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Rumblefish is a content ID system, not a PRO.
ASCAP is getting involved with YouTube, and I’m sure the other PROs are too. It’s still early days, but I’ve seen an occasional small amount from YouTube on my ASCAP statement.
I hope he does comment on that subject. My impression is that there’s no recourse unless a clause is mentioned in the contract, or unless there was some sort of breach of contract on their side. An exclusive deal is either a timed exclusivity or flat out transfer of ownership.
100s of my earliest tracks sit on a shelf collecting dust because I picked the wrong libraries to make exclusive deals with at the beginning of my career.
I looked under Charles, not Chuck. You could get ASCAP to include Chuck as a pseudonym under the same IPI, which would help if libraries don’t know your legal name. Might be a good idea, and also you should always remind your clients that there’s another ASCAP writer with the same name – you have different middle names. I have the same issue, and occasionally a client will mistakenly assign my works to his name.
If your middle name starts with a W, then from a quick ASCAP search your writer IPI is 678175698.
You’re welcome! Just trying to help you avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made over the years.
when u compose your music do you play piano with a string/brass patch
or compose the song on piano and then transfer the correct notes to the right instrument patch.I used to work that way to be super efficient, but I find it’s better compositionally – it sounds more believable too – if you play in the notes with the samples of the instrument you’re writing for. Things don’t always translate from piano to say, strings, brass or woodwinds. There’s phrasing (the piano doesn’t have to take breaths) and the fact that the piano is a percussive instrument, so short grace notes played on a piano cut through a mix a lot more easily than if they’re played by horns or even strings.
i was listening to marks song ” the chosen” realy like that song so i tryed to make a war time song too but just cant seem to get the rich and polished tone you create.
That’s an old track (2007 I think), and actually a great example that proves my point. I wrote that on an old G5, but had the strings and brass recorded live in Prague (Killer Tracks picked up the tab). It’s not super pricey these days – I recently had 2 minutes of legato strings and brass recorded (remotely) in Germany for under $2000. That sounds like a lot, but in the licensing business a good track can recover that very quickly.
I personally don’t think it makes much sense to record live piano anymore. I could get shot down here, but as a percussive instrument, I don’t think there’s a whole lot that’s going to change nuance-wise depending on the room or player (on a purely note to note comparison). I’m a piano player by the way!
There are amazing piano sample libraries these days, and to get a recording that exceeds the sound you’ll get from them requires a world class studio with the best mics and engineer. The only problem is that these new, amazing piano libraries are massive, so they will definitely require a fast computer!
One last thing on piano – be aware that it doesn’t lend itself to epic music. A subtle line here and there is still very much in fashion, but sweeping, piano based trailer music is rare, even for period pieces, dramas etc. Make sure you’re watching lots of trailers and keeping up with the latest trends if you want to get into this business.
would you say its a good idea to make good connections with a desent library before i invest in live recordings
I actually think you need to present them finished, high quality music first. You might only have one chance to make a good impression. Sorry to be a bit of to be a downer here, but the reality is that you’re competing with many other talented composers who can do everything within the box.
what type of ‘disposable’ music did you both make that leads you into trailer music ?
I worked a lot in reality TV (still do occasionally) and sometimes that work pushed me into suspenseful, small versions of trailer music. The key to getting out of the ‘disposable’ mindset for me was to focus a lot more time and energy on at least one track a week. If most of them took me just three or fours hours, I’d try to make one really count, spending at least a day on it.
If you rush through everything you write, it’s tough to break out of musical habits – to go beyond the sounds that are easily within reach, and to grow from it. One of the ways I force myself to do this now is to collaborate with other composers and musicians.
Hi Jesse. These days I write trailer music full time. Your tracks are really nice, there are nice chord progressions and overall have a lot of potential. However, as you probably know, if these were to be pitched for trailers, they’d need a bit more intensity in the beginning, a 2nd act build and a much, much bigger 3rd act.
Trailer music is a completely different beat from ‘disposable’ reality TV / standard library music (which I wrote for 8+ years). The expected high level of production and size (and then the challenges of mixing all that) doesn’t lend itself to a quota of 50 per year. I usually manage one finished track every week to 10 days.
