Nutshell life story: massively bored by my day job, desperate to make even a partial living from making music, disenfranchised with the dance music game and not interested in being a DJ, and have a pretty well honed set of technical/engineering skills.
I’m thinking about making a proper go of it with sync music. I like the idea of producing a range of different genres and breaking out of the “club music” paradigm. A cursory look through some music libraries seemed reassuring, as I think my production quality is better than a fair bit of the stuff I heard that was featured by some reputable libraries.
However it seems quite difficult to find reliable info on how to get started, including everything from networking (who, how, when, where etc) to engineering (loudness, formats etc) and so on. Then there’s the whole issue of navigating the contractual side of things, agencies vs libraries vs DIY.
Anyone here have experience in this and willing to share?
I’ve only briefly looked into library music, but from the small amount of research I’ve done, it appears you need to pump out an absolutely massive amount of tracks, and make them generic enough that people looking for music for their corporate presentations or commercials don’t get weirded out.
I personally found the idea of that soul crushing, so I decided to go back to study and broaden my horizons beyond just music; since then I’ve had quite a few music-adjacent paid opportunities that don’t encroach on my personal creative output.
I worked with a library years ago but ultimately couldn’t get along with it. They would give me prompts of specific things they wanted (BPM, mood, style, instrumentation) and I’d have to submit productions that fit that brief. I can’t remember how I became connected with them but it didn’t last long.
Edit: I wasn’t clear but the process was that I’d have to submit X number of tracks and essentially compete with other producers who were given the same prompts.
@pselodux What did you end up doing if you don’t mind me asking?
I gather that for library music you do indeed need to make a ton of music. Seems like you want to average about one finished track per week. As for making them generic, I’m not so sure. My impression is that lots of people do that, but that you can do very well or even better with music that actually has some real soul and originality to it. The hard part is being able to make good music at such a high rate of output.
That doesn’t sound fun at all. I wouldn’t want to do that either. From what I’ve read so far, I don’t think that’s how all libraries operate.
Good move. Unfortunately that sounds like the sort of thing that a lot of hungry artists might be seduced by and end up doing a lot of work for nothing.
…hmmmm…if u give away ur creations to some royalityfree single license lib companies for their individual sync use business model, u end up working out heaps of content for no real profits…
if ur into music creation, u better copyright them officially, keep ur master rights and network with game and film productions for the real sync missions…harder in first place, but way more reasonable on the long run…
gaming is the biggest market these days…if u try to tease one of the smaller companies by offering them work for free at first, to start some connection and then really deliver, that once “for free” offer can pay out big time in the end…
but whatsoever, all this website companies that offer royality free music for individual sync purposes are no good deal for any content creators, end of all days…
real money only comes from writing ur own stuff, claiming it, performing that live and/or catch a sync or contract offer from time to time, because it’s simply not some more next minutes in the endless sea of free to use sonic soucery, nope, it’s all because U made it and U own it…officially.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about “stock music”. I’m talking about publishers that actively go out and pitch music for placements in advertising, TV, film, and gaming etc.
It was more than just music. I went back to uni and studied digital media, with the initial aim to get into sound design and soundtrack work, refining my craft etc. I ended up getting into interactive design, using my background as a graphic designer, and also experimented in other areas such as kinetic sculptures and lighting design.
As for the other work I got, I’m currently working part time at a makerspace, which brings together a few of my interests (design, music, programming), but over the past year have had paid work developing a Max/MSP patch for an art installation, and just this weekend finished a three month project which was initially intended to be just lighting design for a one-person theatre show, but expanded to include a bit of sound design/music, and towards the end almost a producer role, sequencing all of the audiovisual material and triggering it live during the show. Both of these projects came from word of mouth through my uni degree. I realise not everyone has the time and/or money to go back to uni, but it really helped me.
Also, I realise that these aren’t directly music related, but both projects definitely benefited from me having music production experience, hence why I said “music adjacent” . And I appreciated that they were mostly more on the technical side rather than having to give away my precious creativity.
Some food for thought on this… I expect this industry to be one of the most severely hit by advances in AI in the coming years. Anyone doing cookie cutter mood music or sound design cues could well end up out of a job.
. And I appreciated that they were mostly more on the technical side rather than having to give away my precious creativity.