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Hey Sean, I checked out your tracks and although they don’t have the 3 act structure, they’d be a good fit for TV. Good luck with it! (great country rock tracks BTW)
Do you also provide alt mixes for those companies?
Some of the companies I’ve worked with ask for very deep stems, i.e. practically every instrument on its own audio track, so that a top notch mixer can give it a pro mix. As you can imagine, it’s hours of work (listening back to each stem, naming it using a specific naming system for that client or mixer). Others that don’t hire a mixer still ask for each section stemmed out (strings, brass, synths, drums etc) in case years down the road a change is requested by an editor. I also provide alt mixes to these clients, like no choir, no drums, etc.
And one more question if you don’t mind and its a little off topic, but what do you noticed the licence fee is after the split with the library you get most of the times?
There’s a huge range in trailer music licensing, anywhere from $2K for a very short amount of music in a TV spot to $30K+ for a full length license for all media. It also depends on the company – they all have their own rates (at least in the US – the UK does things differently).
Libraries that don’t pay their composers upfront typically give 40-60% (50% is most common) of the license fees.I thought the 3 acts was usually made up from several different cues and not just one unless custom composed?
You’ll find that most trailer music companies want a composer to give them a 3 act piece, in the hopes that it will get used in its entirety for a trailer. When that happens, they can charge their top rate.
But you’re right, usually there are several tracks used in a trailer.
While most trailer tracks are 1:40 – 2:30, I don’t think length is particularly important to getting licensed in trailers (libraries might insist on a minimum length though). Some of my most licensed tracks are less than 1:30. Anything over 2:30 is probably a waste – trailers don’t run longer than that.
What matters most is that you have a solid 3 act structure:
Act 1 the brooding beginning for when the audience knows nothing about what the movie is or what’s about.
Act 2 being the part where things start to ramp up and we learn what the conflict is, but the music is still usually underneath dialog.
Act 3 is the ‘balls to the wall’ fortissimo last 15-30 seconds that gives the trailer its climax, where the music is often out in front with no dialog on top.The hardest part to produce by far is the 3rd act – it requires coming up with thematic and production material that is strong enough carry from a small beginning to explode out in all its glory. It tests a composer’s skills in arranging, production and mixing to the extreme.
A unique and evocative opening 1st act and a well produced, exciting and original 2nd act might get licensed on their own, so those are still important. However, those are the ‘easy’ bits…very few composers can produce a solid kick-ass 3rd act and ending. Get that part right and you’ll be invaluable to trailer libraries and editors.
FWIW I’ve been doing trailer music for 7+ years, and I’ve still got miles to go, every day learning new ways to improve my 3rd act production and composition.
If you’re:
1) regularly delivering music to a library / libraries, and..
2) they get their catalog used on 1st tier cable and network shows, and…
3) your tracks are appropriate for those shows,
then you should definitely see a steady increase in royalties checks.
Spikes in the upward curve will happen when you get a nice chunk of music used on a network show, or you get a track used as a theme.+1 for what MichaelL said about “evergreen” tracks.
Damage is pretty big – loads of cool one hit samples, both processed and natural sounding (kits, toms, ‘damaged’ drums and impacts). There are a lot of somewhat similar sounding loops too, maybe that’s what they play in the demos. IMO overall it’s great value for money, just for the sheer usable content. Usually I’m lucky to find 5 usable patches in a sample library… I have at least 15 Damage tracks in the Logic session I currently have open!
I use Damage and 8Dio’s epic taiko ensemble a lot in my trailer music, FYI they’re pretty nasty on the processor for just drum samples. Not as bad as Hollywood Strings though!
Once you make over $100k a year, the general consensus is that the tax benefits of incorporating outweigh the fees and accounting costs.
We have one but that’s because we have a corporation. I think (maybe wrong about this) you need to at least be a registered partnership, LLC or corp. You really should ask a qualified accountant about this stuff.
Here’s a link from the IRS: http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Do-You-Need-an-EIN%3FTV and radio advertisements – the same reason that :15 versions are sometimes requested
Does that mean 1000 completely unique tracks, or total number of tracks though duplicated across a number of different libraries?
I would think unique tracks but it could be different depending on your skill set and “luck of the draw”.
Another way of looking at that – from my own experience, it took 1000 – 1500 tracks to get good enough to be able to charge more for each track. My music is much more polished now than it was when I started out and as a result I make more with fewer tracks. I don’t have to churn them out like I used to. Spending a lot more time on each track has helped accelerate the increase in production quality.
It was definitely worthwhile churning out as much music as I could for the first 4 – 5 years after I went full time as a composer. If you do this, not all your music will be great but you’ll learn from your mistakes and as long as you’re constantly challenging yourself, you’ll discover the skills you need to spend more time developing.
pre-packaged album
where everything is ready to go – 10-15 varied tracks within a ‘theme’ for an album. Mixed, mastered (maybe not so important), stems and edits.
15 tracks might get you in the door with a royalty free or purely online licensing library, but in that area of the business it’s all about volume… frankly it’s unlikely you’d make much money with so few tracks. You need a lot of tracks in RF libraries just to increase the odds of getting discovered – once a customer finds a track of yours and likes it, they might dig through your other music to see what else they might want to buy. For that to happen you need to show up in the search, and on a huge site like AS, good luck!
You never know, maybe you’ll do well with 15 tracks, especially if your tracks are in the zone of what most people are looking for. Definitely keep building that number of tracks if you want to make a significant amount of money from selling tracks on online libraries.
If your orchestral music is at a high level of production and composition, consider approaching bigger brick and mortar libraries with your 15 tracks. A pre-packaged album of great ready-to-go music is much more likely to get the attention of a producer / manager at one of these libraries than a composer sending demos for consideration on future releases. The bigger libraries either pay nicely upfront, or share the license fees. Depending on their focus, you could also make significant performance royalties from TV airtime.
15 great tracks places with a well connected library could potentially make you a lot more than uploading to a massive vault of tracks on the web! Just my $0.02 worth, I’m sure others will chime in with theirs 🙂
Sounds like it might be useful, especially if they’re keeping the info current. There are plenty of other places to get that, but it’d save you a lot of time to have it all in one place.
I saw this graphic a few months ago that they made:
http://www.musiclicensingdirectory.com/state-of-the-music-licensing-industry-2013
It looks really nice but I have no idea where they got their stats from, including this:
‘Getty Images owned “Pump Audio” platform take the highest commission from fees at 65% and are the only company that take more than the artist’s share’
…. yeah right! Maybe they should spend some time on the MLR. Â : )
And how could they know that ‘40%’ of music licensing companies retitle tracks?
I’ve had a little bit – Â it’s come from the UK, France, Germany, Canada and other countries that pay out on theatrical airtime. The US does not, unfortunately.
I’ve never seen any royalties from shorter TV trailers, just like with all the ads I’ve had music on. The big money for trailers is definitely in the licensing!
ASCAP has a program where you can proactively assist them in getting paid for TV advertising airtime. It’s still done on a ‘survey’ basis, so it’s a bit of a lottery. Here’s the page where the info and forms are:
http://www.ascap.com/members/payment/commercialPromoGuide.aspx