What to do when it’s not good enough for exclusive libs?

[jo86le]

Hi everyone,

I am relatively new to music licensing. What I have been doing, primarily, is composing full songs with vocals and pitching them to exclusives.

But sometimes song ideas end up being instrumentals, and I wouldn’t honestly consider them good enough to pitch to high-end libs.

So I am literally sitting on tracks because I do not know what to do with them. They’re still good, just not high-end.

What do you usually do with such instrumentals? A few years ago I’d say Pond5 etc, but is it still worth the time to upload there, seeing how oversaturated the market is?

I’d love to hear what other licencing newbies (and not only!) are doing – RF or non exclusives?

[RM90]

Why not improve the instrumentals until they are good enough for the big libraries? When I have tracks that aren’t accepted for briefs or whatever I usually just hang onto them until an appropriate use for them comes up. The RF market isn’t worth it for me anymore.

[jo86le]

Thanks for your reply, RM90. I think you may be right, I guess I am not patient enough, and I didn’t want to sit on tracks, but this is a long game so hanging on to the tracks and/or tweaking them for better opportunities sounds fair enough.

[Dreamcore]

I am extra new when it comes to libraries, but I usually ONLY make instrumentals (also a game composer). There are exclusive libs that take and even specialize in instrumentals. So there’s no reason you can’t tighten them up and post them there. But if you run into a vocalist and end up making that track into a vocal, it could be worth waiting if you truly feel that a vocal will improve the track.

[jo86le]

Thanks for your input, Dreamcore. I am a vocalist so that’s not a problem 🙂 But you gave me an idea, that tweaking some of the tracks and maybe adding some ethereal vox or something, could make them more interesting than I initially thought.

I started as an artist and only later put the producer/composer hat on, I think I subconsciously judge my instrumentals as rubbish just because I don’t think of myself as a producer first.

I’m definitely re-considering my approach, so thanks for that!

PS. Composing for games sounds like the best composing gig ever!

[Dreamcore]

Indeed! Everyone loves a good “Oo-oo-oo-wooo” style track. lol Plus vocals always bring a bit more life to it, even if it’s just vocal tones or sounds.

Being a game composer is interesting, but has its own challenges. I usually do more niche styles like electronic, jazz/funk fusion, and drum’n bass, not so much the sweeping orchestral scores or big cinematic hits and drones that most think of.

So when going into libraries, I usually find myself looking at more of the exclusive ones because game music mostly becomes cues when put into a static medium like film or TV.

Side note: Still looking for non-ex libs that are open to cues and such.

Other side note… did the forum change the way you make posts???

[Author]

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