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I’m with Rident as well. Over the course of a year the NR income is a nice extra income source – about 0.5% – 1% of what my royalties are. Music in non US based libraries definitely makes up the bulk of that NR income though.
Last November I recorded live strings and brass for a trailer track I called ‘Zoonotic’. I’m not saying I’m prophet, but… (I hope the library changed the name before it gets released)
– Are libraries going to have issues signing a contract between them and a company VS an individual?
No, most big ones are used to it because most US composers that have been writing library music for a while usually have an LLC or S corp.– Can you even do this with BMI? (register a writer account under an entity rather than an actual person)
Yes. Just call them for the form specifically designed for you to assign your writer’s royalties to your company name.– Are there obvious disadvantages?
no, aside from the payroll, minutes keeping etc costs of running an S corp, and the PITA of having to pay yourself from the corporate account anytime you need money, but you’re already familiar with all that.
You do not have permission to view this content.I don’t know where I’m really going here, but I guess I’d ask how you made yourself stand out in such a competitive/saturated industry.
Although there are 1000s of aspiring trailer composers, thanks to the rise of its popularity and the growth of ‘how to write trailer music’ courses, I actually don’t think it’s very saturated. The level of production value and authenticity required (usually) at the top level of trailers is very hard to achieve (speaking from personal experience) and a constantly moving target. Very few composers are actually good enough (lucky enough) to get more than a couple of big trailer or TV spot placements every quarter.
A lot of us actually make the bulk of our income from general library music – basically stuff used on reality shows. In that realm, it’s easier for a ‘trailer composer’ to succeed because we’ve honed production skills that exceeds the expectations of most library music.
I don’t know what you’re doing at college, but let me suggest this – if you get really good at producing trailer music – something you could quite easily achieve in the next three to four years, the license fees you’ll get combined with any royalties you start generating from writing for general music libraries will add up to more income than most of the occupations you might be going to college for. I wouldn’t say this to most people, but I can tell you have the drive and talent to succeed, based on your age and the quality of what you can already produce.
Firstly, you’re 17?! Holy moly…
Here’s my assessment of your current situation. You do light drama beautifully – you know how to convey warmth and write really nicely for strings and piano.
Your ‘Little go at trailer music’ is a great start – you latched on to the need to have some hooks, and the structure is pretty much there. As it stands the track would probably already do well in libraries focused on TV.
To get into doing trailer music (and have some success with placements), you’ll need to live and breathe it. Watch as much as you can on YT of all the past two years’ worth of trailers and TV spots, and then seek out the tracks that were used (they’re often posted on their own, or even on streaming services by the publishers).
Any attempt at producing trailer music without that immersion will be simply a guess at what it should sound like – a facsimile.
One sure fire to stay true / authentic to the trailer sound is to do a handful of sound-alikes – taking tracks that were used on recent trailers and trying to re-create them from the ground up. Load the guide track into your DAW, and go about re-creating every note, and then every element of the arrangement. There’s a huge benefit to this – you’re going under the hood by listening back and forth to each bar until you match exactly what was done in the original track.Then once you’ve done that, I suggest a twist on that sound-alike exercise – starting with a sketched (piano only) midi transcription of a successful track, mute the original and turn the sketch into your own piece – modifying the whole thing so it soon has turned into something quite different. Then, as you get close to finishing your ‘v1’, go back to the source material and see where things are lacking, and maybe get some production ideas.
which I believe that prescription/pharmaceutical ads are among those they do not monitor
Wow, that is lame, considering those dominate the airwaves at certain times of the day.
Could be a boilerplate agreement that they neglected to tweak properly.
Or, and this is something I’ve seen before – they are non-ex, but they want to own the RETITLED name they’re going to use. It’s a bit dumb to ask for the master rights, as that implies a master recording that they’ll own.
It goes without saying – ask them for clarification. And if possible, report back to us what they say!Bye Bye direct licenses.
Yes it’s a bit of a relief, but meanwhile big (‘PMA’) libraries and smaller boutique ones still engage in direct licenses with Scripps channels, as well as some of the biggest sports and news channels.
(adding a new paragraph because my posts end up in approval limbo if I make too many additions!)
My guess is that the list would be a who’s who of libraries – essentially most (if not all) of the top ‘PMA’ libraries.
Maybe it’s a bit too aggressive, but perhaps there could be a link on the right side of MLR – of all libraries that engage in direct licensing with TV networks. Just a list – not a debate about whether libraries should do it or not. Would be illuminating – I think the list would be a lot longer than many composers would imagine… Just about any music you hear on Scripps shows (that’s half a dozen channels right there), CNN, Fox News, ESPN involve direct licensing.
David I really like this track. Musically it’s a lot more interesting than ‘stereotype’.
But as it stands, it’s more an approximation of trailer music.
To really get into trailer music, you’ll have to live and breathe it.
It’s all too easy to listen to a little trailer music, and then run off and do your own thing – to get carried away by the piece you’re writing. Trust me – I know this all too well! (Having written over 300 attempts at trailer music at this point)
Here’s a trick that really helps to get that all important AUTHENTICITY:
Start out doing a sound-alike.
load the audio of a piece of music (used in a trailer) into your DAW, find the tempo, then transcribe it with piano, exactly to the grid.
transcribe the bass movement, top lines, inner voices, and maybe the drums, then mute the source material, transpose your sketch, and try turning it into a different piece.
Be careful what you end up doing with it as it could easily be too close to the original – this is more an exercise than a way to create a track you’ll give away to a publisher.
But this is how you get ‘under the hood’.
pay attention to these things:
– the HOOK(s)
– the structure (how things keep getting bigger, hold together as a singular idea)
– the FEELINGI can always tell when someone has done this. It’s the same with any style really – you have to transcribe, then make it your own, to fully internalize it.
Major libraries have supplied their entire catalogs to networks like Scripps’ channels, OWN, CNN, Fox News and ESPN with blanket DIRECT LICENSE deals – and often never paying the composers of that music a penny. I have first hand experience with this.
So the threat really isn’t from some army of hungry, desperate young composers willing to give up their royalties. It’s greedy libraries. I can easily see several of them swooping in to offer blanket direct license deals to Discovery right now – heck, negotiations might already be well underway.Wow.
I just finished writing this on a FB post:
It seems like the composers in this article, and in other places on line, have been painting this as “young composers, please don’t sign away your royalties with this terrible deal Discovery is offering.”
When maybe what we should be really worried about is:
LIBRARIES DOING BLANKET DIRECT LICENSING DEALS…
Firstly, Discovery could only make a deal like this with a US based composer (most non-US PROs don’t allow for direct licensing, bypassing the PRO). So the pool is already small – that is, adequately skilled US based composers who are willing to give up their royalties. Anyone that’s written for TV and received royalties for it, knows not to do this.
But already we have many libraries signing direct licensing deals with broadcasters – channels like Fox News, CNN, ESPN, HGTV… these all demand the libraries sign direct deals, and the blanket license fees from those deals RARELY get shared with composers.
Sadly, I can easily imagine two or three of the big libraries swooping in to offer Discovery their catalogs, or even custom made catalogs, to cover all their needs.