45 thoughts on “Emmet Cooke – Library Idea”

  1. Audio for apps is cool but will you have a separate designation between apps whose sole focus is the music and/or sound effects and the apps that actually use the audio as the background for something else.
    For example, say you have a selection of classical music and someone licenses those tracks for their ‘Listen to Classical Music” app.
    Would they pay a different rate from someone who is only using the classical music as the background to a game or video?

    Another example would be a farts app. If you licensed a selection of fart sounds to an app developer and they made millions of dollars off of their $30.00 license from your site would that be valid? They would be making a fortune directly off of the sounds they licensed from you, not as a background sound or synched audio, the sounds themselves.

    Something to think about when you build your licensing structure.

    • Hey lawn thanks very much – appreciate that! I’ll be including that in my licenses, just need to take a look at the wording of it to ensure that the sounds can only be used as background sounds and must not make up the actual majority of the app.

  2. Hi guys,

    I’ve got the store nearly ready and would like some feedback from composers on what they think of it.

    Would anyone be interested in having a look with me and seeing any improvements I could make or what I may have missed out on?

    Thanks!

    Emmett

  3. You should make your library exclusive. There are enough non-exclusive options for composers to send their music to. Exclusivity is a cheap and easy way to build a nice high quality library. It really does weed out composers that have doubts about their compositions.

    And a 3-year reversion clause for tracks that do not sell would be good for the composers. Also, set the prices yourself. Like many composers have said here, they are not good at selling and marketing tracks, so they should let you pick, price, and pitch the music.

    Think small (in terms of number of tracks) to go big (charge a higher price for high quality exclusive music)!

    • Although I agree this whole non-exclusive, re-title thing has lots of problems and some major players don’t want to take tracks from re-title libraries, there is something to consider here…

      If you start a new library, how many composers out there would sign an exclusive with you even with a 3 year reversion? Look at all the posts here over since the site began and you’ll see just how difficult that is. Would you sign an 3 year exclusive with a brand new library that has no track record?

      Hence, a catch-22 for starting a new library. This is why new libraries love to push how they are 100% non-exlusive, don’t own your music, you can still do whatever you want with your tunes, etc. They need tracks or they have no library.

      Personally, I think it’s a tough time to jump into the library business. Way too much competition and unless you bring something truly unique and of great value to the END USERS (they don’t give a sh*t about ease of upload for you and me), you will be just another also-ran– one more website or hard disk full of tracks.

      If you want to start this type of business, ask yourself what value can you bring to the clients who effectively ‘pay the rent’?

      🙂

      • I think you have the wrong idea about where I was going. I think Emmet should intentionally keepmhis library small. He does not have to aim to be Sonoton, Killer Tracks, or another big name exclusive. He should just focus on collecting tracks from artists that really believe in the concept of the library.

        The easiest way to prove that the library gets placements is for Emmett and a few pals to add their own songs to the library and get those used. A good 10 placements in TV, commercials, and maybe a movie trailer would be good enough for composers to take a chance. 3 year exclusivity with a reversion clause is not a bad deal.

        I think that Emmett’s library under those criteria would fit for experienced composers. He really should only work with experienced composers to reduce headaches. In my opinion, non-exclusive retitle libraries are minor league libraries that inexperienced composers should work with, and when I say experience I only mean experience as far as working with music libraries,
        not years composing music. Exclusive libraries are for those ready for the major leagues.

        Emmett has the chance for huge success. Go Emmett!

        • I agree with you both. It depends on the situation and audience really. For my library, it will be a very small (prob 1000 – 3000 tracks) and cater for a very specific audience who will not care too much about exclusive/ retitling etc.

          I’m probably going to start it off with my tracks and a friend’s tracks, then as we get some more traffic, boost it by adding composers one at a time.

          Looking at it now, implementing every feature composers want would not be useful in the beginning. We could upload everything for composers, and just send an invoice each month for how many sales that composer got.

          It will definitively be a small operation to start with, but its great to get your feedback in relation to the composer side of things – thanks guys 🙂

          • As much as I love composer features in libraries (electronic submission and signature, view downloads, update audio file, edit meta-data, see activity, etc.), what’s WAY more important is what you provide your client end-users. I think you know that.

            If you can get composers to sign exclusive deals, there would definitely be a marketing advantage to telling your clients this track cannot be found elsewhere, you have total control of it’s film/TV representation- no conflicts. You could offer both exclusive and non-exclusive options so you can pitch the exclusive ones to the major networks.

            Although having a searchable database from keywords on-line is needed, a lot of music sups have no time for or interest in searching websites. It’s better if you can build relationships, get the requirements from them and then send them a very narrowed down set of choices for the lead– maybe only 3 tops! If they know you’ll truly listen to them and give them very much on-target tracks, you’ll build a lot of cred.

