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Rather than sending a physical CD, will libraries now accept a link via email to my available catalog on SoundCloud? Are libraries willing to review material this way? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I have my entire catalog up on SoundCloud, and it has worked very well in a couple new libraries finding me, or for them to listen to tracks to get an idea of what I do. Most, however,want you to submit tracks to them via their library to audition. I have had over 18,000 plays on SoundClound in the 3 years I have been on.
Everyone’s experience is a little different but I, as production music library focused, find that sites like SC and RN are simply places to host tracks and create links. I don’t depend on any of the “marketing” aspects of those sites. However, if a library asks for links to some sample tracks, I send links to tracks on a site like SC. I stopped using RN because I found the site to become more and more confusing and they made linking to a single song more confusing (IMHO). Also, their sound quality is poor.
Usually, if a library asks for samples as links, I will send 2-4 individual links to tracks so as to focus them on what I want them to hear. One thing about SC is you can’t change the order in which your tracks appear on your profile. So I prefer to link to individual tracks.
Personally, for folks like us, I think the promotional aspects are WAY overrated. JMHO
You can also create a set for that particular library and order the tracks in the set however you want. You can make it private and send them the link.
@TimV…. Yea, I gotta figure out how to do that. It would be so much easier if they just let you order the songs on your profile page! But overall I like SC. I’m just not big on the marketing and promotion thing for film/TV library composers. Reaching out directly to libraries and sups and using these sites as a tool to present the music makes sense to me. The rest, not so sure. YMMV
Soundcloud has been very useful to me as a tool to market my music to libraries. You will have to check on the website of a library/publisher to see if they will demos via link, or email/phone them to verify if their site is not clear. There are some libraries who insist on only receiving demos via CD but IME they tend to be in the minority now.
will libraries now accept a link via email to my available catalog on SoundCloud? Are libraries willing to review material this way?
At ML we now only accept soundcloud links as a form of reviewing new composer submissions. No more links to downloads or CDs or links to other music libraries. SC is great in my opinion.
I love my personal soundcloud page and use it for all kinds of promotion.
we get about 6000 plays a day, current total 1.4 million plays
here’s my latest dance track (learning how to use Maschine on this one)
here’s one my wife and I recorded together recently
@TimV
really great suggestion regarding creating a specific SC list for a specific library. Some composers will do that with me and I think it is really cool and on their end they can see when and how many tracks I’ve reviewed in their list.\\\-Mark
yikes, sorry about the players showing up like that Art. Just tried to post the links.
SC is even cooler than I thought 🙂No problem Mark.
I’m really behind the curve on SC. Time to get on the ball with this. Once again I’ve been “schooled” by MLR!
BTW what do most of you upload? MP3, wav, aif, bit rate?
Art, I upload 320k mp3s. And I make sure the master out is always set at -0.5db so there’s a bit of grace room for what the SC conversion will do.
Art, I upload WAV files, since the limitations are based on the length of music, not on file size. Somewhere in the help section they used to recommend leaving at least 3dB headroom to avoid problems some people had with sound quality. I checked recently and couldn’t find that, so maybe they’ve changed their trancoding process. However, I still do that just to be safe and I haven’t noticed any problems.
Thanks Rob and TimV, much appreciated.
As Mark said, that’s what I do when sending demos to libraries – a fresh list specifically for them each time. Other than that though I don’t use SC much!
I just joined Music Library Report this month and I have had two libraries sign my stuff already.
The first acceptance was an introduction with links to my SoundCloud page.
It works and they can view your entire catalogue to determine if you can produce quality music on demand.