Getting noticed when you're a bedroom studio band...

[daddymack]

 

I could go along with that if it was their job to have an opinion. Their job is to cover the local music scene. They do it poorly.

 

Or...(playing devil's advocate here) maybe they are trying to influence the 'scene' toward a specific direction, which, since they are the 'shapers of public opinion', is in a way, their raison d'etre...unfortunately in 'entertainment news', too often punditry replaces unbiased reporting, and opinion and ego supercede the facts.

[MartinC]

I was on vacation last week, took the wife out to dinner. We were walking around a very small town looking for a place to eat, and while studying the menu, heard a trio playing in one joint. They were hacks. I told the wife I couldn't deal. We walked across the street in the rain and peeked in another place, saw a 12 string on a stand, and took a chance. We sit down and when the solo guitarist/singer starts, a smile broke out on our faces. The guy was good, no better than good, he was freakin great. Had his own take on covers, and could sing really, really well. Had his own stuff too.

 

After his set, I went up to buy a cd. $20.00 - I'd have paid thirty. Turns out he is a pro, having performed with Kenny Loggins, James Taylor, and his own duo for years. I'd never have bought his stuff from listening to clips on the net, or by seeing his cd in a store. He put it right in my face, blew us away with sheer talent. He signed the cd, and sat with us for 15 minutes, talking with us about our lives, his family, his music, sharing stories. We will never forget that night, and if he makes it to my hometown, I'll be there. That's one way of getting noticed.

[richardmac]

 

I was on vacation last week, took the wife out to dinner. We were walking around a very small town looking for a place to eat, and while studying the menu, heard a trio playing in one joint. They were hacks. I told the wife I couldn't deal. We walked across the street in the rain and peeked in another place, saw a 12 string on a stand, and took a chance. We sit down and when the solo guitarist/singer starts, a smile broke out on our faces. The guy was good, no better than good, he was freakin great. Had his own take on covers, and could sing really, really well. Had his own stuff too. After his set, I went up to buy a cd. $20.00 - I'd have paid thirty. Turns out he is a pro, having performed with Kenny Loggins, James Taylor, and his own duo for years. I'd never have bought his stuff from listening to clips on the net, or by seeing his cd in a store. He put it right in my face, blew us away with sheer talent. He signed the cd, and sat with us for 15 minutes, talking with us about our lives, his family, his music, sharing stories. We will never forget that night, and if he makes it to my hometown, I'll be there. That's one way of getting noticed.

 

 

Yeah. This is exactly it. I perform a mix of covers and originals 1 -2 times per month for many reasons, but this is one of them. It's rare, but every so often someone will come up and tell me they were blown away by my music and they buy a CD. And I can get a whole lot of "feel good" mileage out of that one sale. Usually I'll get compliments and I definitely like those. Who doesn't. But a sale says "I'm not just being polite, I REALLY enjoy your music."

[Lee Fitzsimmons]

Damn dudes,

 

Have you not heard of royalty free music!?!?!?? I have over a thousand tracks on Productiontrax.com, as well as hundreds of tracks on Audiosparx, Soundtaxi, Revostock, and many other sites.

 

Before the economy went into the toilet, I was making hundreds of bucks every month from commercial licenses sold on these sites. I still make about one or two hundred a month, but everything is hurting right now, as all of you guys know.

 

The internet is like the wild west. Facebook and Twitter will soon be replaced with better and faster technologies. There's no telling what new things will occur in the cyber-world.

 

Get yourself a real domain name that is easy to remember and learn how to use Dreamweaver and Flash. Then google SEO and start reading. There are going to be so many new things that are coming down the pike that it boggles the mind.

 

Today, for instance I just got a paypal payment for many hundreds of Euros from a stock music site in Germany for commercial licenses sold there.

 

Just wait until the home video stuff gets better than Youtube and is almost as good as anything shown on network or cable. Hell, Best Buy is selling flat screens that also surf the net.

 

Imagine people accessing your music onto their flat screen TV in the middle of the living room that is hooked up to good speakers, instead of hearing internet music on little tinny speakers like most do now.

 

The future is coming, so do not give up hope, my brothers...

 

We shall overcome.

