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You do not have permission to view this content.You do not have permission to view this content.You do not have permission to view this content.You do not have permission to view this content.You do not have permission to view this content.You do not have permission to view this content.You do not have permission to view this content.If a track is poorly written, and poorly produced with cheap sounds (like stock keyboard sounds), lifeless and overly midi sounding, mastered too to low or too thigh, if it’s what you might call rambling and musically incoherent (rhythmically erratic and tonally confused) it can keep you out of many libraries. On the other hand, I’ve heard tracks fitting that exact description that do, in fact, sell in at least three libraries. Go figure.
August 16, 2019 at 1:01 pm in reply to: Paranoid venture capitalists in the stock music business are at it again #32877We all want to make money with our music, but if our only goal is making money — and we have no love for what we do — what’s the point?
I’m not sure this question was answered. The heart of this question is about creative satisfaction, not money. I can only speak for myself, but when I decided to become a composer, at age 11 or 12, it was because I loved music. Money had nothing to do with it.
The other question here is what exactly makes investors “greedy?” They are in the business of spending money to make money and they want to do so in the fastest and least complicated way. So, they are greedy because they want to succeed in a highly competitive marketplace?
Should composers stop uploading tracks to libraries once they reach 300 or 500 tracks, so that composers with only 50 tracks have a better chance at selling tracks? If someone uploads 1,000 tracks does that make them an “ignorant and greedy” composer?
As Art said, it’s Econ 101, supply and demand. Unfortunately, the reality is that because the threshold for participation is so low, composers today are as plentiful as snowflakes in a blizzard, and that’s not going to change. The amount of competition and content are only increasing which will most likely further depress value.
August 15, 2019 at 6:58 am in reply to: Paranoid venture capitalists in the stock music business are at it again #32869I’m not sure that the libraries are being paranoid. Because this is vacation season, the end of July through August is one of the slowest times of the year for libraries. Offering deals to motivate sales during slow times is a common marketing strategy, which doesn’t necessarily signal doom and gloom.
“Music is business, business is war, war is hell, adapt or die!”…
…We all want to make money with our music, but if our only goal is making money — and we have no love for what we do — what’s the point?
As I’ve said before, “There are easier ways to make money and better ways to make music.”
This is also a story about capitalism, Econ 101 and supply and demand.
Reality is reality. You can bang your head against it all you want, but that doesn’t change it. Today we live in a global economy where an accomplished composer living in a third world country is happy to make $50, $100, $200 a month. This is our competition folks!
Absolutely. The reality is that this business is saturated. It’s not just saturated with content. It is saturated with people creating content. You can’t sustain high value in that environment.
The other day someone said, “Just ‘write hits’ and you will make a lot of money in production music.
“A lot of money,” compared to what? Working at McDonald’s?
I’m not sure that earning a living from production music today is a realistic possibility for 99.9% of composers. On the other hand, as a source of additional income or ongoing passive income it’s not terrible. Most people would say that they can’t live on $10K to $20K per year, which is very true (depending on where you live). But consider the amount of money you’d need to have invested and earning 6% interest to generate a similar amount. We can’t roll back the clock and change global reality but we can adapt, manage our expectations, and plan accordingly.
Non featured performers are paid by SX but only 5% of the gross [to be distributed].
Musicians are only paid 2.5% while g/b singers are paid 2.5% not quite ‘equal’ !Who qualifies for neighboring rights may vary from country to country. There was a decision a few years back, I think in the Netherlands, in which the court distinguished between the musicians and producers whose contributions to a recording were sufficient to claim NR royalties. Producers, for example, had to have economic skin in the game, not only creative input.
Moreover, with SoundExchange the performer and producer royalties are a percentage of the recording owners royalties, not in addition to. The owner of the master recording had to assign that percentage to the performers and producers. This may be different under the MMA, but it’s not something that I’ve had reason to research for anyone.
The US Copyright Office changed the rules earlier this year. As of March 15, 2019, you can no longer register songs as an “unpublished collection”. Under the previous rules you could in theory register as many unpublished tracks as the upload limit allowed. Under the new rules, you can only register ten unpublished works as a “Group of Unpublished Works.”
Under the old rules everything was registered under a single registration number. That meant that you really could not effectively split tracks under that registration among different publishers if you were transferring the copyright. Also, in the event that your works were infringed upon you could only seek damages for one work, no matter how many were infringed on, because everything was under a single registration number.
I have been told by the Copyright Office that under the new Group Registration system each work will be independent and have its own registration number. The caveat here is that timing and procedure are critical. Unpublished means unpublished. You need to register your tracks before you upload them to any sites and offer them for sale to the public. If you publish first, your registration could be invalid. Timing is critical as it impacts the amount of damages that you can collect and the ability to collect for your legal fees.
NOTE: Group Registration is not available in all circumstances. “To qualify for this option, all the works must be created by the same author or the same joint authors, and the author or joint authors must be named as the copyright claimant for each work.” For more details read here: https://www.copyright.gov/rulemaking/group-unpublished/
Don’t know why you would call this a possible scam without knowing any details. Similar to https://www.royaltyexchange.com/ and they have been around for years.
This company seems to be offering to lend composers money based on their royalty income, which they state must be at least $5,000 per year to participate. Royalty Exchange, in contrast, has investors who buy your future royalties. It’s not a loan.
FWIW, Royalty Exchange had been pursuing me. I finally went through their catalog valuation process and to my surprise they offered me a nice amount of money.
BUT…when they realized that my catalog is production music (including TV theme music) they backed out. The reason they provided, is that they no longer consider production music to be “stable” and cannot recommend that their clients invest in it.
July 22, 2019 at 6:26 pm in reply to: Same or different styles for exclusive library submission? #32749I just “Searched Ukulele Production Music” and got OVER 5,000,000 results..
That’s brilliant.. You just made my night, BEATSLINGER!
This guy writes a ton of it, and his tracks are some of the best-selling on the site: https://www.pond5.com/artist/stevericemusic
How can you determine that? Is there a way to see stats like on AJ?
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