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I already got my statement and payment from ASCAP, so unless your bank processes things slowly, it should already be there. I generally get the money on Saturday and the statement on Monday.
I’ve had music on BTN before (nearly a full minute of my track) and the royalties were very low. The program aired at least 10x and at MOST I received about 10 cents total. It’s one of the lesser-paying channels in my experience. But you never know when you’ll get caught in a survey, if you are with ASCAP. I have yet to have that luxury but hopefully someday!
Your best bet is to watch some reality TV shows… Film the credits with your phone, then pause it when they list the “music supplied by” section. Then you’ll see exactly what libraries supplied music for that show, and you’ll know exactly what genres are represented in the show.
I’ve found new libraries this way, and am still trying to get on an episode of “Impractical Jokers” haha. Mainly because I’m just a fan of the show.
I’m by no means receiving full-time income yet but I’m producing a lot of music these days. I started about 3 years ago and have roughly 330 exclusive tracks and probably just as many non-exclusive (but I don’t write NE music much anymore). The wait for royalties was very long (2-3 quarters in a row I got “snubbed” even though my music was within the range of that quarter’s payout). Now I’m consistently receiving ASCAP royalties almost every quarter (never publishing royalties yet though). The range is still low at my highest quarter being about $150-180 ish. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon because I’m enjoying creating music, and I now realize it will take many more years before I can earn a decent income (hopefully within 4-5 years but we shall see!). The whole Pond5, Getty images restructuring really hurt me and made me focus on exclusive stuff but I was getting monthly royalties greater than my current ASCAP averages. I hope to have a 4 figure payout at some point next year and that will really give me some hope for the future! Now that I’m writing several albums per month, I’m addicted to it so, if nothing else, I’m getting joy out of it and increasing my value and skillset as a musician.
I usually lay the foundation of a couple tracks per day, do rough mixes of them that same night, then over 1-2 more days gradually add instruments/tweak the mix until it feels right. I always prefer to do the “creative” stuff, aka writing, early in the day (while the creative juices are still fresh) and do the more technical stuff at night (mixing/midi editing etc). On a good week I finish 7-10 tracks.
Michelleq – “Can anyone recommend some great orchestral libraries”
I use a LOT of orchestral samples and mainly so far I have used “Albion One” which is great for “sections” of instruments but is very limited in terms of “solo” instruments (i.e. solo clarinet is not on there, or many other solo instruments).
My next purchase will be “Miroslav Philharmonik 2” which has EVERY solo instrument. So, with those 2 orchestral libraries I’ll feel pretty confident getting great sounding orchestral tracks… I also have the various libraries contained within “Kontakt Komplete 11 Ultimate” which has “session strings pro”, “orchestral” and a few others.
The difference between a “Bed” and “Narrative” version is basically that the “Bed” has less elements than the narrative. Generally a narrative track doesn’t have the melody. So if it is a song with vocals, the narrative version might just be the same thing with vocals muted. A Bed version might just have only the chord progression and bare bones – no excessive instrument fills, no solos, no counter melody etc.
I still have the free tunesat account and lately I’ve been doing all of the versions within 1 file. So: main, bed, narrative etc. all as part of the same file. Then if there is a detection I just listen for which version it was. Usually it is no problem to fit in 3-4 edits with tunesat’s allotted file size.
Think about average trailer durations:
15 sec, 30 sec, 60 sec, maybe include a “bed version” (fewer instruments/more sparse) and a maybe a Loop or 2. Basically everything you should do for normal tracks (if you don’t already create all these versions of tracks I highly recommend it!).A loop version is a usually a shortened version of the song that is “loopable”. So if you copied and pasted it several times back to back, it would seamlessly play over and over. It allows the client to use it no matter how long the scene is. In your DAW just highlight a segment of the track and make sure it sounds fine/smooth as it keeps repeating.