Here are some useful sites and articles. If you would like to contribute more of the same, please use the comments section to do so. Many of these I picked up from IndigiMusic.
TIN – Taxpayer Identification Number: Obtaining a U.S. Taxpayer Identification Number or TIN if you live outside of the U.S. but working with a U.S. based company. More here…
Keeping Track Of Your Music: How do you keep track of your submissions to the various music libraries and projects? Who accepted and who rejected? More here…
Performing Rights Organizations – U.S.
Educational
“The Independent Artists Guide To Pricing Music”The price is $9.99 but I found it very informative. I have no financial interest in this. Just good info.
Film Music Magazine Knowledgebase
Video: Taxi interview with Matt Hirt – Earning Your Living with Film & TV Placements
Part 1, Part 2, Part3, Part4, Part5, Part6, Part7
Taxi article: “Music Libraries – So What’s The Big Deal?”
Article from Nervous Records Cyf: Mechanical Income
Free samples for composers – Loops, Hits and Multis: www.musicradar.com
Just a quick note/question. I’m looking at a contract at the moment and was advised by someone that if your “output” ie. music is produced in your country, then your laws are applicable to it, and not the US or wherever.
For example, I live in Ireland, and am thinking on signing a contract for the US. One part in it states that “This agreement has been entered into and is to be interpreted in accordance with the Laws of the State of CA. All actions …seeking the interpretation shall be brought to the State or Federal Courts” etc.
Apparently this would need to apply to your own country – for Ireland it should be interpreted in accordance with the Laws of Ireland and brought to the High Court – and therefore should be ammended on the contract. If a court case is brought up, then you’re going to be liable for the court fees in the US ($50k possible)
Does anyone have any comments on this at all? Any European composers to chime in here?
Article by Ron Mendelsohn, President and CEO of Megatrax and a founding member of the PMA.
Should You Sign With A Non-Exclusive Retitled Library?
http://www.shootonline.com/go/index.php?name=Release&op=view&id=rs-web2-5133165-1272980501-2
If there is a better spot for this, please move it Art. Thanks for all you do.
For any Nashville area musicians or those that like to travel.
Nashville Film Festival April 15-22
http://www.nashvillefilmfestival.org/
Panels and Discussions
http://filmnashville.org/panel-and-workshops-at-nashville-film-festival-2010/
Music Supervisors: The ABC’s of Song Placement and Licensing
Green Hills Cinema – Theater 5
Wednesday, Apr 21, 2010 2:15 PM
Understanding exactly how to submit your songs for film or TV can make
the difference between getting that song placed or having it wind up
in the “circular file.” The 2010 panel of top music supervisors
includes Randall Poster (FANTASTIC MR. FOX), Maureen Crowe (THE YOUNG
VICTORIA), Susan Jacobs (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE), and Greg Sill (IN
PLAIN SIGHT). They will discuss how to submit your songs to maximize
your chances; how to build lasting relationships; and how technology
is changing licensing. Jim Scherer (Whizbang, Inc) will moderate.
Please note: panelists subject to change.
Tickets are $15
There are a couple of other Music related workshops also.
Question – we all know a lot about libraries between us all, we know what musicians/composers need etc. Why don’t we all get together and make our own library? Between us all we know what features it needs, what prices, what payout (90/10 to the composer?) etc. Just a thought…
Yes, my wife and I were kicking around the idea of a co-op but not sure how that would work.
Yea was thinking the same – co-ops never *usually* work – the more people, the harder it is. I do think that composers generally know best whats for composers – as long as they are still working as composers and therefore have their best interests in mind.
Btw – have you looked at Drupal?
Emmett
Didn’t get to Drupal and you are right about co-ops. Tricky to make them work fairly.
Tho if a few composers from MLR ever did decide to create a library site, I would definitely be interested in joining:)
BTW I am getting much closer to developing a way for composers to start their own licensing site with opensource software. Stay tuned.
Yea I was thinking on going that route aswell Art. My favourite store was the xml mp3 store (www.xmlmp3store.com), as its the best out there.
