Undercutting???

[More Advice]

Chuck, I am advising everyone, and their mother, including actual rf libraries to charge at least $100 a track. I don’t care if it’s a 90 piece orchestra or 1 guitar chord being strummed. My advice is to charge at least $100 a track. It is working for me. I only deal with sites where I set the price of my works. Stop supporting the lame RF sites like AJ and AM…I can’t name these sites… it is not in anyone’s interest to make a $6 sale once a week…or even 5 times a week. The only people winning in those scenarios are the site owners themselves. They bank on everyone’s hard work while individual composers make chump change. Don’t support the lower tiered, bottom feeders.

[Tom]

More Advice,

I am interested in your thoughts – can you give a ballpark range for what you are making by raising your prices? How many tracks and how many libraries. It is really hard to make intelligent decisions without hard data. Are you selling 5 tracks a month at $80 and raised your rates to $100 or are you selling 200 tracks a month.

Thanks

[Wildman]

I also would like to know some numbers here. I am just curious. We all know the libraries where you can set the prices yourself. I hardly sell a cue at these middle price libraries for 50-100 USD, maybe once a month or even less. Even though my cues are of good quality. But I sell regularly where you can get my cues for 17 USD. We all know this library. I am in a dilemma and I hate it myself !
Of course I also want that my RF cues should get sold for 100 USD. I even could delete my cues from these low end libraries but I would simply sell less !
Name me a worldwide acting library where you guys sell good with the 100 USD price structure. I am the first to change and try it 🙂

[Desire_Inspires]

From visiting a great number of royalty free sites, I honestly do not see the potential for composers to make more than a few hundred bucks a month. Even with superior quality, a composer is going up against a large catalog of music. In addition, most of the prices at these sites is way below $100 a cue.

Besides the one guy that sells $20,000 at AS, I have not heard of anyone report on this site that they are doing well from royalty free music libraries. RF libraries seem to be more of a supplemental source of income.

Is it worth it to add less than 500 tracks to a library with over 100,000 tracks? Is it worth it to compete for prices that range between $2 and $50 for most sites? I do not mean to put down all RF sites. But from the news reported here at MLR, I have not seen very many success stories. I definitely want someone to prove me wrong!

Anybody?!?

[More Advice]

I can see the trap you are in Wildman. You up-loaded your cues and are selling them for $17 and don’t want to rock the boat. What defines “regularly”? 10 a month? 20 a month?
These places tend to be “sticky” because you do the work, up-load, and that’s that…the money starts to trickle in.

I dove into RF land based on Colleague reco’s back in Dec 12. I quickly learned where my stuff sold. I was dealing 18 to 20 tracks a month at $40, but that began to taper after 2 months and leveled off in months 3 and 4 at perhaps 8 to 12. So I raised my prices to $100 and am still selling 8 to 12.

I can see why it’s hard to jump ship when the up-load work is already done, the tracks are in place and generating dribs and drabs of money at $17…I wrote to AM and said please delete my entire profile and all my tracks. I simply refuse to sell myself short. Plus I made maybe $125 after 6 months. I absolutely refuse to help enrich these site owners while they grab 65% and control the pricing of my intellectual property.

It’s a principled issue for me and the entire industry. Going back to the Airline analogy, they basically say to all of us “Pay 450 to $500 for a 3 hour flight or don’t fly at all.” They had to do this to earn a profit. Get it out of your minds about “I’m a newbie so maybe my stuff is only worth $10 a track” and “I have to get my footing first.”

$10 $17…even $20 is just a road to nowhere in my opinion and only serves to stick a few bucks in your pocket each month. For me, it was humiliating to get a Paypal transfer of $58 from AM…So I simply resigned the account. They tried to convince me to hang in there by saying “All you have to do is change the keys of your tracks and go exclusive with us then you’ll make 50% of every sale instead of 35%”…Forget it, I simply am not interested in $58 a month and participating in the race to the bottom. Plus the “change in policy” from 50% to 35% commissions also was the nail in the coffin.

Guys, My argument has been conveyed and I feel like I am sounding like a broken record. I raised my prices and I am making more money. That’s the bottom line!

[MichaelL]

Hmmm….now this is where the rubber meets the road. It will be interesting to see if you get a response.

But I sell regularly where you can get my cues for 17 USD. We all know this library. I am in a dilemma and I hate it myself !

Here’s the the rub Wildman. I’ve scoped out some of the $17 libraries v. the “middle” libraries. I noticed that some artists regularly sell individual cues more than 200 times. So, their net is about $1,700. That’s $700 above what our music should “ideally” be worth, according to the argument.

