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I agree with putting music on your own YouTube channel to monitor the claims. It really helps stay on top of it so you know there isn’t going to be any problems for your customers. Also I really try to make sure all the music I have out there via soundcloud, or youtube has a watermark. I understand why other musicians want to put there music into content id, but for me, I think the libraries need to do a better job of addressing it.
I think the biggest problem is the shock to the customer there is a claim, and it does put a bad taste in their mouth if they were expecting a hassle free experience. What the libraries need to do is just add an option that says this music is registered into content id on the music details page maybe under the music description. Then have a link on “content id” where it brings up a simple and musician friendly description on how easy it is to clear a claim, with maybe some images of the process. Basically give the customers the option to choose whether or not they want to buy that type of music.
The problem is it’s either hit or miss. They get some music and most of the time it’s not causing a 3rd party claim, and then they purchase some music that is. There was nothing to identify it as being part of content id so now they have a bad taste in their mouths because they don’t know what is going on. If the library had done a better job addressing it, the customer wouldn’t be as upset.
This puts the purchasing power back in the hands of the customers, and economics can take over. If content id music is properly defined, labeled, and is on the exact same non-biased playing field as music not in content id, then the customers have the informed choice. If having music in content id hurts sales for musicians that have music in there, the market will adjust. The opposite is also true. If customers don’t mind the process of showing a license for YouTube, you’d probably see more musicians being involved in content id.
The main problem here is the shock of not getting what they expected. That is a problem that can be fixed by the library owners, and should be on the radar. Personally, I don’t have music in the content id system, but do monitor claims against my music on my YouTube channel. From time to time I have to dispute claims that come up, and I know for a fact they are junk claims. I don’t want my customers to have to worry about that. Content id and digital fingerprinting is not going away anytime soon and it needs to be addressed a lot better then it currently is. It’s like people are still in denial about it, like it’s not happening. It’s time to move past the denial, anger, bargaining, and all those stages of grief and get to acceptance. The library that accepts that it’s the way it’s going to be and works with it instead of grinding against it will really gain a big competitive edge.
Very cool!
Hopefully you can get in contact with the dude and get it straightened out. It sucks to hear your situation and hopefully you can get it to work out. I think a lot of times people feel like they can get away with crap like that but when you call them out on it, they know they are caught red handed in the wrong. The internet is not as anonymous as it used to be. Just be persistent with him and if that doesn’t work I found a DMCA generator online. http://www.dmcagenerator.com/
I am not a lawyer and maybe if someone here is familiar with the law could take a peak at that and see if that will work. Might be a nice tool to bookmark if it has everything you need legally speaking.
Reminds me of something they taught me in economics 101. TINSTAAFL (There is no such thing as a free lunch).
My only thought is maybe it has to do with the GEMA and the way they do things in Germany. It sounds like some kind of misunderstanding or something is getting confused. Just a guess though. It seems like an odd situation.
That is great advice Rob! I’ve said for a while people don’t want dirt cheap they want the best value. I try to echo that through my blog and to new musicians that get a hold of me. There is a misconception about supply/demand and I think a lot of it is not being experienced. People think that lower prices will dramatically increase sales, and in this business I really don’t think that is the case.
Personally I think there is a LOT of new opportunity out there for us, and I am thankful to have gotten involved in this business when I did. It might just be my age but every job I’ve worked at I’ve heard from the people that have worked there a long time that it’s a lot harder now then it used to be, or we used to get paid a lot more for this back then. It is not just the music business it’s like everything, so I guess my expectations are different. Recently, I just started focusing my business locally and I have had a VERY positive response. I just joined my local chamber of commerce, and have got the opportunity to network with business owners in the area.
Let me tell you, maybe in the virtual world the competition for music is very tough, but in the real world I am the only commercial musician in probably a 50 mile radius. I have virtually no competition locally, and I am surprised by how many businesses need to occasionally license music, and I direct them to my website to make their purchases.
That is just some food for thought, and not only have I had some local stock music sales, I’ve gotten some quotes for custom music as well. So I guess my advice would be don’t underestimate your local business community, they maybe needing more music then you think.
Here is mine. Musco Sound
Here is my experience with PMA libraries. About a year or so ago maybe a little longer I wanted to have some exclusive music in a PMA library so I found the list of libraries from the PMA site. I tried the generic approach of just trying to get a hold of someone at those libraries and ask what the submission guidelines ect.
