[mikevan]

The group is called “Original Music for Media”

Hi Michael
I’ve been a member fo years but I rarely post stuff, haven’t been there in a while, actually… I’ll go and check it out again.

[mikevan]

Though I’m mainly a guitar and bass player, I’ve always been used to work on my own since my jiingle days in the 90’s… I would like to collaborate with other composers, splitting royalties or working for hire but I find it hard to find people on forums or groups… Even went to a couple of that cab company rallies but nothing came out of it. Do you find collaborators on line or by personal acquaintances, friends of friends?

[mikevan]

The quality of the tracks on their website is quite good and the list of clients impressive but ‘a contribution to distribution, marketing and transaction costs, recoupable from composer mechanical royalties’ looks really bad…. No mention of this library on the MLR database… A new one? Most of their albums are ’empty’, just a title and a cover…

[mikevan]

i tried the demo but it sounds more like an experimental tool: when you try to edit a track in most cases it adds artifacts to the sound, it’s hard even to ‘retune’ a single instrument track without strange things happening to the sound. It may be more useful to remix and experiment and try new ideas than to actually change an existing track or arrangement and get a new one.

[mikevan]

The Kontakt 5 library seems to be the same as the K4 one, there is some useful stuff like the VSL orchestra sounds but nothing particularly stands out. Good if you need a ‘fast’ sound without going through a dozen libraries. If you have an older version of Komplete there’s a good offer for the upgrade to K9 and in this bundle there’s a lot of interesting stuff. I just got the upgrade and still ‘getting to know’ all the libraries but I’m quite satisfied with the quality and quantity. definitely worth the price of the upgrade.

[mikevan]

I try to find song titles that are ‘interesting’, they may suggest a genre or an atmosphere but I try to be ‘original’ or use a pun or a paraphrase of a famous track title if there some resemblance to it and try to grab the attention of the client; it usually seem to work. The problem with ‘Ambient Guitar’ 1, 2 or 3 is that you may not be the only composer that came up with the same idea in the same library…

[mikevan]

I use both techniques: I usually cut the full length version but beforehand I prepare a few ‘special’ bits like a short and long ending note, an alternate short intro and maybe a couple alternate segments. I also have a few separate drum fills for stingers or to connect parts.

[mikevan]

@gdomeier
My tracks are all registered with SIAE (Italy’s PRO). In my experience only a few German sites won’t accept pro-registered tracks (they call them selves GEMA-freie). Most Rf sites encourage composer to register their tracks to get back-end royalties but a couple say that non-regisred tracks may have more placements.

[mikevan]

In short: Producers aren’t the ones paying fees to PROs, networks are.
2. I have tracks in RF sites generating broadcast royalties

I’d love to get into the ‘big’ ‘traditional’ libraries, but it’s not that easy…
In the meantime I got about 10K in broadcast royalties in the last year from RF sites placements, so it looks like somebody is filling in cue sheets even in the RF world.
I don’t have control on the pricing of my tracks on most of the RF sites but even if the single licenses are relatively cheap (30-70$), multiple sales on different sites add up and most of my tracks have passed the 1K mark in license fees (and some 3 or 4 times that, plus some royalties). So the (single) sale is not really the end.
I know that to some these figures may be quite small but you have to start somewhere and work your way up.
I started writing library music seven years ago and maybe it was already too late and the market was already crowded and, living in Italy, until the coming of fast internet connection it was a market I could not access (I didn’t even know it existed except from Valentino Library Cds).
So I don’t see Rf sites as ‘evil’ but as the only way to go for now.

[mikevan]

@Mark Lewis
thanks for the reply and advice…
7 years, to be precise 😉 I know that my catalog is small and I’m to blame for not producing more tracks but I had to do ‘local’ studio work to pay the bills even if it’s very underpriced and in the end gets me nowhere. Now I’d like to give a serious shot to RF music and I’m trying to understand what’s the best strategy to ‘build’ something that may have a future… Music business in Italy is quite dead… Unless you’re American 😉
@ More Advice:
100€ were for local radio jingles, you could get 500 for a Network and 1000€ for a radio commercial. Then there was the big league of Tv commercials but they were very closed circles. Things were always hard for a musician in Italy but now nobody has got any money 🙁
I can’t complain ‘cos I had a good 10 years, made some money, did some cool stuff but now I have to reinvent myself… again…
Thanks everybody for sharing your opinions and experiences

[Author]

Posts