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One of our readers, Ev, came up with the suggestion to have a section devoted to newbie questions regarding music libraries, music licensing, copyright, music publishing etc. There a lot of experienced people on this site and many are happy to share their wisdom. So, if you are a newbie (or not), and have a question, try leaving it here.
Of course many questions have already been answered here. First try searching in the search bar in the upper right hand corner. Also Google is your friend! I have found one of the best ways to search a site is use site specific criteria at Google’s web site. In other words, to search for a specific keyword, say “contracts”, type it in at Google like this “contracts site:musiclibraryreport.com”. Do not use the quotes.
If you still can’t find your answer then leave a comment here and someone will most likely come to your rescue!
I’ve had some decent success with Crucial and JinglePunks and now I think I’m ready to dive into the world of Royalty Free music licensing. Thanks to MLR I think I have a pretty good understanding of what it is finally! I’m going to create Royalty Free names for each track so I can keep them separate.
My question to you experienced folks is which Royalty Free libraries do you recommend (or which ones should I avoid)? Shock Wave Sound, AudioSparx, and MusicLoops seem to be a good place to start…. What do you think?
Yes on all three!
Thanks Art! I read something about MusicLoops not allowing cues that are on AudioSparx (because of YouTube or something) and I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t burning any bridges with any of these great companies!
Any tunes you have at Audiosparx must be exclusive to Audiosparx to qualify for their internet royalty program (YouTube). If not keep everything non-exclusive you are good.
Thanks for clearing that up Art. That makes a lot more sense. I think I’m going to try and make a spreadsheet with all my cues as the rows and a column for each RF site that will include the unique name for each cue in each separate RF library. Hopefully that will keep me organized enough to be successful with the libraries using the Royalty Free business model.
Newbie ASCAP question here. I currently have 15 “works received” songs registered with ASCAP. While I labeled myself as the writer, sole performer for all my songs, all my received songs are labeled as having “no publisher” since I wasn’t sure if I could put my own name in that space.
Is it okay for one to put his/her own name in the Publisher portion of an ASCAP song registration (as long as he/she holds all the rights to it, which I do in this case), or should the publisher section be left blank if there is no official publishing company that holds the song?
Ideally you want to join ASCAP as a publisher in addition to as a writer. Then you list your publishing company name as publisher. See-
https://members.ascap.com/ma/EwaWeb/pub/getPublisherApplication.do
Michael
http://www.guidetopricingmusic.com
Thanks this helped me a lot too!
kingseamus,
The best thing to do is form your own publishing entity, like “kingseamus music” for example and have a publisher account with ASCAP.
From what I have heard/read if you don’t do that then you are leaving the publishing money in limbo and you won’t receive it.
If you don’t have a publishing entity of your own and your work is not published by someone else I think you are not supposed to check the “this work has a publisher” box.
Blind
So say I sign up for ASCAP/BMI as a songwriter/composer (not a publisher) and am fortunate enough to get a placement through a music library. The library would be publishing the song, correct? Thus I would not worry about registering as a publisher as well?
In general, you should set up your own publishing company with your PRO.
In the instance of a music library getting a placement they will typically register the song with them as publisher.
Thanks, Art. So wouldn’t you only need to set up your own publishing company if you were going to try to directly license your songs to companies? Just asking ’cause I was looking into signing up with BMI, but hesitated when I saw it’s $250 to sign up as a publisher. If I can just sign up as a composer for free and not worry about the publisher part of it, that would be nice.
You don’t need to sign up a a publisher.
I wonder if this is unique to the States, in Ireland (IMRO) and I assume the UK (PRS) you do not have to have any publisher assigned to collect 100% of the total. Any non US assigned writers want to chime in.
Thanks very much, guys!
ASCAP general question: I have the great iPhone App to check my ASCAP info, but can’t seem to update the “Year to Date” which says 2010. Is this right? Since I have no cue sheets and only 107 songs listed, I’m not sure what is up … probably should wait until I have cue sheets, yes? It’s part of my daily check list … just like my Awaiting Review tracks (2 since Dec 4) at Crucial. I’m a glutton for punishment … oh well!
Hope everyone has a great week!
Cari
I’m pretty much a newbie myself and I’m sure these guys have the smartest answer but in my opinion, you may have the same song in 10 libraries. Maybe of the 10 libraries one gets picked and the rest don’t….ever. Based on that possibility, which I don’t think is far-fetched, I don’t see how saturation is really an issue. The odds that your song is showing up on everybody’s desk and they’re all sick of it are not very good. Might even be a problem I’d like to have. If non-exclusive music was an issue, they wouldn’t bother with it.
Again, let me emphasize, that’s my knee jerk thought without alot of experience.
I just thought I’d escape all this funky metadata I have to do today by answering your question even if only for a minute. Fortunately, I have to go to the bathroom now so I can buy a few more minutes. lol
LOL! I love it! No, exactly Pat I hear you, that is why I ask. On one hand it seems like a problem I would be lucky to have, but is there a risk of looking like a stock music library slut if we placed the same music in 75 libraries for example?
