PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic A little self-promotion - selling my music for the first time

So, here's the deal. I've been recording my own music and participated in this forum for almost 20 years (man it's weird to type that) and I've never attempted to sell my music in any fashion.

Maybe there was some fear of rejection or radio silence, not gonna lie.

I know I've told myself that I never wanted it to become 'a job' as it's always been a joy-filled hobby of mine.

But I've had the itch the past couple of years. I wanted to do something a little different and a friend that makes a living as an independent film-maker (yes he makes a living doing this) suggested that I put up some of my music on tune society, a music licensing site.

So, you can't buy mp3s off of this site. You buy a license to use a high quality .wav for unlimited, but restricted use in film projects. You buy the license once, and you can use it in as many films as you like, giving proper credits. You just can't resell the song directly.

The TS folks state that it's good to put up several variations of the same song. That's what I've done with 'Extinguish Lights'.

Have a listen. If you have film-making friends that could use this 8 minute long contemplative piece, please let them know about it.

http://www.tunesociety.com/artist/rockstar_not

Well, sorry if that was a commercial. First time in 20 years. (well, except for the adverts I did here for a CD I helped with to benefit victims of Katrina years ago). 2nd time in 20 years.

-Scott

Hey Scott. That looks like a really interesting site. I have been trying to submit my music for TV and commercials for a while but have not found a way to do it cheaply (Taxi, Broadjam etc all really expensive). So this looks interesting. I have a bunch of instrumental tracks that I developed a while back just sitting there doing nothing so I may try upload those.

Are you doing 50/90?

Regards

Josie, I am not doing 50/90. I'm married with 4 children, have a full time job and a weekend gig 2 weekends a month. Just won't happen.

It will be interesting to see if I get any takers on Tune Society.

At least my film making friend said he loved it, but he was possibly just being nice.

Scott.

If you're going to pursue this avenue, I'd suggest a few things.... write shorter cues. Eight minutes is a long piece of music and no scene in a movie lasts that long. If you're gonna write the 8 minute cue, at least make the variations different. What I mean is, not just a different 8 minute take on the same theme.... give them a 15 second cue, a 30 second cue, a 60 second cue and even a 5 second cue. Make it from the start, middle or the ending so that they can easily drag and drop it into the movie. It's rare to have the music in a TV show or movie, last more than 30 secs...a minute at the most. Even the title theme song in a movie never plays in it's entirety until the closing credits are rolling.

Also, look around. There are dozens of good, first rate music libraries that specialize in film and TV. See what their submission requirements are, see what their split is, see if they are exclusive or non-exclusive and place your music with them. The more folks you have representing your music the more likely you are to get a cut.

My music is in dozens of libraries and publishers. Most are non-exclusive. Not only the full songs, but some have a dozen or more cues cut from them and all those are in the libraries as well. You really never know what the producer is looking for. They may need something for 12 seconds in a TV show or a movie, and they really don't want to listen to 8 minutes of music to find that music..... they'd rather listen to a 15 second cue because really, that's all they will listen to of the 8 minute piece.

You can find libraries on the internet and simply research them a bit and submit to them. Most of the better ones will have a screening panel and a quality bar you'll need to get over.

Some of the better, more active, libraries actually will send you a tip sheet letting you know about the projects they have setting on their desk at that moment. They tell you what they are looking for. Ambient, jazz, comedic funk, rocking country, ballads, male or female vocals or instrumental.... essentially everything you need to submit or write for that particular listing and when it closes.

Taxi and a few others charge memberships and some have submission fees... those are the services. Do NOT confuse those with libraries and publishers. They are a middleman doing some screening or providing a buffer service for the pub or library. Quite often, those libraries are the better ones and don't want a bunch of email songs flooding their inboxes. Don't be afraid to use them, but know what they are and what they cost. TAXI IMHO is rather costly but does have dozens of good listings on a weekly basis. There are others without the high membership cost. You just have to find them. None of my placements came through any of the TAXI listings I submitted to. I quit TAXI several years back and started looking on my own. My placements in film and TV were the result of my own searching for film libraries.

