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Hi Michael,
I have a few thoughts to add –
I really like that strings motif!
Mix wise it’s not that far off. I think it’s just a matter of more layering, injecting ‘steroids’ into each element. Make the drums hit harder on downbeats, more hi end perc, make the strings sound fuller and further away. To give you an idea, I usually have about 20 – 30 perc tracks in any given trailer track, and blend four or five strings libraries.
You should decide if this track is going to be ‘hybrid’ or not, and truly own that sound. Right now there are a few synths sprinkled here and there. They’re noticeable enough to make the track non-traditional (and not just acting as sonic glue for orchestral elements to sound bigger), but not dominant enough yet to make the track an edgy, modern hybrid blend of synths and traditional instruments.
I think your 2nd act needs to be a lot bigger, and your 3rd act / finale needs to be ridiculous. Right now it’s a bit too tame for trailers. As is, it’d be great for TV. That’s not meant as a slight – you’ll hear amazing music on reality shows today, the standard keeps getting higher and higher (like in trailers).
Try to avoid modulation unless it makes a huge difference to the track (don’t rely on it for adding energy, instead find other ways to achieve that). Editors like to be able to chop up the music, so it’s important the key stays the same, or at least complimentary throughout (relative minor / major is ok).
Try to find one or two key ideas (hooks, rhythmic, sonic or melodic) that your entire piece builds from. You’ve got a great start with that string motif, but I’d really go nuts building on top of it in your 2nd and 3rd acts.
This is how I think of the typical trailer layout: (rules which are often broken)
1st act – mysterious, brooding, occasional hits ok
SUDDEN BREAK or RAMP UP
2nd act – energy, using same ideas from opening if possible, building bigger and bigger with every repeat of the 8 bar phrase
SUDDEN BREAK, HUGE RISE
3rd act – massive energy leading to a finale
Finale – ridiculous ending, over-the-top repetition of hits etc – realm of the ridiculous
SHORT BREAK FOR REVERB TAIL
Outro, for ‘coming soon’ – a long fading held note or a gradually fading soft recap of the beginningHope that helps.
It’s #3
that link was locked – here’s a free version:
The difference is probably that some have a good accountant, and others don’t. If you make more than $600 and the US company doesn’t file a 1099 at the end of the year with your ITIN number, they are liable for the income tax on your sales, which I have been told is usually at a rate of more than 20%. The only other option is for the company to withhold that money from your payments, but it is more work for them and their accountant.
Disclaimer – I am not an accountant and you should get professional advice on this subject.
Instead of going in person to an embassy, you can call the IRS in the USA and get an ITIN over the phone, according to this discussion about iBooks:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3105682?start=15&tstart=0
I phoned this number (Apply for EIN by phone, international applicants): 1 (267) 941 1099
The 1 is American country code, 267 is the area code.It literally took only 15 mins on the phone, including hold time, before I got my EIN number! It was very easy!
You might need to register some works to that publishing name before the IPI shows up. You should probably call them if it doesn’t make a difference after a few weeks – 1-800-952-7227
I would say that you should steer clear of exclusive deals in your situation. With an exclusive deal, there’s always the chance your music will just sit on a shelf making you absolutely nothing. A tragedy in any case, but especially if it’s music you spent a long time on with bandmates.
Check out AudioSocket.com – they might be a good non-exclusive place to start.
I’m specifically interested in what companies are using on the backend to distribute and manage all of the tracks, composers, metadata, etc. and commerce. I found one platform called Source Audio that seems pretty decent: http://www.sourceaudio.com
Source Audio is a great solution for needle drop licensing libraries – a lot of trailer libraries use it. It’s for libraries that establish a business relationship with a client and then send them to the sourceaudio section of their website.
It’s not suitable for RF libraries though, if you want to get sales from organic searches. It won’t help (might hinder) your position in search results. As you know about SEO, this should make sense to you.
Chuck I highly recommend CineBrass Core & PRO, together they run $750 (less if you grab them on sale). Used carefully, they can fool most people.
They run in Kontakt and are much more efficient than Hollywood Brass, which I tried using but it gives my computer a meltdown, no matter how much ram I throw at it.
To throw my $0.02 in about live recording on the other thread, I think live players are usually a huge asset to a recording. But… for epic or even reality cues, that big horn ensemble sound you’re after is next to impossible without hiring 8+ horns.
