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This is going back a while now so this might have changed, but I seem to recall a similar problem when I was trying to join – they told me I could still join by providing a scan of a voided cheque from my UK bank account.

Partly because I thought this was a bit of a weird and out-dated way of doing things and partly because I am disorganised and forgetful (!) I never joined.

If any other UK people reading this have had any joy with joining SoundExchange I’d love to hear about it (and please let me know if I’m completely incorrect regarding the above!)

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By the way, I wasn’t necessarily looking for personal advice here, just thought it would be an interesting conversation. I know quite a few musicians in a similar situation to me, in that they have a kind of ‘two-tiered’ approach to their music career.

On one hand they have music that they write purely for the purposes of making money (whether that be music written for libraries, session work, etc) and on the other hand, music which they maybe feel a little more emotionally precious about, which could be making them a bit of extra cash but isn’t because they (or one or more co-writers) feel a bit uncomfortable allowing it’s use to be completely unrestricted.

It seems this is quite common among musicians (at least among the musicians I know) and yet I haven’t really come across many conversations on this subject online before.. I know quite a few people who make perfectly ‘licensable’ music who are wary of sending it off to regular music libraries due to various ethical worries (jewish or muslim musicians who wouldn’t want their music used to advertise pork, for example).. or simply because they want to make sure any use of their music fits in with their band’s overall image / aesthetic.

(Incidentally, I’m not making any kind of value judgement about these two ‘tiers’ at all.. Personally I put just as much effort and love into my library music as I do for the band’s songs. But they’re definitely different from one another)

I’m babbling. I will shut up for a bit. 🙂

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In general, if you are looking to only pitch your music to situations whereby you know exactly what the usage is and have right of approval/refusal, the music library world is not for you.

Well I’m already very much in the music library world! Most of my solo instrumental music is with a handful of non-exclusives, and is all ‘pre-cleared’. I totally understand why most libraries operate like this. Makes perfect sense.

However, I’ve intentionally kept the co-written band music out of any of the libraries I usually work with (for reasons stated above).. It was only after stumbling across a library which does ask for approval that it occurred to me that there might be a way of offering some of the band’s music for sync too without potentially stepping on my co-writer’s toes as it were.

Since this seemed quite an unusual approach for a music library I just wondered if anyone had come across this anywhere else.

…whose name had a medical diagnostic procedure in it. My OWN, PERSONAL strong opinion is you should not work with this company.

I agree. I’ve dipped a toe into those kind of sites before and in my opinion they’re kind of exploitative.

Also, if you are a band you might want to take a look at Patreon.com

Looks interesting, cheers! 🙂

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Ah right.. I just logged into youtube and it looks like some of the music is being provided by one of the big popular music libraries listed here.

So maybe they’ve struck some deal with YT to use the music?

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Maybe it’s somehow hooked into the content ID system in a round-about way? Other than that, it doesn’t seem immediately obvious how one would get paid from this, unless as Desire says they’re paying composers up front (I doubt it though!)

To put a more positive spin on it .. maybe the availability of this music to Youtube users might mean fewer people going to RF libraries for cheap web-video licenses, which in turn might mean those libraries start to focus more on higher-paying placements instead?

… No? Too optimistic? 😛

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That is, unless they operate in a small scale niche market (maybe).

Yeah the one we found do indeed seem to be a fairly niche company specializing in longer film & video projects (where perhaps an instant download is less important) .. having said that, they do stress that it’s important that license requests are approved (or disapproved) within 24 hours, which is fair enough.

I can’t imagine any of the RF libraries being able to operate like this, but that’s not really a road we’re going down with the band stuff.

I just wondered if anyone else had ever noticed any other companies offering this sort of flexibility, niche or otherwise..

This is different than a library agreeing to keep your music out of venues like porn, violence, etc. When they send tracks to a client, they often know what type of work the client does and can weed out track that are restricted in those areas. (Even this can be challenging)

Indeed, and I’d also be interested to know of any other companies who offer this kind of option too…

There are no absolutes in anything, BTW.

I’ve long since given up relying on absolutes! 😛

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Very good point.. You might not care about making a full time living from your own music, and that’s fine.. but lowering your prices doesn’t just effect you, it has a knock-on effect on the industry as a whole.

Better to up your game as far as the quality of your music than to go after the lowest of the low.

+ten-bazillion!

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A race to the bottom is in no one’s interest.

Absolutely agree. If something has little perceived value it’s not likely to sell.

In answer to the original question.. My sales peaked a bit just before the Summer and have been really quiet since then.

Nothing to worry about I don’t think, sales tend to ebb and flow for me generally anyway.

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I shoved a track onto their free service out of curiousity…. to my ears it just sounded like someone had plopped a preset limiter and a bit of high eq over everything.

Frankly I can get better results myself and I’m rubbish at mastering!

The free version might be useful for beefing up rough “listening copies” of work in progress to send to collaborators, but definitely not for actual mastering work.

Interesting concept though… whether an algorithm can treat a piece of audio with the same subtly as human ears… personally, I don’t think it can.

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@woodsdenis

Wow, just seen this. Great video. From the way he describes it I bet it sounds lovely too. I’m a sucker for wobbly broken sounding drones 🙂

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..I should also add that the 4-track in question had most of it’s knobs ripped off and looked like someone had spilled coffee all over it!

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I’ve really enjoyed reading this thread! .. Great story, Jay.

On a related note: Last year a friend gave me an old 4-track cassette recorder he’d found in a bin. I didn’t have much use for it (I generally record on a laptop & Logic Pro) so I decided to sell the 4-track on Ebay.

I made a short two minute recording on it just to demonstrate the sound quality on the ebay page .. a couple of tracks of acoustic guitar and a couple of cello parts.

Anyway, I ended up submitting this piece to one of the libraries I work with and it’s just been licensed for use in a promotional video .. 🙂

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