In terms of actual web store software, have you tried Opencart? http://www.opencart.com
Its got some beautiful themes, for instance:
http://themeforest.net/item/sancart-opencart-template/59996
Are you looking for software with a built in mp3/music player for it? Its something I’ve been really interested in for ages…
Emmett
Yep, tried that and yes it’s great looking and very straight ahead but (as with most of them) I don’t want or need images. Getting that out of the templates can sometimes be a hassle as well as presenting the music in a straight forward way. I like Mark’s site at http://www.musicloops.com and am going for that look. Also check out prestashop. It’s new and French so there’s not a big community yet. If I spoke French it would be easier. And, yes, finding the great mp3/music player is another thing. Hmmm, maybe I’ll start a thread on setting up ones own license store. I think a lot of folks would be interested in this.
Have you ever seen this?
http://www.allmusiclibrary.com/
I spoke to the owner one – he made it himself, and its only his tracks on there. He said he makes a fair bit from the site, and would consider selling the template for the website that he made. Also, not sure if you saw this:
http://deliveryscript.com/ – I use this for my albums (http://sonicoctave.com/album.html)
Let me know if you need any help with ideas/feedback or anything – I’d like to help you out with this
Nice job on the allmusic site. I’ve finally found a way to build it with WordPress. I understand it the best and I like the fact that I’ll be able to populate the MYSQL database with an Excel spreadsheet upload. Thanks for the links!
I’ve just written an article on how to sell and license your own tracks via your own website – you guys might find it interesting hopefully 🙂
I tested a number of the widgets that are available out there – might be worth a read:
http://www.scorecastonline.com/2009/10/making-money-from-your-music-part-2.html
Emmett
Thanks Emmett, nice article. I’ve been wrestling with this for a couple of months but want to go the “open source” way. I’m pretty familiar with Zencart as I have an e-commerce site at http://tlracks.com that I built using it. Unfortunately it doesn’t handle music very elegantly. I’ve played with Joomla using Virtuemart and that comes close. Also tried a number of open source shopping carts and some WordPress plugins. Still haven’t found what I’m looking for yet. My BIG thing is that I want to be able to export my music database, that includes all of my metadata, and import it directly into the license site I build. I’ve gotten very close. Once I find it I will write a post on my solution.
I have most of it in there but there are quite a few tracks that are finished that need editing so I haven’t gotten around to those yet. I do update the database as soon as I finish something. I found you can get behind very quickly if you don’t.
I started doing this back in 2005. We (my wife and I) created a lot of stuff, fast, for a production company. In retrospect I think our newer stuff is better but that being said that old stuff is on the air constantly. There are so many sides to library music. Ours is mostly under lifestyle type shows. It doesn’t pay much but I think quantity is the key for this type of writing. One of the reasons I like it is that I have a short attention span:-) These types of shows only use a few seconds at a time so we never write anything longer than a minute, two at the very most. I also like that fact that I get to write in just about any genre I want. There always seems to be a home somewhere for it.
We probably have about 300 – 400 tracks at this time.
Thanks for the info Art. I’m now trying to catch up on all of my tracks as I never really uploaded them with great descriptions or keywords etc.
I now have a spreadsheet with a list of about 40-50 tracks, with a good description, a list of keywords, then another list of top 10, or top 20 keywords that can describe a track for those libraries that limit you to selecting only 10 or 20.
Wonder if anyone else does the same, or has any tips/hints?
Emmett
I built a relational database (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database)
using Alpha 5 Software: http://www.alphasoftware.com/.
I like going this route as it so easy to massage the data. When I need to I can export the data in whatever format someone needs, Excel, PDF, etc. I also use it to create addendums to contracts as I add music to their catalogs.
That looks interesting! Never even heard of a relational database before. Sounds really handy. Quick question – do you have like a list of all of your tracks you have available for licensing in that, and do update it straight away once you’ve made a new track?
Also, out of curiosity, if you don’t mind me asking, how many tracks have you got in your catalog? Feel free not to answer if you don’t want to honestly 🙂 I’m just curious, as I’m trying to slowly but surely build up a small catalog – I know its quality over quantity – I’ve learnt that so far definitively, but I’m just curious how much other people have out there