My advice is don’t do it 🙂
Sorry to be so brutal about this, but it really is a massive undertaking if you want to be successful i.e. make a profit. Even if you’re tenacious enough to get a site launched, and actually start to drum up traffic and sales, you’re at the mercy of any change in Google’s search algorithm.
Aside from the challenge of finding a designer who will do a professional, solid job for under $30k (I went through 3 cheap companies who over-promised and under-delivered before finding one that could get my site to a launch-able state), getting graphics made, sourcing music (maybe just your own), organizing it, deciding on pricing, coming up with descriptions, metadata (not just on page but also web metadata), there’s the stuff that happens after your site is finally live:
You’ll need to learn about SEO, the latest in white hat internet marketing, keep up to date on new versions of Google’s algorithm, keep a regular eye on things – customers not getting their files, site going down etc. Constantly replying to customer and composer inquiries. Will you send out a monthly newsletter? Don’t forget – paying your composers! All the ways you imagined setting up an e-commerce website licensing royalty free music would be passive and very little work once you launched it… it’s all sadly misinformed! (I write this from personal experience)
Oh, and it will cost a lot of money. And time. But on the other hand there is some satisfaction in the completion of such a massive project (it took me longer than a masters degree) and there’s something to be said for being more in control of one of your income streams.
I wonder what kind of reassurance the new owners would have that the music will keep generating royalties?
For a well known song, it makes sense – radio will always play it, TV and films will continue to license it. But for library music? Someone has to be pushing it, marketing it to potential broadcasters.
I suppose for this reason, an investor might prefer to just buy the writer’s share, and let the publisher continue to market the music.
I just glanced through some of the auctions – it looks like that’s what is being offered on most of them (but not all – some are offering the publishing and copyright).
I see composer John Fulford offered 50% of his writer’s share on music written for reality TV… I wonder how that went for him! If he’s lurking about, it would be awesome to hear from him.
And this one, which seems really LOW:
Bid on 100% of the ASCAP performance royalties generated by a collection of 270 works of production music by Judge and Jury Music, Inc.
Auction Type: Single-Unit
Sale Price: $37,000
Number of Bidders: 26If so, that is completely unfeasible for a library selling lots of licenses.
For a big exclusive company like APM’s partners, Killer Tracks, MegaTrax etc, this is no big deal because:
a) the majority of their clients are high end broadcasters and a dozen or so whitelistings of major blue chip accounts (networks, film studios etc) cover a ton of potential flags. They don’t focus their business on the millions of small time YT producers out there.
b) they have a big workforce, and can afford someone to cover this full timeIt’s the smaller exclusive (or even non-exclusive) libraries I wonder about – the ones that are nowhere near as big, primarily market to low budget producers and yet still register all their music with AdRev. It’s probably a major PITA for these types of companies to have to release / whitelist each of their YT clients.
Just discovered another Content ID company this evening: ‘RouteNote’.
Seems like they automatically add your music to Content ID if you sell music through them.
Also, I’m pretty certain my exclusive libraries aren’t using content ID either.
I don’t know if we share any of the same library clients, but ALL my exclusive ones do in fact use content ID.
It’s not specifically written into any contracts (we’re talking music I wrote before content ID was even a thing), but most of these deals have been work-for-hire, so they probably get to keep all that income. I guess that’s an entirely different subject for discussion…
Upload your own tracks inside video files to a YouTube account and try to monetize them. If you’ve been writing library music for a while, you may be shocked by how many mistaken, false or even fraudulent claims there against your music.
I’m in the process of going through my entire catalog and just about every composer who gave me non-exclusive music has had stuff flagged.
It’s not usually their fault either – 9 times out of 10 it’s because a library they gave tracks to got greedy and sent the music off to AdRev without thinking about what it might mean for every other library trying to license the same tracks.
‘Matched content’ comes up a lot for arrangements of public domain songs (like Christmas Carols). I guess there’s no way around that issue right now.
I sell an album of 20+ tracks of mostly trailer and library music through CDBaby. They also distribute to iTunes (where the vast majority of my sales come from) and Amazon. The trailer music sells pretty well, but I put yoga and Christmas albums up on the same account and those only sold once or twice.
As Michael mentioned – definitely OPT OUT of content ID if you’re selling non-exclusive library music to the public, Rumblefish and CDBaby both have their own schemes.