[MartinC]

How do you make money on royalty free music?

[daddymack]

license fees.

[Lee Fitzsimmons]

That's right brothers and sisters...

 

I'm here to TESTIFY that you can make a lot of money with royalty free music IF you can create your own high quality professional grade tracks of your own compositions.

 

At least you could when the economy was booming. Not quite so much anymore. I'm surprised that few here have heard of it.

 

The trick is owning the rights to everything yourself. That means that you write and arrange and perform and/or program everything by yourself. The more help that you have, the more that you will have to split the proceeds.

 

You make money when somebody purchases a commercial license for your song to use in a commercial, promotional DVD, power point presentation, amateur movie, etc.

 

The licenses sell from anywhere between 10 to 200 bucks and the typical split is 50/50 with the hosting site getting half and you getting half. Productiontrax.com gives a 65/35 split in favor of the artist and is my favorite site. Audiosparx got stingy and went from 50/50 to 40/60 in favor of the site.

 

Just go to the site and register and then start uploading. You can do this with Productiontrax and Audiosparx. Most of the others require approval of the site owners before anything can happen. (Please don't flood these places with lame mixes, though. There's already too much of that going on right now. Promise me that you'll only put half-way decent stuff up there... pretty please )

 

I'm a little frustrated with Revostock, because they won't raise the prices and still require that every track from me be approved.

 

Even though I'm the one that Craig (the Revostock dude) originally contacted at the end of 2006 to show him how to go about adding stock music to his already lucrative stock video site. He heard my tracks on Blish.com and liked them, so he got in touch with me and asked me what the best things to do in order to make the stock music portion of his site work. My music was the first music to appear on the site and for at least two years, I was making anywhere from three to six hundred dollars a month on Revostock alone. That was with 10 buck tracks and a 60/40 split.

 

Blish.com actually called me on the phone after seeing my website (CoolMusicGuy.com) and asked me to place my tracks there. Man, that was sweet. I was making around two hundred bucks a month on that site before they burned through their capital and went belly up. They got sold to Jupiter Images and all the tracks and uploads and custom photos and tons of work that I did to get my stuff onto their site just went POOF, up in smoke just like that. Hey, but it was a good ride while it lasted.

 

Anyway, with the economy still trying to recover, there's not that much money in it anymore, but that could change if things start getting better...

 

...let us all hope it will

[BlueStrat]

 

The more help that you have, the more that you will have to split the proceeds.

 

Not necessarily. People who can't play every instrument can hire musicians for a flat fee and not owe them squat from proceeds.

[Lee Fitzsimmons]

Not necessarily. People who can't play every instrument can hire musicians for a flat fee and not owe them squat from proceeds.

 

True. But you're still having to pay the flat fee. A fee is a fee is a fee.

 

BTW - since I posted the last post, I had a sale come in on Productiontrax.com for $99.95 just a few seconds ago...

 

...maybe I should post more posts mentioning Productiontrax.com. I can use all the good mojo I can get these days

[BlueStrat]

True. But you're still having to pay the flat fee. A fee is a fee is a fee.

 

No, a fee isn't a fee isn't a fee. If I can get someone to lay down a track for 100 bucks, I'm done with him and I don't have to keep track of how much the song earns and keep paying him a cut for God knows how long. I would rather pay on a work for hire basis any day of the week than mess around with percentages.

 

Glad to see you're making money doing this. I'm stoked when anyone does these days.

[Lee Fitzsimmons]

No, a fee isn't a fee isn't a fee. If I can get someone to lay down a track for 100 bucks, I'm done with him and I don't have to keep track of how much the song earns and keep paying him a cut for God knows how long. I would rather pay on a work for hire basis any day of the week than mess around with percentages. Glad to see you're making money doing this. I'm stoked when anyone does these days.

 

 

You pay a $100 for help on only ONE track. That is going to eat into your profits in a very BIG way. In order to make any type of impact in the Royalty free market, you have to have hundreds and hundreds of tracks, and then get them placed on multiple sites. If you can't make a ton of tracks by yourself, then your initial investment to create enough tracks to make any amount of money at all is going to be huge.