Very important: Join a PRO and get your registration number and register your songs with the PRO. (It's free to writers) Many good libraries will register the cues you place with them, for you. Some will not so be on top of that. It's how you get paid for the music so be sure it gets done. Oh yeah... don't worry with a copyright on the cues. If you have a full song and think it might be a movie theme song... yeah get it copyrighted. None of my film and TV cues are copyrighted. They are registered with the PRO and when they get used, I still get paid. Telling you to not worry about copyright I'm sure will cause a firestorm..... but that's how I have been doing this for years.

Keep good records. Let me say that again..... KEEP GOOD RECORDS. Be able to easily find out which libraries have which songs and cues. Know what was sent to whom, and whether they accepted it into their library or whether it was rejected. And be 100% absolutely accurate and sure about the exclusive libraries. You do NOT want to send something you signed to an exclusive library to a non-exclusive library. Keep your songs in 2 categories. Exclusive signed and non-exclusive. Exclusive means you can NEVER sign that song to anyone else ever again. Publishers tend to use exclusive agreements. Just be aware.

That's a good start.... there's more to learn, but you can pick that up as you begin the journey. For now, look for the libraries and get your music into them. One day, quite to your surprise, if you stay diligent, you will receive a letter from BMI (or your PRO) and when you open it, you will find a check and a statement of account on what songs were used and who used them and where. That's a day you will not soon forget.

I certainly support your endeavors, Scott. Good Luck, and I hope this is very successful.

Additionally, I appreciate your comments Herb. You have articulated some very valid points, definitely worthy of consideration.

Trev

Herb, great points. I did join BMI and started the song registration process. This group of variants does need shorter cues. Because of the very slow tempo, I will be challenged to get any of the build in 15 or 30 second cues. That's the next step of refinement for me.

Scott

I wish you great success Scott.

Best Regards,

Scott, good luck!

I'm in BMI and Sound Exchange, as well as Fliktrax for music library marketing (non-exclusive).

Best of luck. Insightful thread as well.

I wish you good luck too.

Anybody making money yet, by placing their music on licensing sites? I know guitarhacker has been real successful placing songs.

Just another avenue.

I know a guy with about 10 original albums (CDs) who sits all day Saturday and Sunday 9-3pm at a flee market and plays them through a small boom box. He has been selling his CDs like this for over 10 years. $10 each 3 for $25. Just saying there are other avenues for selling your music.

I'm working on my first CD and its all original Christian contemporary. I plan to perform in several ministry events this fall and sell the CD. I have one booked for October, far enough out that I will have at least an EP for sale.

A few other ways to make money selling your music:

1. Do gigs and sell CD's. With a good fan base and a variety of different clubs, you can make a nice income this way. Of course, you can't keep playing the same club every weekend. You have to have a few dozen different venue's on the schedule. Back in the day, well before CD's and digital music, one of the bands I was in was playing a fairly decent club circuit and played full time. I sold merchandise for the band. It was an investment I had made and so the profits or looses were mine alone. I sold photo's of the band, buttons, and T-shirts and other sundrie items. We didn't have any music to sell. There were many nights where I made more money selling merch than I did from my cut of the gig money.

2. Set up a web presence and get a sizeable fan base. Sell on line. You really want to have over 5,000 fans. Pomplamoose is the example to follow here.
https://www.youtube.com/user/PomplamooseMusic
They even landed a nation TV car commercial as a result of their fame a few years back. They make a respectable income from doing their music this way. They don't tour. IN fact, they did a tour one time and lost money on the 30 day tour. Watch some of their video's to see how they do the music and video.

Use your imagination and find the way that works best for you.

Herb,

I followed your cue and made a 2m cue with a bit of variety from the longer version.

I snooped around on the tune society site and found that there are almost no purchases of songs of this length, as in, nearly zero.

Longest cue song on the site right now is 13m.

There are 50 songs on the site at 8m or longer, and only 5 total purchases of those 50 songs, 3 of the 5 from just one of the songs. Those were purchased at $59 each.

In fact, there are almost no purchases of any songs longer than 5m.

5-7m is kind of a no-man's land of purchases.

Somewhat surprising, only 1 purchase of a 10s or less 'stinger'.

Even at the 30s mark, almost no purchases.

The most purchased song is just over 3m long with 21 purchases, most of which were at $99, which means the artist cleared 1/2 of that.

Next most purchased clocks in at just over 1m, with 20 purchases, again at $99 for most of them.

4th most purchased was at 6m 25s with 14 purchases.