Trailer music practically demands a super fast computer (or multi computer set up). You can be resourceful with an older computer, perhaps one way to get a great sound would be to actually record some of the parts live. Remote recording has become a lot more affordable. Still pricey, but one trailer license can cover that.
As far as tutorials go, there are some useful youtube videos to get you started, but nothing replaces hard work and doing regular comparison of your music to the top level stuff out there (TSFH, Audiomachine, Sencit, Methodic Doubt, Immediate Music etc).
Infomercials can make you A LOT of money in royalties. It depends on how much it’s playing, of course, but if all the paperwork is in order, it could be a decent payout for you.
You should convert to paperless statements if you haven’t already! I have a 10 second clip of a track on some fitness infomercial which has aired for the past 2 years. Each quarter about 40 – 50 pages are devoted to just that one infomercial, no joke! Those pages are full of tiny 5c, 10c usages. It adds up though.
Often times agreements are re-hashed from stock contracts. It could be a mistake. If you’re to get the music back after a year, you should be the one retaining the copyright. Otherwise they effectively own the track, like a work-for-hire agreement.
Thanks to everyone who has chimed in – it’s turned into one of the most interesting threads here.
My experience in the library music world is that I started out writing a lot of the ‘disposable’ music Michael mentioned. It was for reality shows, some of it was written specifically for shows that other composers had hired me to help write for.
I ended up writing 2000+ tracks like that over about 5 years. Then I got involved in the trailer side of things. It was frustrating at first – switching to a quality over quantity model is a big change. Every choice you make is different, and I always felt guilty taking longer than a day on a track.
Today I’m thrilled I made the switch to spent most of my time on projects that value quality over quantity. My royalties may have gone down a bit from the days of writing solely for reality TV, but my sync licensing income has more than made up for it.
Also, there’s satisfaction of improving my writing and production skills with every track, simply because I now spend so much time on each one, re-writing and polishing until it’s the best I can do within a reasonable amount of time (usually 5 – 7 days for one track).
I’ve even landed significant jobs through the higher quality music. I’m working on a game right now that I got because one of the designers heard a track of mine on YouTube. As you may know, Ryan Amon scored the film Elysium after being discovered there too.
Congrats! I hope you make a lot from it. I haven’t had much experience with a content ID system before (other than repeatedly asking AdRev to remove my non-ex tracks) but a few different sources have told me the rate is about $2 per 1000 views. Here’s hoping you get $12,000+ : )
Maybe you have to split that with Rumblefish, and I don’t know if there’s a minimum threshold before YouTube starts paying out.
Also, you don’t know for sure what the license was like – maybe the video maker was able to monetize the video by paying an extra fee (and cutting you out of the content ID royalties). Keep that in mind – I don’t want to get your hopes up.
It would be great if you could update us on how this goes for you. Many people (especially in the non-exclusive side of things) consider content-ID to be a very bad thing, as it interferes with monetizing YT videos. I’ve heard completely different attitudes from people in the trailer music business.
I wonder – it’s a RF site, so how are you in a content ID system?
My question is how much does an average track earn on the libraries in the different genres? I am sure that is an impossible question to answer but I am just trying to get an idea what I can invest in each track.
There’s a huge range of prices and budgets in the licensing / music library world. Literally zero dollars for an entire catalog to $50,000+ for one track.
I’d recommend reading Emmett’s eBook for a good refresher on the business: http://thebusinessofmusiclicensing.com
Maybe a Pro SoundCloud account is all you need today.
Hi Chuck, there’s nothing wrong with that – quality often trumps quantity!
I write full time and sometimes a track will take me longer than a week. When I was fully immersed in the reality TV world, churning out several cues a day was the norm, but after making a gradual transition to trailer music, tracks have taken longer and longer to finish.
Google quietly adjusted their search algorithm in mid December and it had a big impact – RF websites that were always on the first page were suddenly way back in the search results. I think it’s the main reason sales are down at some sites.