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Hopefully she’ll appeal it. This is a ridiculous precedent to set. The very resonant 808 sounds the same and the melody has a similar sort of arc, but so do the millions of other trap instrumentals in existence.
At least we’ll all have a stable source of income going forward if we can just randomly sue artists to make ends meet.
Have you listened to the “classical” sections on libraries like MusicBed? https://www.musicbed.com/songs?genres=classical
It’s far from purely orchestral, but it might be something you’d be into writing if you don’t want to go the epic/trailer music route?
Do you think it’s possible I am missing subtileties in the playing because I am not a pianist? And maybe not using the velocities like a pianist would play dynamically? Or is it more a tempo and feel thing?
It’s both. I got the same criticism when I started doing piano programming and couldn’t really hear the difference, but I pick up more and more things as time goes on.
I don’t think you necessarily have to be a pianist and play everything in to get the desired effect. You can learn how to place notes “around the grid” and mess with the tempo envelope.
Maybe you could place a track in your DAW of a really good pianist playing something, and try to match them note for note?
I feel like I may have bitten more than I can chew with this haha. Lesson learned.
No, your writing is really good! Honestly, you could probably put these tracks up on an RF site and they would sell as they are.
Not pushing a product, but I would go with Omnisphere.
+1 for this
How can you determine that? Is there a way to see stats like on AJ?
Nothing as exact as AJ, but if you do an empty search, you can sort every track on the site by “best match” or “popular” https://www.pond5.com/search?kw=&media=music#1/2064
There’s also this: https://contributor.pond5.com/data-trends/music/
fwiw, “Jazz” is the 29th most searched term on Pond5. There’s absolutely a market for it, and you can cut yourself a nice niche in that market if you write it well. 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
+1 for lo-fi hip hop too. It’s the defining sound of YouTube at the moment, so TV people will eventually start using it within the next 10 years, and continue using long after it’s gone out of fashion. 🙂
Very nice writing.
Just from a marketing perspective, it might not be a good idea to name your flagship track “atonal mess”. 🙂 I actually do like that track, but I’d call it “Noir Investigation” or something.
I’d recommend slowing the tracks down a bit and giving some more breathing room between phrases. Maybe add a pad element underneath the piano to fill the empty space (I know you said you were having trouble with synth choices? Listen to tracks from MusicBed, the artists there tend to pick synths that work well).
The playing also sounds a little bit mechanical. A bit of rubato here and there would make your tracks really stand out.
I think the piano instrument you’re using is also contributing a little to the “mechanical” feeling. Keyscape and Fracture Sounds Woodchester Piano are the ones I’m using myself nowadays, and they tend to not cause me many issues.
The endings fade out very suddenly. Let them ring out.
Tell the YouTuber to contest the claim through YouTube’s system, if they haven’t already.
If there is a song title on a restricted list with the same name as a SmartSound song title, then it will sometimes be flagged.
According to Art’s link, so hopefully forcing Cyberlink to manually check their claim will resolve the issue.
I don’t receive much in the way of backend yet, but a few months ago I received royalties for a track that I hadn’t even registered with IMRO, and it still got through. The person who filed the cue sheet didn’t properly write the name in a way that would have exactly matched any of the titles anyway.
I realize it’s a good failsafe to have every title registered if you can, but given how much work it can be, I just wonder how necessary it is now. Have there been many cases where you’ve had royalties not get through because of an alt title?
You’re definitely on the right track.
I’d recommend downloading best-sellers from libraries you’re targeting and studying them closely. Trying to reproduce a top-selling composer’s track for practice is a great exercise, and can really help you learn new production techniques, and help you figure out if anything’s missing from your own work.
Regarding structure, again, refer to best-sellers. I’d suggest making your tracks a bit longer (aim for about 2:30). Innovation Station in particular is way too short at 0:52 (even if you’re going for advertisement-length, it should be 60s exactly).
For stock music, the best thing to do in my opinion is either a trailer music structure (three acts, increasing intensity, like a film, with an epilogue section), or intro-crescendo-bed-bigger crescendo-epilogue. There’s no strict rule, and It depends on what fits the music, but those are generally what you should be aiming for.
And just to echo what BEATSLINGER said, be very careful about having noticeable changes in the music beyond the usual structural elements. A lot of stock music is used under dialogue, and elements like the synth coming in in Chillest Percussion can just be jarring in that context. Playing your tracks over timelapse videos, or videos of dialogue without music is a good gauge.
I know for a fact that unless it is requested. NOT following the current music trends too closely, and being a few years behind is best.
Got a laugh out of this, it’s very true.
If we’re talking about the same library, I once got asked to change _all_ of the major chords in a future bass track to minor chords because the track wasn’t sounding dark enough. When that wasn’t enough, it was suggested: “Hmm, we might have to make them diminished chords then”.
Alternate versions make up 72% of my sales on Pond5.
We’re all going to be replaced by AI in a few years anyway.
If it makes financial sense, I’ll opt into it. If it doesn’t, I won’t.
Do we actually have any numbers to suggest that it would reduce revenue? Isn’t it entirely possible that a large number of new customers attracted by a different model could increase revenue for us in the long-term? I’m interested to see how the numbers work out.
People are seeing this as one new subscriber customer = one less pay-per-download customer, but it’s entirely possible that one less pay-per-download customer could = 10 new subscriber customers. I think about all of the big-name YouTubers who currently opt to use free Creative Commons and YouTube Music Library music who might be attracted by the larger and higher quality selection of RF sites if it can be made more cost-effective for them to just grab whatever music they need.
At any rate, I trust most music libraries not to make stupid decisions that would lose them a huge chunk of revenue. They stand to gain/lose as much as we do, right?
Buying stereo mixes in the late 60s was sort of like what buying 192KHz files from HDTracks is today. It was more about “Hey, isn’t this cool, we can hear one instrument in this speaker, and vocals in the other” than how we really think of stereo now.
Stereo mixes were commonly done after ~1965, but up until the early 70s they were often an afterthought compared to the mono mixes, a gimmick. It wasn’t uncommon for engineers to spend weeks getting the mono mix perfect, and then to just dash off the stereo mix in a few hours with the band/producer not even present at the session.
It’s very common to hear engineers/artists from that era talking now about how superior the mono mixes are compared to the stereo mixes. You’re even seeing things now like projects to do proper mixes of classic albums in stereo (eg Sgt. Pepper’s).
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So honestly, when doing soundalikes from that era, I’m trying to stick to a “classic sound, modern mix/quality” mantra going forward. You’re not filling up the track with tape hiss, recording errors, generation loss from bouncing, so why stick to outdated mixing practices too?