Don’t get me wrong after certain age, being associated as a “slut … anything” is not so bad probably. I am not of that age yet however and even though I will put out pretty easy for my present age, I think you get my drift…. image isn’t everything, but apparently it can be a help or a hindrance in our business.
You want to do metadata for 75 libraries be my guest. I’m in only a few by comparison and I’m trying to get out of it by talking to you. What’s that tell you?
I actually started targeting every library that would take my music. I was up to like 25 libraries. I’ve since decided over time that there are libraries that do nothing but act as a parking garage for tracks and there are libraries that do something if they stand to gain so I started shedding.
I was spending so much time uploading and doing metadata, I didn’t have time to write music.
Now I have a handful of libraries to submit to and try to only target libraries with some kind of track record or the new ones to give them a chance to see what happens there.
I spend only the weekend doing metadata and have so far been able to stick to my two cues every 5 day week (no matter how many hours it takes).
When I get enough tracks out there, I will also submit to some exclusives.
Again, just my view which could change as soon as these more knowledgeable guys show up with their views.
I agree Pat. I started submitting to many different libraries and finally settled on only a few to work with. Like you say many seem to be just a place to park tracks and not much more.
Yes! Thank you both! We are getting into the juicy stuff here. Even though I did not type it what you (Pat & Art) are saying is also rattling around up in here.
At first when we get into the business it is all just trying to break in etc. But then after a while writing a track that is likely to get picked up is not so hard and becomes even something we bank on.
This ties into another post I read here today. (sorry don’t have the link handy..) about “wanting a few more like Jingle Punks.” Yes Please!!! Me too and also. Even though there is a very structured system, how many tracks you can upload, time frames, sincerely I think they gett’er done faster than most. The log jam of track review and integration into the system can be large for a one or two person team. Especially if you would like to place a few hundred pieces with a library. (not to leave out the many other potential composers and recordings entering the system)
I appreciate hearing what you had to say, because you can see I have been thinking about this. It all ties together for me, because a system of submissions can clearly get us into many places. But is that what we want? And then and also balancing, how much work it can take to get tracks into a company and creating new content…. not looking like a stock music slut, all at the same time. Seems then to just get down to finding the right balance. Thank you both! looking forward to reading from others more on it too.
Worry less about what you look like and focus on what you sound like yogi. You’re selling a product not a personality (although personality has it’s place because you’re also establishing relationships in a sense with each submission). I’m just saying get the priorities in good order. If your music isn’t good, it really doesn’t matter how you appear to people except maybe as a nice person with not so hot music.
Don’t analyze, utilize. Now get writing.
lol! No you are exactly correct Pat thanks!
How Much Is Too Much Exposure?
I have not found other posts touching specifically on this. When you have a body of tracks you are licensing non-exclusively and you want to get them into as many libraries as you can, how many is too many before the content is going to start looking over saturated?
For example some non-exclusive libraries, we could pick Jingle Punks for ease, re-title by simply placing a JP at the end of the track title. Which is meant to help with accounting and proper payment. Others (less and less it seems) may change the name of the track to read something different entirely. Same recording & master with radically different title. (I sorta prefer the latter)
How many libraries can a track be in, with the ‘mostly’ exact name, and not be reaching the point where editors or music supervisors are internally saying…”Geez! I see this track everywhere. That’s the 5th library this week. (just making this up as I go folks!)
Is this something to give thought to? Has anyone direct experience with getting a track title into toooo many libraries by the same name? Certainly it is the music that counts and most would probably recognize the same music after hearing it again…. or maybe not right? Many will have the experience of sending the same track to the same person a few months later only to hear “where have you been hiding this!?!?”
I would love to hear from people who track re-title for their own marketing purposes. If you do, how do you keep track? At what point should we consider it? (how much is too much exposure for a track?) Yes, no exactly! Subjective question coming in… would love to hear from others on it still. Thanks!
I re-title mine for different RF libraries and some libraries want their own titles. I built a relational database to keep track of everything. Each tune in my catalog table has the capability to add aliases to the main title. I also have a field in the alias table for the library that title is assigned to.
I also have separate tables for libraries and writers. All told I might have 7 or 8 tables that all relate together. This way I can view the data in a myriad of ways.
It’s very easy to keep track of who has what and when it was sent.
Art, when you register those alternate titles with your PRO, do you list them as alternate titles of the original work, or do you register them as new titles? Or do you just let the library register them?
If they are RF libraries I usually don’t register them. If it’s a library that creates their own titles then they register them as new.
But my “titling” approach leaves a lot to be desired from a PRO point of view. As an example I have one particular cue that has been purchased many times from an RF library. It has it’s own title that was unregistered my PRO. It recently started showing up on a number of CBS and NBC shows and was picked up off of the cue sheets with the wrong publisher info. Even though the RF library had the PRO info for that cue. BMI will straighten it out and I did register that title finally but lesson learned. I have to get a better handle that aspect of my titling efforts.