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ENW1, having a finished album is a big plus. Good luck.
Libraries are for bread and butter money. I use them. But I am not competing to be at the bottom.
Exactly. RF libraries are only one spoke in a very large economic wheel that hopefully allows you to pursue other goals with your music.
It’s common for composers to also gig, teach, do custom work, write for mid-tier JP-type libraries, write for upper-tier exclusive libraries (Shout out to BEATSLINGER for breaking through that ceiling!), and many other things.
Nothing lasts forever in this business. I don’t care if you have 1,000 tracks in libraries, your income will go through cycles. Over the course of decades of producing library music, I’ve experienced some amazing good fortune, like winning the lottery, and I’ve seen good revenue streams dry up like puddles on a hot summer day. We are experiencing one of those transitions/challenges that forces composers shift focus and to branch out.
If subscriptions pose an outsized threat to your well-being, you may need to, as investors say, rebalance your portfolio.
Michael, Just curious to learn your opinion. How does one “adapt” to music licensing models where the offer will soon be “Unlimited downloads for .49 cents a month.”</blockquote
Being in the business of composing and being a composer are two different things. Twenty years ago, I saw the writing on the wall with respect to the viability of composing for a living and changed careers. Today, I compose because I am a composer. That’s how I adapted. I don’t mean to be glib in any way. Changing careers is a difficult choice that requires a lot of work, but it is a choice that should be considered. “New” and young composers, especially, need to have a realistic handle their prospects.
Regarding RF libraries and subscription models, as Art has said, it’s “Economics 101,” supply and demand. As more composers enter the system and as more music floods into the system the value of music is going to drop. It is inevitable. Would you pay more for something than you have to and/or would you pay more for something than it’s worth?
You can increase the value by limiting supply. If the flow of music into the market can’t be stopped, how do you limit the supply? Make your music unique and/or of such high quality* that it is in limited supply in comparison to other music on the market and focus on marketing your music to consumers who care enough to pay for it.
* Quality in this context is about professional standards and not necessarily an artistic judgment.
I wonder if that’s how we see change in our industry. Always bad. Always sinister. Doomsday for composers.
Kevin, my first library tracks were published in 1978. It has been a roller coaster, constantly changing and adapting. One well-known mentor/educator in our industry has said that you have to “reinvent yourself every 5 years.” That’s about right. I see a stratified industry with opportunities on many levels. The composers in the most jeopardy are the ones who, for whatever reason, are stuck in their ways, incapable of adapting and producing new well-targeted, level-appropriate content.
What is the optimistic outlook?
The optimistic outlook or the realistic outlook?
The bargain-basement sites will become known for amateur composers, and serious sites will attract discerning professionals.
There are those in the industry who would argue that the term “serious sites” is an oxymoron, because ‘sites’ implies ‘shopping cart’ sales, whereas upper tier libraries (and I don’t mean JP, SC, etc) have a sales force and deep realtionships with sub-publishers and users.
That said, IMO having a dollar menu doesn’t hurt the sales of McDonald’s more expensive items. It most likely brings more customers in, who may eventually buy items that are not available on the bargain menu. For that matter, the existence of McDonald’s hasn’t resulted in people not paying $15 for a burger at their favorite Pub.
Shopping cart ‘sites’ are operating on the commodity level. That is an economic reality. The question is whether or not you want to be on the ‘dollar menu’ or even if the ‘dollar menu’ can serve as a baseline revenue stream to support broader ambitions.
There’s this thing in economics called the “demand curve.”
New business models are disruptive. They displace and replace old, existing models. Just ask the cab companies who 6 or 7-figure medallion investments are being eviscerated by services like Uber and Lyft. Just ask the studios and session musicians who have been replaced by computers and samples. Music licensing has, unfortunately, reached a similar disruptive moment.
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.
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?
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.
I’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.
I 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?
@Wall_E , the license between the U.S. PROs, ASCAP and BMI, and their composers is non-exclusive, which allows composers to direct license. Many societies in other nations require an exclusive license from their composers, which can limit composers’ freedom and autonomy.