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 curious how people keep track of all of their songs/cues/tracks. I’ve just lately started up a google docs spreadsheet of all of my tracks, and all the websites they are on. On a seperate page on the spreadsheet, I’ve also done up a track description for each track, and a large amount of tags possible for each track. I’ve found this really helpful to keep track of where and what I need to upload, aswell as make sure I’m keeping all of my tracks with the same description and tags – not having to make up new ones because I forgot what I wrote the last time.
Just wondering if anyone does anything similar?
I actually run a free site which interviews film and game composers – ranging from amateur to professional:
http://www.filmandgamecomposers.com
I just do it in my free time, to help other composers out and so that people get information on composing, equipment etc. and get to meet other composers aswell.
Hopefully you might find it handy… 🙂
Ive already put this up in the SCORBE section, but this is a useful thread from another site. You may recognise some of the names from here too, but on the whole , this is a rundown of some of the libraries mentioned here, by Gael Macgregor.
http://musicpal.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/show/182014?page=2
Directories of A&R folks (labels, film/TV supervisors) are, for the most part, pretty worthless. Most label folks don’t take unsolicited submissions from unknown sources so having their contact info has little value. Film/TV music supervisors tend to only care about their current project’s specific needs which can be very narrow. A general CD for them to keep on file is a dust gatherer or trash item.
Lists of publishers, if you are pitching songs for artists may have more value- except the really big ones also don’t take unsolicited. But, you really don’t have to pay for a directory to get lots of names. There are plenty of lists of publishers on the internet.
That is not to say that if you had these lists and had the time, energy and sales/personal skills to spend every day marketing to them– phone calls, letters, emails, etc. you could not make any inroads. It takes a very skilled sales person with cold calling chops (most musicians are not like that) with nothing but time on their hands and no need to actually make money to put food on the table.
😉
HTH 🙂
Some here may be familiar with this one. Im not sure if it’s still being updated, as it looks as if the last entry was in june this year.
http://www.themusicsnob.com/
Here’s some info on the value of publishing agreements:-
http://www.majormusiccontacts.com/publishers.php
ahh..
“Do I need to join overseas societies?
We have reciprocal agreements with the vast majority of our sister societies throughout the World who collect, distribute and account to us for broadcasts and performances of our members repertoire in their territory. You are therefore effectively already covered by your membership for the world.
For collection of mechanical royalties in a specific overseas territory, the most efficient way for you to do this is by looking at joining an overseas collection society. If this is not an appropriate option you may wish to find a sub-publisher that is willing to represent you. If neither of these options are right for you, MCPS can collect your overseas royalities on your behalf.
Please note, MCPS only licenses in the UK.
”
In case anyone was breaking a sweat due to the above post, the general FAQ page is still helpful.
How strange, in that in the FAQ’s section, the foreign performance royalties section info doesnt lead to info, but a holding page which says redirecting to homepage as page as moved..great. 🙂
For the brits amongst us, OUR PRO is PRS FOR MUSIC :-
http://www.prsformusic.com/Pages/default.aspx
nOW DONT QUOTE ME ON THIS, BUT I believe that these days you can become a member for free; when i joined you had to not only produce the proof that youd already had your work broadcast on tv/ radio etc, but you had to make a one-off payment too. Now, it all comes out of your first PRO backend money.
Here’s an article I came across , which some of you may already be familiar with. It’s written by Gael, who i still believe is part of the musicsupervisor.com team.
http://www.filmmusicmag.com/?p=3574