Totally different experience and a LOT harder to get something going. It actually got me a lot more interested in getting my music with them because of the challenge and found out that I’d have to go about it a better way.
I am on linkedin, which if you’re not on there I suggest you get on there, and joined some of the music production groups. For me, that was the best way to get to know some PMA people, and after having discussions in the linkedin groups, I was finally able to submit a solid demo to the owner of a library.
I got solid feedback from him but sadly he still passed on the first go around. He told me that it is extremely rare that they accept anyone on the first submission. He told me that over the next 3 months he wanted to see me using some of the suggestions he gave and re-submit. So I did, and next time I submitted things were better and I thought I would get in this go around.
I didn’t, and I am still doing the dance because at this point I really want to have my music in there. I’m not sure if that is a common experience with people or not, it is just mine. I am hoping in time I’ll get in, and it seems like every time it’s one step closer.
Art, Doesn’t that feel like something your PRO should be doing for you? They should be chasing that stuff down, and if you could find it using TuneSat, why can’t the PRO’s partner up with them, or at least respect the detection? Maybe I am expecting to much but it seems like a system that is not working correctly. How much time do you think you’ve spent trying to reconcile a TuneSat detection with your PRO?
What doesn’t make since to me is when you have a company like TuneSat out there and their reports aren’t used by the BMI, maybe other PRO’s use them, it seems like there could be a lot better way to do it. I think TuneSat claims something like 70-80% of usages go without being reported. I am not sure if that is a valid claim, but that is a pretty terrible percent if it’s accurate. If those numbers are even close then it seems pretty obvious that something needs to change because the system is not working the way it should.
So basically 40 hours of work for $500 equals out to like $12.5 an hour. If that’s ok with you that is what matters. For your situation it sounds like you’ve weighed the pro’s and con’s. Something to keep in mind though is it will be hard to move from that price the next time you work with them. For example say they liked the work you did and want to use you again and in reality you need $20 an hour instead of the 12.5 they might be like woo woo that’s a big jump, and you might have to negotiate to like maybe $15. I guess it all depends on what you need your margins are and how much potential business that person will throw your way. I wouldn’t say your a fool at all. You just need to make sure that it’s a win for you and not just a win for them. To me it sounds like your kind of feeling like you should of charged more because 40 hours is a lot of work time. If that’s how you feel then make sure next time you don’t quote that way again, and hopefully the job pans out good for you and it was worth it.
Sometimes I get a little cynical in the sense that I’ve heard from a lot of people promising me things like oh if you do this music, I got a bunch of work lined up bla bla bla, or this is a small budget project but I got a large budget thing coming up next quarter. Which panned out to be just b******t, and I don’t know if it’s like they are being super optimistic or they were flat out lying to me. Maybe it’s the way they negotiate or whatever, but it’s something to be careful with because you can get caught up in that and think things are going good having all this prospective work but in reality it’s not there.
My old boss was a very smart sales person and she always used to tell us that you quote a price for today (I was in wholesale sales) based on the quantity they are buying today, and the history of sales they have had in the past not what they are promising for the future. The thought behind that is people that purchase for companies have an invested interest in beating down a price.
Thanks Mark, that is good to know. It really shows what is possible at the very top of the mountain. So basically you got composers scoring for zero dollars all the way up to 2 million. That is a pretty nice spectrum of possibilities and everybody is somewhere in there. It’s pretty inspirational to know that people at the very top can pull those numbers, and that is good for all of us.
I am not really sure how you get to that level, but it is pretty sweet to know it exists. Personally I am having a pretty terrible sales month right now, and it’s easy to start to feel down. For me, hope is a big driving force. Reading that was kind of the shot in the arm I needed to hear to kind of snap out of it. I appreciate it Mark.
I wasn’t planning on making any music today, but I think I will. haha I have got to expand my cinematic skills.
Does anybody know how much like the top Hollywood composers get for a film score? Think like Hans Zimmer, what do you think his ball park would be for a feature, or just the highest paid composer in general?