I'd like to peruse your stuff - is there a way to find it directly?

Unfortunately, I don't keep my musical cues for film and TV on any of the open websites. Who wants to hear a 5 second cue? Besides that... I wrote over 40 cues for one particular TV show listing... it was a MAJOR job uploading them to the library let alone putting them into soundclick or some other site. There are hundreds of cues in some libraries that I've written and recorded.

I do post some of the full length songs in my web site.

New Grass Lullaby, Footsteps in the Hall, Come & Go, and several others from my website are in libraries.

The songs I write for cues tend to be no longer than 60 seconds in their full length version. They tend to NOT follow a verse/chorus format. That makes it easy to edit cues from them and they have excellent edit points in them. The edits can be as simple as only 15 seconds of the original song or it could be a different set of stems so that the cue, while it's from the same exact part of a song, doesn't even sound like it's close to being the same song.

Hey Scott,

Here are four of mine on TS. You might want to use them as a template for what not to submit. No action at all.


Just go to the link and enter "90 dB" and hit Search.


http://www.tunesociety.com/music/search.aspx



Regards,

Bob

I'm thinking the overall site might be somewhat dead. It is run locally here n COS, and most of the artists with significant sales are COS based. I'm going to check out a few other licensing sites.

Bob, I quickly auditioned your songs. I would say Tears of the Volga would work well in some rainy sad scene. Did you realize that there is a Vocals question on the categorization form for each song? Martians has vocals but the song info says that it doesn't. An auditioner might blow off listening to your other songs if they think you haven't categorized your songs correctly.

Herb, I guess my question was which examples are getting you paid? Any of the full length stuff?

In quarter 1 of 2015, for example, they took one of my full length bluegrass songs.... under 3 minutes total length, and did their own editing and used that one song in over 70 cues for 4 different shows. That song is not on any of my music sites. Heck I'd have never guessed that song would be the one they picked.

In fact, I have never heard how it was used in the various shows and the made for TV movies. That is often the case. A statement shows up with a check from your PRO and it tells you what song in which shows and well.... good luck trying to find that show on-line. You normally have to wait a year for the new season to come out.

To me, it really doesn't matter. I'm busy writing and sending in more music. Maybe one day I'll get a chance to hear it and how they used it. For now, it's Write, Submit, Write, Submit...repeat. It starts slow and may be many months or even years before you get a cut. You just have to stay at it. Listen to what the current trends are.

Bluegrass used to be the hot music of the day... now I'm hearing more guitar based Rock cues and acoustic guitar cues. Remember when Uke music was the hot thing? Not anymore. Every 6 to 12 months you will notice a change. Stay Current.

Thanks again.

Now that I have submitted the first one, I do feel like it's going to be an interesting journey, and your advice is going to help me at least take step two and hopefully many more.

A friend of me that has been highlighted in TAXI's blogs and recent placements suggested using the http://www.hitlicense.com/ promotion website and service.

Do you use any promotion sites to go along with the licensing? It seems this might be part of the equation as well.

-Scott

I no longer use any sites where I have to buy a subscription or join as a member to get the leads. It's reasonable to pay a small submission fee per song submitted to the lead services. And yes, there are a few that will send you viable leads for free. You pay a submission fee slightly higher as a non-member. I'm OK with that. That keeps everybody and their brother from sending every song they have ever written to every lead and overloading the email servers.

The film music network is one to investigate. I have also researched the independent libraries and have a publisher in Europe who is handling some of the songs and music I have written, on the other side of the pond. All of these are out there on the internet for you to find and use. The European publisher regularly sends me emails with his current and future musical needs for artists and film/tv deals. Several I am with here in the states do the same thing. Once you get passed their quality standards test/evaluation, they put you on their email list for projects coming down the pipeline to which they plan to submit the music they represent.


Big libraries are good in that they have a huge number of clients looking for music, but they also have an astronomical number of songs to choose from. You are the small fish in the big ocean.

Small libraries, where the owner knows you personally, and has good industry contacts can easily be a great deal. The owner can and will push YOUR music and promote it to the producers. That's the kind of thing that happened for me when I had 70 cues in several shows. The library president pushed just one of my songs to multiple people and they all used the song. You gotta get into a library where the owner has the street cred to make it happen for you or else your music simply sets and collects dust.