 

The ability to create a wide variety of stuff is crucial, and if you're gonna have to pay for help, you're probably not going to make any money.

 

However, let's say that you can scrape together a hundred tracks and then get them onto three or four sites. Maybe you can make fifty bucks a month in this crippled economy if you're lucky; but if you're pumping a hundred bucks into each track for help, then you're not going to see profits for a long time.

[BlueStrat]

You pay a $100 for help on only ONE track. That is going to eat into your profits in a very BIG way. In order to make any type of impact in the Royalty free market, you have to have hundreds and hundreds of tracks, and then get them placed on multiple sites. If you can't make a ton of tracks by yourself, then your initial investment to create enough tracks to make any amount of money at all is going to be huge. The ability to create a wide variety of stuff is crucial, and if you're gonna have to pay for help, you're probably not going to make any money. However, let's say that you can scrape together a hundred tracks and then get them onto three or four sites. Maybe you can make fifty bucks a month in this crippled economy if you're lucky; but if you're pumping a hundred bucks into each track for help, then you're not going to see profits for a long time.

 

 

True enough, which is why the model you present is viable for only a very few people. How many guys do you know who can play bass, keys, guitar, sing lead and harmony vocals, program a drum machine, run a recording setup , mix, master, and promote their asses off at all, let alone well enough to sell their stuff online? I know only one or two guys who could fill that bill, and I've been doing this for 40 years.

 

Maybe you don't realize how talented you really are to be able to pull off what you've done. I listened to your stuff and the recordings are great, the drum sounds are really good, your mixes are good, many of the songs are quite good as well. Not too keen on the vocals but that's a personal preference, not any fault of yours.

 

The point is, though, that for 99% of musicians out there, they're going to have to have someone else lay down some of the tracks for them if they're going to be usable. I'm glad you found something that works for you, but as a viable option for most musicians to profit from, I'm not seeing it.

[Disco Cat]

If your music is better than everyone else's, people will listen to it and tell others about it. Solution: make amazing music.

[BlueStrat]

If your music is better than everyone else's, people will listen to it and tell others about it. Solution: make amazing music.

 

[MartinC]

 

license fees.

 

 

My bad-I thought royalty free meant people got to use your music without paying you..............what is the distinction? They can use it if they aren't making money, but have to pay for commercial use?

[daddymack]

they pay you a onetime fee, not a per play or per use like in Royalty based agreements. Quick and dirty, simple accounting, from what I understand.

[Myst_Crow]

There are niches that cater to selling royalty free music, this is a potential avenue for "bedroom bands" or artists.

[Lee Fitzsimmons]

 

they pay you a onetime fee, not a per play or per use like in Royalty based agreements. Quick and dirty, simple accounting, from what I understand.

 

 

You are correct, sir... (he said in his best Ed McMahon voice)

 

Only a one-time fee, dudes and dudettes...

 

Also note that you still receive back-end royalties from your PRO (mine is ASCAP)...

 

The customer does not have to pay recurring royalties on the front end to the owners of the rights of the track.

 

For the big budget stuff, the royalties are paid everytime the song is used, and this is referred to as "needle drop" as in every time the needle drops on the record a fee is paid.

 

With royalty-free music or stock music (as it is often called) only a one-time fee is paid by the user of the track.

 

If the track is broadcast on TV or radio, your PRO royalties are still paid.

 

 

BTW - I forgot to mention that primarily instrumental and not vocal music is used. Vocal music is sometimes used, but often it is custom-made so the lyrics fit with the product.

 

(Sorry for dressing up in my Captain Obvious uniform there for that last sentence:))

[U&I]

Making awesome music alone does not get you noticed - and lets be frank, there's enough {censored} out there getting noticed to prove a few of the above theories incorrect.

[Scafeets]

 

Making awesome music alone does not get you noticed - and lets be frank, there's enough {censored} out there getting noticed to prove a few of the above theories incorrect.

 

 

+1,000

Inventors are told "build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door."

This is, of course, bull{censored}.

I don't understand how anyone can grow up in America and not realize the importance of promotion, marketing, sales and distribution. These four distinct practices are far more responsible for success in music than the relative merits of the music itself, as defined by value judgments, expert consensus, etc.