Just hypothetically for the sake of discussion if you were an indie film maker and you were working on a feature that you planned on putting online, submit it out to different film festivals, and were on that level, it would be very unlikely you’d have a budget that could support that pricing of the 1000 a minute ball park. For something like that we’d have to have a real talk about the budget and what was a realistic way we could both have some sort of a win/win arrangement. With something like that it would start with 5% of the budget to begin with and see what that number was. So say they had a 50,000 budget for the entire film the starting number would be around $2500 for the music. Well to create 45 minutes of custom music for $2500 dollars wouldn’t make economic sense for me cause that will take a lot of time. So it would probably start by combining stock and custom music to fill the time. Start a realistic discussion about what absolutely needs a custom score, maybe just the opening theme, and a couple sporadic pieces that ties that together mixed with stock music. Then we’d have to talk about whether there really was $2500 set aside for the music and what they actually had. Say they only had $2000, depending if you’re liking the project and you’ve worked it out that your time is not going to be sucked into this, then maybe work out the credits, along with a prominent music credit on the cover art, film or whatever.
It would really be about working out a deal that is a win for you and a win for them. Maybe if that film does well their next film has some investors and a larger budget of maybe 100,000. Now their career has advanced and since you worked with them in the past they come back to you and can pay a little more.
At the same time the movie could completely fail, and go no where. At least you got paid enough where you’re not having that feeling of like man I’ve put so much work into this and I am not getting paid anything. That is a terrible situation when you get sucked into a time trap and you’ve completely quoted this wrong, it’s going no where, and taking time away from pursing something that is better for you.
That is how I would realistically handle something like that, but if the situation was different and a film maker had a larger budget that may support 30,000-50,000 and wants something super sync’d, specific, and custom, and just unique that would be totally different.
This business has so many different levels and situations. It’s easy to say well this is what I charge, but really it’s more generic then that. It is kind of the starting spot but it’s negotiable because the genre of music can effect the price, the time frame, the project, the person you working with, the future opportunities, ect. There is a lot of “if” factors and “it depends.”
I think it’s really important to keep in mind too that your prices aren’t just about your music. It’s the whole package. What I mean by that is, if someone comes to me over and over again it’s not just because they are happy with the music. They are happy with the customer service, the dependability, the rapport, the trust that is built up over time. I’d be willing to make a bold statement here and that is I would say maybe 90% of musicians here could make a happy clappy ukulele track. I feel like that would be realistic, and there is probably 100,000 stock happy clappy ukulele tracks to choose from online. If you have built up a positive business relationship with someone over time, they know they can depend on you, the trust you will do the job in a timely fashion, and the music is going to sound great, they will go to you every time, even though there are so many other options out there.
The reason being is that it’s not just the music its the value you deliver to them as a whole package. The music, the musician, the core business values, integrity, ect are what really make you successful. People don’t want the dirt cheapest price, the want the best value for their money. Customer service is a HUGE deal, answering emails timely is a HUGE deal, all of that contributes to your pricing not just your music.
I think sometimes musicians don’t appreciate that enough. People value the service just as much as your music. If you can delivery an awesome piece of music for them, and do it in a way that they are confident in you and happy with the experience, you’ll be ok and they will come back in the future. These people have a million things going on and they want to be able to depend on you to get the music side of things off their plate. If they know hey I am going to call up “insert musician here” to do this music they do it cause they know they are going to get something good, and get it on time. They wont have to worry about it. That has value.
MichaelL, the majority of custom music I do is for more for the business world doing explainers, ads, corporate videos and that general niche. Normally what ends up happening is I use that generic pricing as a guide and then figure out a per second rate. I kind of work with the same assumption as a wholesale model where I can quote a price that behoves them to use me again in the future. So for example, I recent customer just got a hold of me to bid on a project for a series of videos for this company. They were talking around 10 videos averaging 1:30-2:00 minutes. Now that was a job I really wanted so what I did was quote them a per second non-exclusive rate with a 6 month window where they could decide to move exclusive. By doing it by the second it was helpful for them to ball park the music. It was less then the normal 60 second rate, but it still left me a nice margin to work with.
For an Indie flick that would be so much out of my wheel house. Don’t get me wrong, if there was a project where I just enjoyed it, and wanted to get behind it, I would work with them and try to work out a payment that makes sense. I have yet to make a contact with an indie film maker that had 30,000-50,000 grand to throw around for a music budget. I am sure they are out there but I haven’t found them. What I’ve done in the past for indie film/indie game developers is have them send me what they want along with some visuals and work with them a bit. Then when I finish the music just throw it in my stock music library for them.
Maybe in time they will get more successful in their careers and remember that and come to me with a 30,000-50,000 budget but those type of numbers for me are still pretty fair away. I’ve been doing the commercial music thing for going on 4 years now, and feel like I still have some dues to pay before I can land a 30,000-50,000 45 minute custom score.