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The whole survey thing that ASCAP seems to do a lot more of is a big sticking point for me. From what I’ve managed to find out, BMI is much more accurate with lower tier cable royalties. It’s not big bucks down at that level, but I had several recurring sports themes that ASCAP paid out on once, while my BMI co-writer received several checks. Also, BMI statements seem more detailed, easier to understand.
It depends on who you talk to. Someone who loves ASCAP might turn around the next quarter and tell you how much they hate them because of a rate / policy change. Or you might find someone who loathes all three enough to do something drastic, which brings me to…
There’s a fourth PRO in the US now – brand new and invite only, but some TV composers are getting in on it. It’s called GMR, Global Music Rights. I think it’s a bit scary being part of a tiny upstart PRO, but there are claims that their TV royalty rates will be significantly higher.
That might be a tad drastic!
Does anybody know how much like the top Hollywood composers get for a film score? Think like Hans Zimmer, what do you think his ball park would be for a feature, or just the highest paid composer in general?
Well over 1 million, I’ve heard some fees go as high as 2 million every now and then.
$500-1000 per minute is a range that I hear from my friends in the video game industry.
$500 is for low budget indie games. For major games the rate is more like $1500 – $2000
I’ve scored a lot of indie films (60+). I think the trick is to decide how much you want to do the project. The potential pain or joy of working with the client should dictate the fee.
Sadly, most ultra low budget films aren’t going to pay more for music than $10,000 for a feature, or $2000 for a short film. A per-minute rate won’t look pretty when you only have that much to work with.
So, if you love the sound of the project, you could say something along the lines of: your usual rate is $X00 per minute but because you love the film so much, you’re willing to make it work. Ways to stretch the budget might be to use existing tracks in your catalog, writing some music that can be re-used / re-mixed in a handful of scenes.
Also – you probably know this, but just in case – always insist on owning the music, giving them a license in perpetuity. This helps you build up your own catalog and get a credit to your name at the same time. The only reason to give this up is if you’re getting paid well – $1500+ per minute.
I’m not sure if you’re talking about opening your own RF site or going after TV and licensing clients.
If you’re talking about the latter, you have to ask yourself, is your time better spent doing client interface – selling/meeting/schmoozing/dealing with lawyers/delivering/editing etc or writing more?
Would you be better off spending your time working on more tracks and leaving the client interface to middlemen, allowing you to improve your skills in writing and production?
I’ve dabbled a little in running a library but my focus has always been on improving as a writer, and the only way to do that is practice.
Maybe you would prefer to split your time between running a library and composing, knowing that you’re keeping more of the proceeds. It could be a great move, depending on your skill set and personality – just know what you’re getting yourself into.
Early in my career I made the mistake of giving a lot of music to libraries who ended up doing very little with it. Looking back on it, I think I should have insisted on one or more of the following for an exclusive deal:
– good upfront fees (at least $400 per track, ideally a lot more)
– for royalties based companies, proof that they have been placing their music over the past two years in top tier cable or network shows (cue sheets are the best evidence but ASCAP ACE etc will show the credits). For licensing based companies, a track record of lucrative placements.
– a share of the licensing. If you’re not getting a 50/50 cut of the licensing – ‘work for hire’ deals won’t give you any (which the big libraries usually insist on), you shouldn’t give your music away without $800 or more per track. The only exception I can think of would be where you’re getting about $100 per cue to write for a very busy reality TV composer who needs hours of music and you’re pretty much guaranteed air time.
– a three year reversion clause (not likely if you’re getting paid upfront)
For strings and brass, you really don’t need much more than three or four libraries that, combined, give you realism and fullness (you get one or the other usually).
I recommend something like:
-8dio’s adagietta
-Symphobia 2
-cinebrass with the pro update
-Some of 8dio’s epic perc, also damage and good old true strike 1 and 2. I still use SD2 a lot too.
You’ll need $3000 – $4000 (depending on if you get them on sale).
That’s still a good chunk of change, but less than what you paid for a light version of VSL, the standard just a few years back.The way to do it cheap is to not record an orchestra : )
I’ve had a couple of great sessions with Dynamedion, who are composers/producers who travel to places like Prague, but bring their own mics and supervise the sessions in person. It makes a big difference!
Trailer music doesn’t usually call for winds, and you can get away with cutting corners, like focusing on the parts that need live instruments the most. I’ve found that for my tracks, the legato strings and brass lines are the best use of the recording budget.Duane –
This topic has been discussed A LOT on this site. Basically the situation right now is that if you have music placed in more than one library, you can’t use ContentID for those tracks. Otherwise people will get irate when they pay for music that YouTube says someone else actually has the rights to it. It makes the licensor look bad and prevents the customer from being able to monetize their YT video until they’re whitelisted.
The problem is that not enrolling your music in ContentID (through an outfit like AdRev) means that others can mistakenly or fraudulently enroll music you wrote and claim it as theirs.
I’ve been told by people at AdRev that enrolling music in ContentID would effectively protect it from others claiming on it. Other experts on the topic (like Mark Lewis of ML) strongly doubt this is the case.
There’s got to be a tech based resolution to this insane situation. Maybe these guys have the right idea: http://www.businessinsider.com/licenseid-good-for-artists-maybe-trouble-for-users-2013-9
Josh –
You’ll most likely need to work with a ‘YouTube Certified Company’ like AdRev. For some reason it’s difficult to work directly with YouTube’s ContentID system.
Every time someone wants to use the track in a monetized video, you’ll have to contact AdRev, asking them to whitelist your customer’s video or channel. Imagine if that happens several / dozens of times a day, it could get to be more of a PITA than it’s worth, unless you’re charging a decent fee each time.
Maybe you’re super tech savvy and can come up with a system involving automation and outsourcing… I’m sure it could work, with some creativity!
Selling through iTunes still has these requirements:
At least 20 albums in your catalog
UPCs/EANs/JANs for all products you intend to distribute
ISRCs for all tracks you intend to distributeThanks Denis, will keep that in mind.
I have just upgraded to Mavericks from Lion because some plugins weren’t being supported anymore, and mainly to use Logic 10, works OK here. What issues are you having ?
I’ve been on Mavericks for about a month, and have had a bunch of small annoying issues like gradual latency in changing the cursor options (from pointer to pencil etc), unreliable ability to stop freezing or bouncing a track (shortcut not working all the time). Crashes happen a little more often than back in Snow Leopard.
Also, NI support (or the company that made the plug in) can’t figure out why the Service Center won’t completely authorize some new software.
Another fun new issue – random crackling like there’s a processor overload happening but Activity Monitor says everything is fine. That issue seems limited to some software like Adagio Bass and Damage. The latest Kontakt update took it from unusable to tolerable, but it’s still annoying.
Oh and then there’s annoying pop window that asks if I want to use my Apple TV as the audio output in Logic!