[MichaelL]

More Advice is correct that anything sells on RF.

My spin is that in addition to what More Advice said, RF is perhaps the best outlet for non-broadcast-friendly music. By that, I don’t mean not broadcast quality. I mean music outside of pop-culture

But…if libraries if there’s no backend potential, libraries like JP most likely have no interest. What I’ll call small information or industrial producers aren’t likely to pay high-end exclusive sync fees (and there’s no backend interest there either). So…that leaves the RF
world as a logical place to sell music to those consumers.

For that reason its s good fit for my catalog.

And, I remembered the most frequent word / instruction I was given by corporate clients when asked what they wanted: “upbeat.” I took that to mean an overall positive, perky, motivational mood.

Cheers,

Michael

[MichaelL]

Gary, do you worry about price shopping? I’ve thought about posting links on my website, but libraries vary in price.

Thanks,
Michael

[MichaelL]

@Advice (did you send me friend request?)

Here’s my spin on this, based on years of doing non-broadcast work.
There’s an entire universe of things like product videos, training videos and educational videos that often has an entirely different aesthetic than broadcast stuff, which is pop culture oriented.

If you can imagine a corporate video, for example, about a manufacturing process for paint polymers. What???? I used to score productions like that all the time. You need to understand a few basics: 1) corporations are conservative, so things like hip hop and dubstep might not fly on internal productions. 2) The music must be subservient to the narration. It can’t fight with the VO. When your talking about things like, polymers, pharmaceuticals, even financial products, the copy can be pretty dense. At times the music is minimal.

True story: I was scoring a corporate film, and the producer came to my studio to listen to the track against picture. Every 10 or 15 seconds he’d ask, “can you take that note out? Can you take that sound out?” After about half an hour there was nothing left but one long drone note and a few accents. The entire piece was deconstructed. He asked, “do you mind?” I said, “no, I get paid by the minute, not by the note.”

I offer that only as an illustration of how minimal and different some corporate music can be. The producer became a client for years, because I gave him the music that he wanted.

I guess I would say, try to watch some corporate videos on youtube.
Try to watch some science or education videos. Maybe you can find that stuff on youtube. Often museums have videos as part of their exhibits.
I’ve done scores for historical properties and environmental foundations. The former required baroque sounding cues, and that later has ranged from tropical to nautical.

In other words, there’s a need for broad spectrum of functional music outside the world of pop culture.

I have a busy day today. You can send me a pm to talk more.

Cheers,

Michael

PS..I just remembered that Art posted a great video about Birds of Paradise. That’s something good to watch for other kinds of music.

[MichaelL]

I see whole songs going for $2 also. The lowest price you can use is $2. Try searching the site by price and you will see for yourself. These low prices apply to all media (music, SFX, video, photos, etc).

That is a whole different kettle of fish.

[MichaelL]

I am making more money in the RF marketplace because of the price increase.

I really hope that is the case for all of us. But, to illustrate what I mean by an underlying assumption, you are assuming that you are making more because of the price increase. That may well be the case. But, you cannot be certain, unless you have ruled out all other possible reasons. Maybe you have.

@Blind, again there is an underlying assumption. We need to know if there’s a general plateau for RF sales at $100, beyond which there are few sales. If so, then the positive aspects of selling at “mass market pricing” kick in at some point. Where’s the break even point?

It’s really hard to say. There are so many variables.

Michael, sorry to hijack the thread about sound effects. You should have indicated “Undercutting sfx prices” as your subject. Plus I thought MLR was a place to talk about music?

Handy Pandy, your comments were rude and unproductive.

No worries. You’re passionate and believe in your cause. I should have been more clear. As far as Handy Pandy and his fortune cookie wisdom goes…bush league. Just ignore it.

[MichaelL]

Again…just imagine what the income would be if they sold at $100 a track and only sold 1/3rd the volume at that price point. I still do not get your argument.

Part of the tone here is my fault. One of the first things lawyers are trained to do is to look for the underlying assumption of the other person’s argument, without which, there is no argument.

In this case the assumption is that a writer would, or could sell, 1,000 cues at $100, vs. 3,000 $17. That is a big assumption. First, from what I’ve heard, a good selling cue, might sell 50 to 100 times. So, the premise that we have to accept is that by raising prices sales will increase 10 or 20 times.

How does that measure against our real world experience? If McDonald’s raised the price of a burger from $4.99 to $10, do you think sales would increase, or would people say “I might as well go to the local pub were they have great burgers for $10.” Or…would they look for another restaurant that still sells burgers for $4.99?

