As a music library owner, I am interested/look for high quality production music with a concept tied in that maybe hasn’t been done so much before. Something with a little twist to it, an edge over what our competitors are doing. All this said, the decision on whether we accept a composer is left with myself and the staff here who listen to music submissions on a weekly basis and yes, we listen to everything that comes in. Your music might be the best that’s out there and if that’s so then we would choose you if we thought we could get good usage from it and or whether we have that genre you might be providing is covered in our catalogue.
The point is that we know what we’re looking for down to the very last note. Composers need to push themselves and find every avenue possible to get their music out there. I am always shocked at how writers don’t listen to what we do first and insist on sending us songs with vocals when we clearly are asking for instrumentals for use in TV, film, promos’s, Commercials, radio etc.
Finally, a quick story about one of our writers: I was a regular customer to a well known music instrument store and got very chatty to one of the sales guys, a South African guy who told me from the start that he wrote music out of work hours. I asked him “what sort of stuff are you producing” he said “oh yeah man well, a bit of D&B, House, Big beat, dub-step that kinda thing”…I liked his positive attitude a lot and gave him my card and said “send me some of your stuff”. Well weeks later I still hadn’t heard anything from him and went in there one afternoon and said to him, “hey what happened to that stuff you were going to send me?” the reply came “oh well er yeah ya know..I’ve been busy doing this and that” I said “ok well here’s my card again, just send me a bunch of MP3’s or even just one to hear what you do” He sent me the stuff and I was blown away at how original, edgy & personal his music was. I signed him (non-exclusively) to do an album for our library and it has been the most used CD we’ve done. 6 months following the distribution of the album (and remember this is Production Music being sent out to mainly TV/Film/Radio Production companies) He/We received many 1000’s of $$ for the music being used on TV promos for a few well known channels.
It can be done. Be original. Be yourself. Don’t do what you think is needed, do what you feel inside, your passion will show in the music, even if maybe the production needs a little work, I am personally willing to give composers a chance if i think they have that certain “something”. Give your music attention to detail and *listen* to what is out there and be honest with yourself if you think it’s special enough to be broadcast. Don’t be afraid to get opinions, not from family members…sorry, but from other composers, publishers, anyone in the music business you can just get them to listen for 3 minutes to your *short montage”
Go for it!!
Anthony James
Music Candy.