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In response to Vasim, it was my 8th quarter/statement when I felt comfortable putting in my notice for my day job.
Mostly stuff on the “cinematic” side of things as opposed to pop. Orchestral drama, electronic tension, orchestral comedy, etc. The more “film score”-esque genres.
Mine reached 4 figures by my 2nd payment. I know that’s a lot faster than most, but I was dropped straight into writing 5 tracks a week for a very busy library focusing on American reality shows. So I had mostly US royalties coming from a US PRO for maximum speed.
I had my highest payout yet, thankfully. Still growing after 8 years and a comfy range for a while.
I think you should be capable of mixing your own music competently in this day and age. It’s already hard enough to make money just entering into the library world as a beginner. I can’t imagine how negative you’d go if you were paying someone to mix every track.
In the highest of high end library work, working for the biggest publishers and being paid well up front for each track, it could be beneficial. In fact, some libraries even do the mixing in-house without you having to pay for it. But for the majority of us trying to work our way up, I’d say mixing is an essential skill.
This one was good. My 3rd highest overall, but still in a very good comfy range. My last 4 quarters have all hovered around the same amount, so I’m wondering if I’ve hit my earning plateau at my current output rate. Or maybe it’ll just do a crazy jump again soon, like it tends to do.
Or a crazy drop.
My 2nd highest quarter overall. I noticed a significant jump in my international royalties, and also had a lot more network than usual thanks to Tough as Nails on CBS really liking my style. Cable is my usual bread and butter, and it was overall down compared to usual, but thankfully the network and international increases balanced that out
Mark nailed it. It’s a “sexy” side of the library business, but honestly it can be so depressing and exhausting, especially if you’re chasing after customs. I would never advise anyone to pursue only trailer music full time. But it’s a nice thing to have going alongside a more normal library career.
In 2015 I kinda stumbled into this field by getting recruited into a library company that works directly with lots of reality TV shows while just posting music for fun on youtube. It was a lucky opportunity, a music supervisor and composer who happened to need help with the cinematic side of his employer’s catalogue. He reached out to me after finding my music on youtube and we had a phone call, and I decided to go for it. Started writing 5 tracks a week with mentoring from that music supervisor, and after 3 years, I felt comfortable quitting my day job. It was year 4 that I made $60k+
Along the way, I started learning more about the library business and reaching out to make my own contacts with other more traditional libraries, and also got into trailer music as a side hustle. The reality TV stuff is my bread and butter work, and I do occasional solo albums for other libraries to get my own ideas and creativity out.
I’ve realized after reading quite a few stories that I managed to have an exceptionally fast launch. I’ll chalk that up mostly to luck, as my first library contact ended up being a very important and lucrative one. But I’ve gotta say, jumping straight into 5 tracks a week while working a full time office job sure was something. I’m very grateful for where I’ve made it today.