Here are some useful sites and articles. If you would like to contribute more of the same, please use the comments section to do so. Many of these I picked up from IndigiMusic.
TIN – Taxpayer Identification Number: Obtaining a U.S. Taxpayer Identification Number or TIN if you live outside of the U.S. but working with a U.S. based company. More here…
Keeping Track Of Your Music: How do you keep track of your submissions to the various music libraries and projects? Who accepted and who rejected? More here…
Performing Rights Organizations – U.S.
Educational
“The Independent Artists Guide To Pricing Music”The price is $9.99 but I found it very informative. I have no financial interest in this. Just good info.
Film Music Magazine Knowledgebase
Video: Taxi interview with Matt Hirt – Earning Your Living with Film & TV Placements
Part 1, Part 2, Part3, Part4, Part5, Part6, Part7
Taxi article: “Music Libraries – So What’s The Big Deal?”
Article from Nervous Records Cyf: Mechanical Income
Free samples for composers – Loops, Hits and Multis: www.musicradar.com
Yea I was thinking on going that route aswell Art. My favourite store was the xml mp3 store (www.xmlmp3store.com), as its the best out there.
In terms of actual web store software, have you tried Opencart? http://www.opencart.com
Its got some beautiful themes, for instance:
http://themeforest.net/item/sancart-opencart-template/59996
Are you looking for software with a built in mp3/music player for it? Its something I’ve been really interested in for ages…
Emmett
Yep, tried that and yes it’s great looking and very straight ahead but (as with most of them) I don’t want or need images. Getting that out of the templates can sometimes be a hassle as well as presenting the music in a straight forward way. I like Mark’s site at http://www.musicloops.com and am going for that look. Also check out prestashop. It’s new and French so there’s not a big community yet. If I spoke French it would be easier. And, yes, finding the great mp3/music player is another thing. Hmmm, maybe I’ll start a thread on setting up ones own license store. I think a lot of folks would be interested in this.
Have you ever seen this?
http://www.allmusiclibrary.com/
I spoke to the owner one – he made it himself, and its only his tracks on there. He said he makes a fair bit from the site, and would consider selling the template for the website that he made. Also, not sure if you saw this:
http://deliveryscript.com/ – I use this for my albums (http://sonicoctave.com/album.html)
Let me know if you need any help with ideas/feedback or anything – I’d like to help you out with this
Nice job on the allmusic site. I’ve finally found a way to build it with WordPress. I understand it the best and I like the fact that I’ll be able to populate the MYSQL database with an Excel spreadsheet upload. Thanks for the links!
I’ve just written an article on how to sell and license your own tracks via your own website – you guys might find it interesting hopefully
I tested a number of the widgets that are available out there – might be worth a read:
http://www.scorecastonline.com/2009/10/making-money-from-your-music-part-2.html
Emmett
Thanks Emmett, nice article. I’ve been wrestling with this for a couple of months but want to go the “open source” way. I’m pretty familiar with Zencart as I have an e-commerce site at http://tlracks.com that I built using it. Unfortunately it doesn’t handle music very elegantly. I’ve played with Joomla using Virtuemart and that comes close. Also tried a number of open source shopping carts and some WordPress plugins. Still haven’t found what I’m looking for yet. My BIG thing is that I want to be able to export my music database, that includes all of my metadata, and import it directly into the license site I build. I’ve gotten very close. Once I find it I will write a post on my solution.
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I have most of it in there but there are quite a few tracks that are finished that need editing so I haven’t gotten around to those yet. I do update the database as soon as I finish something. I found you can get behind very quickly if you don’t.
I started doing this back in 2005. We (my wife and I) created a lot of stuff, fast, for a production company. In retrospect I think our newer stuff is better but that being said that old stuff is on the air constantly. There are so many sides to library music. Ours is mostly under lifestyle type shows. It doesn’t pay much but I think quantity is the key for this type of writing. One of the reasons I like it is that I have a short attention span:-) These types of shows only use a few seconds at a time so we never write anything longer than a minute, two at the very most. I also like that fact that I get to write in just about any genre I want. There always seems to be a home somewhere for it.
We probably have about 300 – 400 tracks at this time.
Thanks for the info Art. I’m now trying to catch up on all of my tracks as I never really uploaded them with great descriptions or keywords etc.
I now have a spreadsheet with a list of about 40-50 tracks, with a good description, a list of keywords, then another list of top 10, or top 20 keywords that can describe a track for those libraries that limit you to selecting only 10 or 20.
Wonder if anyone else does the same, or has any tips/hints?
Emmett
I built a relational database (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database)
using Alpha 5 Software: http://www.alphasoftware.com/.
I like going this route as it so easy to massage the data. When I need to I can export the data in whatever format someone needs, Excel, PDF, etc. I also use it to create addendums to contracts as I add music to their catalogs.
That looks interesting! Never even heard of a relational database before. Sounds really handy. Quick question – do you have like a list of all of your tracks you have available for licensing in that, and do update it straight away once you’ve made a new track?
Also, out of curiosity, if you don’t mind me asking, how many tracks have you got in your catalog? Feel free not to answer if you don’t want to honestly
I’m just curious, as I’m trying to slowly but surely build up a small catalog – I know its quality over quantity – I’ve learnt that so far definitively, but I’m just curious how much other people have out there