On the other hand, if the same cue only sells a few times in the “middle” range you’ll only make a few hundred dollars.

So, if you made $1,700 from a single cue, why would you hate yourself?

BTW… the cues that I saw, which sold 200 times or more, were not involved productions, just solo, or a few, instruments. Couldn’t have taken more than a day, maybe half a day to do. That’s about $200 to $400 per hour. Not too shabby, and far from a “race to the bottom.”

It’s all about revenue streams and doing things that you can build on.
And, if the argument is about “what is our time worth?”…I’ll take $200 to $400 per hour any day. And, even if you spent 4 days on a cue, that would still be $50 to $100 per hour. Nice work if you can get it. 😀

It’s almost tempting to spend 100 days doing 100 simple cues, just to see what would happen.

[Jay]

I am advising everyone, and their mother, including actual rf libraries to charge at least $100 a track.

I did it this past summer..sold some stings/bumps at new higher prices ($60-$75) but not a full track at $100 yet..I only sell so so at RF sites and I really believe this will pay off..will I lose a sale here and there ? possibly…will a sale or two at higher prices make up for that and then put more $ in my pocket ? I think definitely 🙂

I set my SFX at a ridiculous price compared to others months ago and I’m selling better than ever…I think the higher price draws attention and even gives a higher perceived sense of value…whatever the reason I see this working with SFX and a little so far with my music but it’s early in that game…I think if someone really wants the piece (whatever it may be) a higher price won’t deter them…Jay

[More Advice]

DI, did you ever think that reason why no one is reporting success is because the prices are too low? I feel like you are trying to suppress my arguments, but you do not have a valid counter argument yourself other than “Is it worth it to compete for prices that range between $2 and $50 for most sites?

Did I not answer that question dozens of times already? Yes it is worth it because I am making more money than before at $40!

I feel like I am successful in RF land otherwise, I would not be participating. And why would you say ” I honestly do not see the potential for composers to make more than a few hundred bucks a month.” Hmmm…aren’t we all interested in making a few hundred extra bucks a month??

DI, why would you not want prices to go up? and if you are not interested in RF, why are you participating in the discussion?
DI, this is not a debate class where we’re in a contest to win the debate. MLR exists to exchange ideas on how to make more money with music Libraries and share info about experiences with different companies.

[Jay]

It’s almost tempting to spend 100 days doing 100 simple cues, just to see what would happen.

I spent a month doing this this past summer Michael…1 guitar and some effects can create some interesting ambient pieces…I’ll post if any of it sells in the future..you never know what you’ll have success with…Jay

[More Advice]

Michael L, Are you really selling 1 cue 200 times a month at $17?…or are you speaking in hypotheticals…”if I sell”??

Can we keep the discussion to hard facts of what we all actually are earning a month a various price points…

[MichaelL]

@More Advice, the airline industry analogy doesn’t work, because it has no competition. You can’t take a train from New York to London, and most people don’t have the time to take a train or bus from NY to LA. So people have no choice, but to pay the price if they want to fly.

Unlike the airlines, there is an abundance of competition and choices when it comes to music. I don’t worry about micro sites. There are far worse options…composers/companies that sell CDs containing 200 cues for $200, maybe less. There are annual subscription services that sell unlimited cues for $200. I know of businesses and ad agencies that buy these products!

Plus, the industry is having a hard enough time getting composers to stop stealing from each other, let alone getting them to not compete on price.

[MichaelL]

Michael L, Are you really selling 1 cue 200 times a month at $17?…or are you speaking in hypotheticals…”if I sell”??

Not me. I’m not on those sites. I followed one artist’s link to AJ, and yes HE is selling cues in excess of 200 times.

[More Advice]

Can you link us all to that cue? Art…would this be OK…I am extremely interested in hearing the cue generating 200 sales a month at $17. Yes…

[MichaelL]

Besides the one guy that sells $20,000 at AS,I have not heard of anyone report on this site that they are doing well from royalty free music libraries. RF libraries seem to be more of a supplemental source of income.

1) I’ve had this discussion with library owners, and if you have 1500 cues it is possible to make a $2,000 per month from a single RF library. But…your music has to be functional, the kind of thing that sells well.

2)There are far more successful composers who well on RF sites that do not post here than do.

3) There is an entire universe of professional production music composers outside the sphere of what goes on here.
So, just because you don’t see something here, doesn’t mean it doesn’t
exist.

[MichaelL]

I’ll send you a PM.

Never mind here’s an interesting post. See specifically what “Greg”
has to say.

http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32905

And BTW “Greg” is what I would consider a pro, with actual composing chops.

[Author]

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