            🙂

            • Thanks – I agree with you completely. This library however will be geared solely towards apps and mobile games. I won’t be pitching or directing advertising towards tv/film.

              The website is http://www.audioforapps.net – theres a holding page there currently. Hope to have it released around March. I am focusing more on client end features, rather than composer features. Taking notes on everything though – some features for composers may be built in the future 🙂

              Emmett

  4. Hi Emmet

    thats great news, your an innovator ! my suggestion and i dont know if anyone agrees with me – make the upload as EASY as poss, make the template option the best and easiest ever – some sites suck with their interface and to me its their biggest downfall, we all know how infuriating it can be, so my suggestion is pepper the upload process with a little humour, with nice colours which make it look less tedious but most of all just make it FAST, i think the key to that is having a very simple interface, if poss stick it all on one page, and make the template work and effective, if you can make it the simplest interface of any site with minimum time you may get a great opening to your venuture with people willing to upload, if you make it time consuming and tedious with the prospect of little sales for 1st year, who knows u may get lucky tho – then i think it will hamper you the most of getting this thing up and running. just my 2 pence. cheers

    • thinking of it emmit – if you can entertain this possibility – let people upload and tagging is done by third party – dont know if youve got a brainbox little brother whos willing to do it for you! then that would be a massive pull, a no brainer for getting people willing.

      • Thanks for your input Adam. I agree that upload should be as easy as possible. I think to start off, a simple CSV and bulk .zip file upload will work. We can upload these details and tracks manually then.

        The upload process is certainly something I want to take a good look at..

        • i know you will do good job emmit cause you know your stuff and know a lot more about it than me. i would like a one page upload – and as few clicks as poss, and the more template usage the better, like click one button and get a load of ‘positve’ words clicked in place or load of dramatic rock words, the less i have to do the better. god i am lazy , its true ! i dont know if i was born lazy or grew lazy, but yes , the less i have to do the better a site is to me. good luck with it and im sure its going to be great.

    • I think musicloops.com is the best and quickest interface for uploading tracks one at a time. I particularly like their grouping function for alt mixes. Also if you need contracts for each set of uploads then Jingle Punk’s eDoc solution is very slick.

      And for pricing my sweet spot seems to be around $35-$40.

  5. “Anyone’s thoughts on this? What do you selll your tracks for usually? I generally sell my tracks from $20 – $30, but obviously have sold licenses for a lot more depending on the usages. Don’t want to contribute to the race to the bottom by undercutting the competitors at all.”

    It would depend on the track length and it’s end usage.

    But again it depends on what exactly your area of the market is going to be and what your customers are willing to pay.

    Are they wanting something unique to your library ? I personally can’t get my head around this non-exclusive business. You just end up undercutting yourself. How important is buyout to your customers ?

    But I guess what I’m trying to say is $18 is a lot for a ringtone, $30 is peanuts for TV or film. Plus I have to factor in the $ to £ exchange rate.

    Got to be brutally honest here and take off the composer hat : your business is driven by it’s customer base, not the composers. Sorry folks, thats business.

    • Thanks – yes I agree. Its not for TV, Film, Ringtones – its for a smaller market. I’ll go into it in more depth in a few weeks/months when its closer to completion.

      One route to go down would be allow composers set their prices, but I think this never goes well. Some composers come along and sell tracks for $5 and undercut everyone, devaluing the rest of the music on the site. Would rather have a set price.

      I’m actually going to do a survey on the target audience to see how much they would be willing to pay for music and sounds – best way to be sure really.

  6. Hi all,

    Myself and a friend are setting up a music library with a special license which caters for a specific type of media. Its nothing big at all, and I’m not looking to go into competition with any of the big libraries out there either.

    We hope to take on other composers and give a good rate (65/35) which will go up after a certain amount of sales (as will the price of the music so they keep earning more).

    I was wondering if I could get feedback – what do you think constitutes a good music library as a composer, and what features do you want as a composer? Contract, statistics, rate, price etc.?

    Also…would anyone be interested in joining? Its nearly built, I can almost gaurantee there will be little to no sales for the first year, but its aimed at a market that finds it difficult to find licenses for that media, so I’m quite certain that it will gradually take off (don’t want to get into too much detail yet). As I said above, there will be a really good rate for composers, and we’ll be spending the majority of the income we get from it on improvements and advertising.

    We’ll need sounds, fx and music. Thanks 🙂

    • I’d possibly be interested, depending on the target market and type of music and sound needed.

      One of the things that’s important to me, is timely replies from libraries that one is already in. It’s very frustrating to send musical ideas or respond to requests from the library and then hear nothing back.