While quality and craft is occasionally perceived and rewarded by the general public, originality and creativity often take a back seat until properly promoted, marketed, etc.

Many of the answers I read in this forum assume that making good music is often rewarded through perseverance without regard to business aspects.

Show me some examples.

[Lee Fitzsimmons]

 

+1,000 Inventors are told "build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." This is, of course, bull{censored}. I don't understand how anyone can grow up in America and not realize the importance of promotion, marketing, sales and distribution. These four distinct practices are far more responsible for success in music than the relative merits of the music itself, as defined by value judgments, expert consensus, etc. While quality and craft is occasionally perceived and rewarded by the general public, originality and creativity often take a back seat until properly promoted, marketed, etc. Many of the answers I read in this forum assume that making good music is often rewarded through perseverance without regard to business aspects. Show me some examples.

 

 

I couldn't have said it better myself.

 

You totally nailed it, dude...

 

The marketing and promotional hype are where the rubber hits the road. That's where you have to roll up your sleeves and do the hardest work out there that there is to do.

 

Creativity and high artistic quality (other than basic production quality - i.e. professional multi-band compression, high volume w/no distortion, etc.) do NOT matter one bit.

 

I can speak directly from experience, because a very large percentage of the tracks that I sell are what I consider to be B-grade tracks - that is, they require little or no musical skills to create. All they require is high-quality professional production. That's it.

 

My A-grade tracks are my tracks that I feature on my website. These are my "artistically serious" works that I have dumped hours and hours into, meticulously crafting them into fine works of art. My B-grade tracks are usually some type of drum loop, often with no melody, chordal structure, or B section, and are thrown together in 5 to 10 minutes. Of course, the production quality of my B-grade tracks is equal to the production value of my A-grade tracks.

 

My B-grade tracks almost always outsell my A-grade tracks.

 

The artistic level of music currently demanded by the public is very low.

 

I hate to say it, but that's just the way it is.

[ermghoti II]

 

I couldn't have said it better myself. You totally nailed it, dude... The marketing and promotional hype are where the rubber hits the road. That's where you have to roll up your sleeves and do the hardest work out there that there is to do. Creativity and high artistic quality (other than basic production quality - i.e. professional multi-band compression, high volume w/no distortion, etc.) do NOT matter one bit. I can speak directly from experience, because a very large percentage of the tracks that I sell are what I consider to be B-grade tracks - that is, they require little or no musical skills to create. All they require is high-quality professional production. That's it. My A-grade tracks are my tracks that I feature on my website. These are my "artistically serious" works that I have dumped hours and hours into, meticulously crafting them into fine works of art. My B-grade tracks are usually some type of drum loop, often with no melody, chordal structure, or B section, and are thrown together in 5 to 10 minutes. Of course, the production quality of my B-grade tracks is equal to the production value of my A-grade tracks. My B-grade tracks almost always outsell my A-grade tracks. The artistic level of music currently demanded by the public is very low. I hate to say it, but that's just the way it is.

 

 

This post is diametrically opposed to this one, unless one of us has done a poor job of Interweb communicating.

[daddymack]

For the big budget stuff, the royalties are paid everytime the song is used, and this is referred to as " needle drop " as in every time the needle drops on the record a fee is paid.

do they still use that term these days? (no one has 'dropped a needle' in decades... )

[Lee Fitzsimmons]

The key word in the above post on this thread is "currently"...

 

"The artistic level of music currently demanded by the public is very low."

 

 

I am always hopeful that the public will one day eventually desire music of higher artistic quality in the future. That is why I continue to try and create better and better songs. Hopefully, in the future, everybody will desire music that actually takes imaginative creativity and genuine musical talent and ability to produce.

 

That is why I gave a "thumbs up" in the link that you provided above. If we all continue to improve ourselves, then maybe one day in the not-so-distant future, the public will crave actual musical ability, instead of merely desiring a drumbeat to dance to.

 

In addition, the post above was also referring specifically to royalty free music that is currently demanded by customers. The post that you linked to was about music in general. There is quite a distinction between the two.

[Lee Fitzsimmons]

Yes, the term is still used, but not quite as often as it used to be.