I’m not arguing for one position or the other, but pointing out the logical premise that must occur for the theory to be true. Any one who does any kind of study based on numbers will tell you that until you’ve looked at long term data, all you’ve got is anecdotal evidence.

Enough time spent. P5 answered my original question, and his has been
a time waster.

[MichaelL]

@More Advice. I think it’s a bit disingenuous to imply someone else might be exaggerating and then take umbrage when someone suggests you might do the same. If you are going to open up that can of worms then you have to expect blowback.

I don’t think it was disingenuous. I think he completely missed the irony, which I was trying to point out. I don’t actually question for a moment the he is actually raising his prices.

[MichaelL]

A point I tried to make to “More Advice” before but it keeps getting ignored.

When obvious points get ignored I generally assume that people either lack the capacity to understand the point, or that they chose to ignore it because it is in fact a valid argument against their view.

[MichaelL]

Dear Handy,

I’m not sure what your point is. I didn’t make any claims about what I have or have not done in this thread. In fact, I didn’t even discuss my music at all. I mentioned what other artists were doing on certain sites and showing links to their stats.

So, what does that have to do with whether or not anyone is an expert?
What does that have to do with my music? Nothing.

However, I started this thread because a certain library P5, has lowered its minimum pricing for SFX, but has not updated that info on it’s website. I was curious about that because I’m planning a new FX catalog.

The thread was then hijacked by someone with an agenda because I didn’t initially make clear that I was not talking about music. Even when I made that clear the argument continued.
That’s what happens when you’re on a soap box.

So,I ask again, what does that have to do with my music? And what have you contributed of value to the discussion? Nothing.

The saddest part about this whole discussion, is that there is valuable information for anyone who does SFX, buried in-between the BS.

Specifically: P5 lowered its minimum prices for SFX to $2, because of the number of short, approximately 2 second long sounds being uploaded.

[MichaelL]

Really, it appears that you guys write stuff just to screw around and play games…it really does this site and forum a dis-service to write non-facts like “I know a guy who sold 1 track 200 times for $17 in one month….when that was NOT the case!

That isn’t what I said. I said that he sold 1 cue more than 200 times. I didn’t specify a time frame.

And now that you have goaded me into revealing what you wanted, here’s the cue: http://audiojungle.net/item/dare-to-dream-big/528879

237 sales.

[MichaelL]

Again…just imagine what the income would be if they sold at $100 a track and only sold 1/3rd the volume at that price point.

I think “imagine” is the key word here.

And… how do we know that these numbers are not exaggerated to serve the interests of AJ?

Now you’ve entered the realm of silliness just for argument sake.
How do we know that you aren’t encouraging people to raise their prices to $100 so that you can compete against them by selling at $50.
Do you see how silly that sounds?

This has been fun. But as I said to DI there’s an entire production music universe that exists beyond these debates. And, as a wonderful woman in my little country town used to say, “this ain’t gettin’ the hogs slopped.”

Carry on.

[MichaelL]

I really see the problem here. Basic linguistic interpretation. He is not just “starting to see income.”

He is speaking to a newbie and stating that it is inspiring when one starts seeing income…something he did a long time ago.

Let me make it easy for you.

Greg is #19, with 8,000+ sales.

But, check out #1 with 23,930 sales. His top seller 3,449 sales. And his Coldplay knock-off 2,987 sales. Anyone else do that with a Coldplay knock-off?

http://audiojungle.net/author/top_authors

There are your facts.

[MichaelL]

That explains a lot.

Greg’s comment is the third one down. Look at the avatar on the left side for his name.

He doesn’t post a link to his AJ page. There’s one to his soundcloud page. As we used to say to young paralegals, be a little resourceful.

[MichaelL]

I’ll send you a PM.

Never mind here’s an interesting post. See specifically what “Greg”
has to say.

http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32905

And BTW “Greg” is what I would consider a pro, with actual composing chops.

[MichaelL]

Besides the one guy that sells $20,000 at AS,I have not heard of anyone report on this site that they are doing well from royalty free music libraries. RF libraries seem to be more of a supplemental source of income.

1) I’ve had this discussion with library owners, and if you have 1500 cues it is possible to make a $2,000 per month from a single RF library. But…your music has to be functional, the kind of thing that sells well.

2)There are far more successful composers who well on RF sites that do not post here than do.

3) There is an entire universe of professional production music composers outside the sphere of what goes on here.
So, just because you don’t see something here, doesn’t mean it doesn’t
exist.

[Author]

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