    • sounds interesting, though personally I’m not exactly thrilled at the suggested split :

      “We hope to take on other composers and give a good rate (65/35) which will go up after a certain amount of sales (as will the price of the music so they keep earning more).”

      Can you perhaps elaborate on that without giving away too much of your business plans ?

      • Ha sorry. You’re reading it the wrong way around. Its 65% to the composer 35% to us as the library 🙂

        Say a track starts at $18. Composer gets $11.70 per sale. If it sells 50 times, it goes up to $20, then composer gets $13 per sale.

        We haven’t decided if it will be per track, or per overall sales per composer, but we were looking at increasing the composer % as they make more sales. So it could potentially be – track sells 100 times, the composer gets 70% of the income from that track, and the track goes up in value also. The way we see it, if the track sells well, then its worth a little more money – people won’t squabble over it if its a good track.

        What else do composers want in a library? Personally, I like to be able to see some sort of analytics such as track views vs. sales, receive an email when you get a sale etc.

        • “Ha sorry. You’re reading it the wrong way around. Its 65% to the composer 35% to us as the library”

          Well that deserves a very large “DOH” on my part.

          I’d certainly be interested 🙂

          My initial question though would be : are you making this a composers free for all, where composers basically upload what ever they like. Or are you actually vetting submissions to control the content of your library ? If it was me, I’d certainly be vetting content.

          • I’ll be the first to admit that 65% of no sales is still useless, but I want to start off by doing this right. Good composers rates, everything a composer wants on the website such as analytics etc. – after all its the composers that make it.

            We’d absolutely be vetting content – not a free for all at all. I know how that goes and it ends up being the library is full of junk, with potential buyers having to wade through it all.

            • This sounds mysterious… I’m in!

              Could you please feed my ego by randomly adding 100 to my “play count ” in the analytics?
              Ha!

              Seriously though, this sounds awesome! I look forward to being rejected by you. 🙂

              • Great stuff, I’ll update everyone in maybe 2-3 months when we’re ready to start taking on composers and have more info for you all.

                Was just curious regarding interest and what composers would like as features etc. 🙂

                • Hi, Emmet!
                  0) Excelent communication:))) Resonable feedback rate/time.
                  1) Description, Tags and Title fields should be equal priority when searching a tracks.
                  1.1) Smarty search engine (track with “mystic” keyword should appear even when “mystical” is entered, also: “laid back” and “laid-back” should be equal with searches)
                  2) Stats:
                  – “plays” without counting composer’s hits (if I playback my own track being logged-in) and one hit from one IP.
                  – “sales” (of course)
                  – graphs of plays/sales depending on time (look on Pond5 solution for example)
                  3) User friendly track list (what I have uploaded here?) – one-view-point – strategic overview – minimum track descriptions – maybe excel table – very narrow, tight and eye-comfort!
                  Cheers!

    • Wow, $18 per track? And you think you’re providing a useful service to composers? Way to devaluate the industry further for hardworking composers Emmet! It’s ridiculous.

      • This is the kind of feedback I’m looking for too – thanks 🙂

        As a general question to all composers, what do you see as a fair price for a track? I’m by no means looking to devalue the industry, just basing my ideas on some websites that already sell quality tracks.

        The type of media we would be licensing music / fx for doesnt have any backend royalties, so it need to be enough on the frontend for composers to be happy. Do people think $30 per track is fair? See…its all based on the audience you are trying to sell the tracks to, and this particular audience does not have huge, or even large budgets. Then again, anyone wanting to buy music should be able to afford $30…

        Anyone’s thoughts on this? What do you selll your tracks for usually? I generally sell my tracks from $20 – $30, but obviously have sold licenses for a lot more depending on the usages. Don’t want to contribute to the race to the bottom by undercutting the competitors at all.

        • can you make it a library where a composer can easily remove a track/s at anytime after being accepted into the catalogue? (does any library do that?) I would be interested but at the same time a little weary incase another library that has the same tracks decides to have an issue with your library’s prices an kiks me out theirs

        • I think the price of music depends on who your competition is and what your target market is. If you’re talking $20-30 then you’re in the royalty-free arena, so competing against plenty of big libraries.

          Personally, I think $30 is the minimum that a track should be (although I’ve probably got music going for less somewhere!). As this business model requires a large volume of sales to be effective, I imagine it will be tough starting up for the first year or so, maybe more, but why sell for 33% less than you have to ($20 instead of $30). The royalty free library that makes me the most money sells at $29.95 for a single track.

          • Pricing is a great topic for discussion. I’ve been doing a bit of experimentation (basically raising my prices for a few tracks that sell well). I’ve found that my tracks sell pretty much as well at $44 as they do at $29. For what it’s worth, Audiosparx has a cool algorithm that raises the price of a track every time it sells.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

X

Forgot Password?

Join Us