, studio, family, and other habits, etc. on royalties of one form or another.
Back end is OK, but stagnant – they are not growing as they should be. Probably due to the switchover to streaming. Front end royalties are growing steadily.
My only hope is that when back end royalties tank from streaming concerns that front end will make up a good portion of it. I’m not sure that will ever happen though.
-LAWriter-
This was the year of Exclusives.
Nice Tunesat detections for the Rio Olympics, NFL and NBC Versus shows.
A few P5 sales but don’t no if they were placed anywhere. Still awaiting my BMI statement.
I live in New York. It is so hard to live here, I could probably score the next Batman film and not pay off my property taxes 🙂
I have a question for 56 Strat and Art in response to Alt edits: when you say 30 s edit, does that mean you have a clean ring out at 30 seconds? or do you just chop it at 30 seconds? Wondering what your process is like! Thanks!
Hi glengomezmead. Yes, I have a ring out at the end with it fading out by the 30 second mark. For hard endings I always have at least a reverb tail. As a side note, I always try to have my edits sound like a complete sounding composition within itself.
Hi glengomezmead,
I’ve been told two different ways by people who have more experience than I.
Last note at 28.5 – 29 and ring out to exactly 30.
Last note no later than 29.5 and ring out past 30 so editor control the out.
I’ve licensed cues using both methods.
A Lib I work with that requires multiple cuts for a track, states that even a reverb tail can end at exactly 30.
Ohh. Just read Art’s post. Basically the same info.
BTW guys I have been told that Sound Forge is an excellent program to help with cuts due to being able to highlight Wav sections and estimate timing. Sort of thinking ahead.
Maybe if I get a decent BMI check I will check it out 🙂
how do you PM people on this site? hey Daniel do you have a soundcloud page where we could hear your sports cues that got placements? if you want to take this offline we can do that.
I’ve been told two different ways by people who have more experience than I.
Last note at 28.5 – 29 and ring out to exactly 30.
Last note no later than 29.5 and ring out past 30 so editor control the out.
I’ve licensed cues using both methods.
Some countries require shorter lengths, a 30 sec commercial is in fact 29 sec of sound etc so they cover all eventualities. As for edit timings most DAWS allow you to do this. I can only reference ProTools and Cubase for this but most DAWs do this.
Use the Ruler track and set it to seconds or SMPTE and then set the timecode offset to start at 00.00.00.00 at the start of your track. Usually done by setting the playback cursor at the required position and changing the SMPTE time to start there. You will then see exactly how long 30/29/28.5 secs is in your song timeline.
2016 Was my best year to date. I finally hit a place financially where I’m genuinely comfortable calling this a career… My backend went through the roof and I landed music in many hundreds of episodes of various shows. (I’m guessing somewhere near 1000 unique episodes spanning 50-75 shows. I haven’t tallied yet, but should be in that ball park…)
I had a nightmare film project that went south which is in the midst of legal action, but all should work out in my favor and I should come out driving the ship once all is said and done with that… (Special thanks to Art for helping me with some technical issues posting at the time… and thanks to the folks that weighed in with positive words and wise advice.)
On an unexpected note I wound up converting the second story of my loft into a production studio, and somewhat feasible mastering room. (I did the “room in a room” thing and spent 3 months building all the acoustic treatment). It was grueling to put it mildly, but a few folks with some pretty great rooms have said it’s one of the nicest home studios they’ve seen which meant a lot. It’s the crowning jewel of 2016 for me… May launch a site offering reasonably priced mastering this year, but have to think about whether that’s really a road I want to go down…
Either way the studio made up for the film experience and the year ended off with me being offered another short to score. (Not the same folks!) Although it’s a small budget it’s something I’m looking forward to since the score they want is off the beaten path for me, and I’ll be doing music in the vain of a few favorite artists that I’ve never had the opportunity to work in the style of outside of some personal pieces…
Oh yeah! I also had the pleasure of testing Neutron for Izotope and had a chance to drop by their office and meet some of the programmers… That was just plain fun and what a bunch of great people!
Hope everyone has had a fantastic year, and even if still climbing your way uo, you’re closing 2016 feeling like you’re on your way to great things… To a fantastic new year regardless of however things may look for some… Just keep pushing forward!
Happy New Year everyone!
2016 was a pretty good year for me. My overall composing income was up 33% from 2015. My income covered my mortgage and car payments for the year. I guess I can say I’m a professional composer now. Nah, better not jinx it
My 2015 to 2016 breakdown is as follows
-PRO income was almost identical (a big disappointment)
-P5 income increased by 68%
-Big sync fees from JP & Crucial up by 79% (these accounted for about 25% of my income)
-The other Non-Ex sites were mostly up, a few were down though.I expect to make less in 2017 because a big chunk of my growth came from 5 large sync fees. Those are pretty rare for me. I was able to get nine tracks accepted into Crucial in 2016, so maybe my odds for another big placement or two are a little better.
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