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There’s usually a sync fee for TV spots, even for HBO. If not, the library involved is really low balling and hurting the business at large.
Royalties are a bit tricky with trailers / TV spots. They have to be treated the same as advertising, which involves submitting paperwork to the PROs.
If it’s on HBO on any other premium cable channel, the royalties probably won’t be worth the effort – the rates there are ridiculously low.
On the other hand, promos on network TV (like music behind “coming up tonight on Jimmy Kimmel”) pay out great royalties. Those are definitely worth chasing up on.
Are you using the very latest Kontakt? It messed up a lot of libraries. Each library will need an update. Most companies are recommending not to update Kontakt – some of them have workarounds.
The opening is great. A nice mood is set.
I’d recommend making your 2nd act gradually more energized. Then consider a pause to riser / swell into your big 3rd act. The 3rd act and climax needs to be much bigger and should fully realize your original ideas from the beginning. Fully realizing your opening ideas is useful for trailer editors who might want to cut straight from the beginning to the end (and then maybe back to the opening material for the end of the trailer), and also is more satisfying to listen to for your fans.
You need a massive ending, even for a drama track. Think as big as you can get, then go even bigger at the end… this the standard feedback we get in the trailer world : )
Promo money is great on network, but I imagine Nick Jr is much much lower. Fingers crossed it shows up on a survey, might a nice 4 figure bump. But some channels are literally surveyed just twice a year, so I wouldn’t be too optimistic!
Depends what you’re doing but if it’s all in the box, quick and dirty then go for Symphobia 1 and 2.
Here’s how I understand it <DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A TAX EXPERT)
The ITIN as you quoted above, is for the purpose of avoiding withholding about 28% tax. You just pay the tax in your home country.
You would very likely be able to write off the 28% – 30% tax paid when filing taxes in your home country any way, but it saves a lot of accounting work. And for smaller companies, that’s a significant cost of time and money, which is why many libraries require the ITIN. Maybe BMI is ok with doing all that extra work.
Without the ITIN, their accountant will charge a fee (probably a couple hundred dollars per person every year) to calculate and process an extra tax payment. Not to mention, before paying you, the company has to make sure they’ve withheld 28% of every dollar you made. You can imagine why most libraries don’t want to deal with this.
From what I’ve seen, there are some countries that might not need an ITIN – like the UK and Australia. Don’t quote me on that, but I have seen this mentioned before.
Here’s more useful info about it (the IRS page is a bit lacking in detail)
Hi Vicky.
Really nice track!
I have some comments and suggestions for getting this ready for top tier libraries and their clients – like trailer editors. (it’s already beyond the quality level necessary for libraries with cheaper prices, and TV placement)
Structure
Your track is evocative doesn’t get to the point fast enough and the climax isn’t quite big enough yet.
I suggest shortening your opening act by at least a minute (which currently ends at 2:03, letting it build each time you cycle through your chord progression. So by the break to the 2nd act, the track has gone from minimal to fairly big.
Act 2 should also be growing more dramatically, again bigger at each cycle of the chord changes.
There would ideally be a crazy big transition to your 3rd act, which is currently plateaued at almost the same energy level as the 2nd act. If the 1st act is 1/10 and 2nd act ends at 6/10 in terms of energy, then the 3rd act should start at 8/10 and get a ridiculous ending at 10/10.
Production
The drums should much more thunderous. Right now they are holding a steady beat, while what you really need is to have more sparse and massive drums for trailer music (that means more low end, less ‘clack’). Listen to any recently placed music on a theatrical trailer (not the TV spots) and you’ll likely hear this.
I’d lose some of the synth and rock elements that might make your mix sound a little dated and cheesy to some very picky clients. These creep in around 3:20.
Bring your horn melody forward.
Hope that helps!
Debbie Downer alert!
In the interest of public safety / disaster prevention, I wanted to chime in with this:
You probably won’t find anyone with the skills and experience to pull off what you need (building an e-commerce library website from the ground up), unless you can pay more than $20K for the build (I’m including data entry in this fee), then likely a retainer for tweaks and fixes each month. And then there’s marketing to get paying customers… which will take more time and money each month.
