Selling Your Music For Production

All through the improvements that have impacted the music industry, a very important factor that has always been consistent is music for production. This usually has, and can remain, just about the most desired markets for composers as well as musicians. Music for production is very important to a production's success. Each and every film, TV show and also corporate video requires music to lift their final product... they usually have and will be always. Record labels could only get you so far, but bringing a tune in a TV show may gather its returns for a long time.

Production music libraries in many cases are requested by composers and musicians about how precisely to publish their very own music for production. An excellent library should be available to a stable circulation of fresh material from both experienced or veterans and new musicians. Who knows what undiscovered talent is waiting around in the wings! While all of us devote most time of our day online, connected to our email and the world wide web, it's very easy to deliver out an MP3 with a link to a site to browse around. Yet, a bit of work in your production can surely significantly help. Posting a demo CD featuring your very best work, with all clearly branded might have longer desk pile life than an email that's very easy to delete and tag as spam. The majority of production music libraries hold the greatest submissions on hand, generally organized by genre, for upcoming projects. Do not be blown away to listen to back from a library one year after, when they eventually comprehend they do need an album of mariachi rock music for production.

For some music libraries, composer agreements are made on a work-for-hire basis. The library will have the masters and copyrights, and will keep 100% ownership of publishing shares. But, the composer is eligible to take part in all writer performance royalties. Agreements may change among various music for production libraries, although many work on a work-for-hire basis to be able to support the type of music for production libraries as a one stop licensing shop.

Publishing indie music for production is actually a the same process. But, the management contracts differs from exclusive to non-exclusive deals, varying term period and publishing share splits. Many music supervisors, who be given a continuous stream of submitted music for production, highlight the value of exclusive agreements. It's within their greatest interest, as well as your best interest as a composer/musician/artist, to do business with just one company to try to sell your music. By doing this, all parties included are clear in terms of the prices and true ownership/representative of the music in use. You do not wish to contend against yourself and also have the music supervisor settle for a less expensive license fee. You may be losing out on well-deserved license earnings!

Thus, just what occurs when all the parties agreed and your music is used in a TV show such as Grey's Anatomy or Fringe? Hopefully you are a registered writer with either of the US Performing Rights Organizations (PROs), namely ASCAP, BMI or SESAC. These PROs are every author as well as publishers' very best friend. These people are responsible to keep sending you those royalty checks each quarter, yet most importantly, they help safeguard your rights as a composer and publisher.

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Tasmanian Musicians. Carry That Weight

Since recently dabbling in assisting bands increase their public profile by way of an online music newspaper that was initially called "Music In Tasmania," I was underwhelmed by the lack of responses that I received after contacting them. The major response was/is a surefire winner. A chap called Mat from "Argusband" contacted me with other websites that the band is on so I have tweeted them with the relevant hashtags with moderate success at this stage.

I didn't bother contacting Rod Fritz as his online presence is making my job pretty easy as far as "Music In Tasmania" goes.

What took me aback was that I received four letters complaining that they hadn't been featured and the bands that I have featured are "....crap...." "rubbish...." "....wankers...." and so forth. Such letters were the first correspondence that I had received from these bands. Needless to say, they're off my schedule.

Having a small population base put me behind the eightball to start with. Having such useless and pointless comments from some bands narrowed my field even more. This saw me launch straight into 'Plan B.' This entails a name and content change for the paper. It is now called "Music And Arts In Tasmania." It is now including tourism, art, photography and theatre as well as the original topic of music.

Where am I going with this blog? I was heading away from my original theme of discouraging musicians from being aloof when nobody knows who they are for a start. Added to this, it's not a good idea to send unprofessional slurs about other bands to the likes of myself with my mere 26 years as a professional musician. My word travels far and fast. Make it work FOR you. It's not rocket science!

If any bands are viewing this entry as criticism, then you're way wrong. It's the music business. Are you into your music as a hobby or are you treating it as a business? If your answer is the latter then I suggest spending some time exploring legitimate and worthwhile to your specific needs. It really is worth it. You don't have to upload you're entire catalogue of music to each site. I do recommend, however, having a consistent bio. and profile picture.

The music business has been around longer than we have so they know all the tricks. You can make yourself stand out simply by being easily reachable via Google search. This is where consistency comes in. People will be more likely to 'join you' on another site if your presentation is consistent with the other sites that you're on.

It takes time for each site to 'generate' you and make you Google friendly. Patience is a virtue.

The best promotion that I can offer you is via "Music And Arts In Tasmania" (below) which is heavily reliant on my Twitter activity. All you have to do is send an occasional tweet my way and I can get you great mileage; namely in the form of a "featured article." In order to keep up to speed, simply subscribe to the daily edition of my newspaper.

Why Sell Out Your Music Career?

Many independent musicians are known for their anti-corporate stance. It's not surprising then that the concept of "marketing" leaves a sour taste in many independent artists' mouths. The fact is though, there are ways to build your fan base and increase people's interest in and awareness of your music - without selling out. If you are an independent music maker, here are a few ways you can do some marketing without going corporate.



First, if your mindset is completely anti-marketing, you really need to change your tune. Marketing and administration does not have to equal selling out or going corporate. Finding ways to expose your ideas and creations through your songs and music to more people - marketing - shows that you believe in what you are doing.


Just stop and think about it for a moment. Doesn't what you create mean enough to you that you want to share it with other people? If not, why are you even pursuing music at all? Once you stop equating marketing and administration with these negative connotations, you can finally move on and start finding ways to promote your band that are still in-line with your ideals as an independent artist.

For starters, remember that your fans are not only your target market, but also your best promoters. Many independent musicians avoid pursuing marketing and administration because they think it means having to constantly deal with the media, promoters, record labels and other corporate types to help get the word out. If you're not comfortable with that, just skip it and go straight to the people who already are your best advertisers - your fan base. Provide them with ways to spread the word about you and your music. They will do the best job at it - and for free. Think about marketing in terms of your fans spreading their passion about you and the word loses even more of it's negative stereotype, doesn't it?


With that in mind, increasing your marketing simply becomes a matter of increasing your fan base. What could be better than that? Make sure to find out what it is about your music that attracts the fans you already have. Make sure you can describe your style of music quickly and clearly. With these tools it becomes even easier to find others who would also be interested in your music and your message. Reach out to them.


As you can see, independent music marketing doesn't need to be a dirty concept. Once you see it in terms of sharing who you are with even more people who will get pleasure from what you create, you can start using it to your advantage. Best of all you can do this using methods that don't require selling out or forgetting about your roots.

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