You’ll find plenty of website designers and developers who will claim they can do it for less, but it will almost certainly be a long drawn out mess.
20k is conservative by the way – I know of another RF site that just went up that cost 100k and took three years. A friend is about to launch his RF sites and it took him two years and about 40k.
Not sure if this is a question to pose, but here’s what I’d love in a library deal. Perhaps it sparks a conversation:
– $1000 upfront re-coupable advance, per track
– 50% of licensing
– ability to sell music to public i.e. iTunes, CDBaby
– Never sharing writer’s share unless someone actually co-wrote the track with me
– no other re-coupable expenses. Some libraries seem to go nuts with thisWhile I doubt an ‘unknown’ act is going to ever command $250k for a license, a hit song by a famous artist or band could easily eclipse that fee.
So on the one hand, while I completely agree that it’s disingenuous to imply anyone could command a fee like that, on the other, licenses of this price range still do happen frequently in advertising and film.
Even the currently popular ‘trailer-ization’ covers of hit songs command larger fees (around $100k, sometimes more).
Re:
even sync fees of 10, 20 or 30K come along only once in a while for the overwhelming majority of Film/TV composers.
I don’t personally know of film and tv composers that deal with licensing very often (most don’t own the music they write, and when their music is licensed, it’s done by the studio that owns the score), but in the trailer world, 10 – 30k is not unusual at all.
Focusing on quality over quantity can open up that world of high end licensing.
Have to agree with Rafael on this one. the pay-to-play / submit middleman type companies are in my opinion, purely around to prey on the hopes of part time composers and musicians. They’re often so useless that you’ll find the same listings for submissions on free sites. I don’t think they’re necessarily run by unscrupulous people, but how do you know that the listings you’re paying to submit tracks to are even valid?
The real way to creating sustainable income streams in this business is to work through reputable music libraries, unless you’re lucky enough to make a direct connection with a client. Work on matching your music to the quality level of a library you want to work with, then when you’re at that level or exceeding it, get in touch with them.
These days I’m usually asked to deliver at 48k 24bit, for mastering.
Something to keep in mind is that the end game for a music library is being bought out by a bigger company for millions. So if the library owners have this retirement plan in mind – and they probably do if they are asking for exclusive tracks – they’ll want to make sure they own all the assets completely. A semi-exclusive deal is not likely to fly for that reason.
Also – many libraries believe they have to own the rights to all the tracks in their catalog 100% to enter into foreign sub-publishing deals.
If could address this track specifically, here’s my $0.02’s worth:
It’s a very, very nice piece, but it doesn’t sound like a trailer track. Here’s why:
Trailer music needs to sound very full, with a lot of clear but deep low end coming from drums, strings and maybe synths. Your track seems to have all the low end, and most low mids, chopped away. This isn’t just an EQ thing, I think it’s the arrangement that is currently missing a lot of parts like basses, cellos, trombones. If they’re in there, the mix isn’t quite bringing them through. The great advice from previous posters should help with that.
Also, in trailers we use a lot of tricks to boost the low end, like a sub bass following the basses, and a soft brassy synth pad following the horns.
I would recommend losing most of the lower piano after :44 – it’s competing with the cello (which sounds really good!) and cheapens the sound a bit. It’s important to not lean on the piano as a crutch (especially for us piano players) as it’s not a particularly ‘epic’ sound… in fact it’s really the opposite of epic – intimate, the sound of ‘home’. At the moment, trailer music usually features piano only as a single high ‘ping’.
Your finale is great, (I love the choir and trumpet parts especially) but needs more big drums, and a more drawn out ending. It’s a beautiful track and deserves more than a quick ‘ta-da’ at the end : )
Consider adding horns in the 3rd act – modern trailer music tends to lean more on horn than trumpet.I hope something in all that was of use to you! Now it’s back to trying to write trailer music for me…