One of the many great things about living in Barcelona is that it is a popular place for all kinds of conferences and trade shows. We are attending the Digital Music 2.0 conference this week and I just came back from my first day.

It started off with a ‘where are we now?’ panel discussing the current state of affairs in the distribution of digital music. It basically boils down to people trying to figure out how to make money in a completely new paradigm.

I was surprised to hear how resistant many of the audience members and some of the panelists were to the idea of change. The fact that the record shop as we know it is probably a thing of the past as well as record labels. There is simply no money to be made in this world of $0.99 digital downloads and people seem to be holding on to the old ways for as long as possible.

Some of the quote I heard were “there are no examples of musicians successfully making it on their own using the internet”, “musicians and bands will always need us for distribution, management and marketing”.
I thought I had been transported back to 1996.

There were some great panelists too. The most impressive of the lot were Sam Levin, Gerd Leonhard and Rupert Davies from Virgin Records.

They spoke of new ways for bands to build fan their fanbase using social networking and widgets for promotion. Gerd was especially interesting with his mantra of “get the attention and the money will come”, meaning that people should not be so eager to put a buy button next to everything they upload to the web. Give your product to the people who are interested in it, build a following, get traffic, once you have this attention you will figure out how to monetize it. The goal is to make people want to give you their money instead of forcing them to buy your content before they even know who you are.

I think most of the people that are active in distribution understand this but it sure was a controversial idea to the people in the audience of Digital Music 2.0

Rupert also had some great insights into how tough it getting for record labels these days and that they are constantly dealing with huge changes in the industry and having to adapt to new marketing techniques.

Sam talked about new applications and ideas coming from Silicon Valley, he also gave our company a nice plug in his speech and reinforced Gerd’s comments using our business model as an example.

All in all it was a great time with catered coffee breaks and a cocktail party at a nice hotel at the end of the day.

Here are some links if you want more info:

Digital Music 2.0 website

Panelist: Gerd Leonhard (Media Futurist)
mediafuturist.com

Panelist: Sam Levin (Social Media Consultant)
samlevin.com

For the 2nd year in a row Partners In Rhyme has agreed to sponsor the Indie Short Film Competition with a big line up of prizes including collection of music and sound effects from our catalog.
If you are a filmmaker and think you might be interested on entering you can visit their website here

IndieShortFilms.net

Welcome to the 2nd annual Indie Short Film Competition. This innovative international short film and video competition is a great opportunity for aspiring filmmakers to advance their career, gain recognition and receive international exposure in the filmmaking industry. Entering this filmmaker friendly competition gives you a shot at being discovered by the right people and opening the right doors to get your short films seen by top industry professionals in the filmmaking business.

Enter your short films and/or videos in any of our 10 Categories: Comedy, Drama, Horror/Thriller, Animation, Action/Adventure, Family/Children, Sci-Fi, Documentary, LGBT, and Music Video. Winners will be selected by a judging panel of top industry professionals who are seeking the next generation of creatively talented filmmakers out there. Winners will receive awards, cash prizes , sponsored merchandise & services and also international exposure!

Here’s a great question that I found on the Film and Game Composer’s Forum from a member who is a roylaty free music composer:

"Does anyone have any kind of knowledge about keywords and descriptions on royalty free sites? Does it REALLY help sales? I mean considering the extra time required to think up and input these terms…"

I believe I have extensive knowledge in this area and yes, there is no doubt that good descriptions and keywords for your tracks have a big impact on sales.

"If it is a helpful tool, then what are some of the more popular techniques that are generally employed by composers and producers on Royalty Free websites…"

Here’s a list of general concepts that will help you to fill out your descriptions. If you answer most or all of these questions in your description plus add a little flare and creativity you will end up with a great description that compels the customer click on the play preview button.

Things to convey to the customer
what genre(s) it is:  jazzy, fusion, latin, rock, speed metal
what tempo: uptempo, slow,
type of feel: funky, laid back
instruments used with descriptive adjectives: real guitar, swirling synths, majestic strings
emotion: sad, lonely, happy, soulful, lost,
what type of use: children’s show, wedding video, corporate presentation, hollywood blockbuster
structure: is there a bridge, is there a chorus, is there a breakdown, etc?
sounds like?: name some bands that the music might be similar to.

Examples:

Michele Vanni writes great descriptions

Rearview
The road lies ahead, a new adventure, and in the rearview mirror we see familiar
places fading in the distance. The radio plays this happy and somewhat nostalgic
tune driven by 12 string acoustic guitars. The main theme is played with more energy
and additional electric guitar the second time around.

Dan Morrissey also writes great descriptions

Exit : Stage Front
Twisted synth sequences get this pitbull of a track moving, then massive guitar riffs
crash in with drums and bass to form an irrrestistable groove. Imagine a cross between
White Zombie and Kraftwerk. Contains drums, synth ,bass and lots of guitars!

Bjorn Lynne also knows the value of a great description,

Spellcraft
Depicting a magic fantasy world of fairies and deep forests full of magical creatures and
ancient adventures. Otherworldly, pastoral. Piano, vocal pads, tremolo guitars, mysterious
sounds and hand drums.

Customers love descriptions! It makes it easier for them to browse and gets them interested in the tracks before they even hear it. Remember that customers more often than not use the search function of royalty free music websites. If your description says "rock song" it will probably never be found or purchased.

Monalia Ventress is a composer / sound designer and co-founder of Partners In Rhyme, Inc., she is also an author and has her first novel, Horizontal Rain: Memoirs from Middle Earth, available for purchase on Amazon.com.

It tells the story of our travels through New Zealand, Indochina, Indonesia, Australia and more along with detailed and exclusive ‘making of’ stories about The Lord of the Rings films which I worked on while we were living in New Zealand.

Here is the jacket blurb from the book:

Mona-Lia and Mark are two ex-scenesters living in Hollywood who uproot their recording studio, two dogs and burgeoning Internet company and move to New Zealand where Mark has landed a visual effects job working on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Both of their lives change completely for better and worse. Mark begins working inhuman hours and is swallowed whole by his new job while Mona-Lia travels around the Southern Hemisphere to escape the domestic stress and strain his new job causes. Mona-Lia and Mark rediscover themselves and each other in their quest to explore new and exotic lands such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Tokyo, Samoa, Fiji and Bali. This three year journey is filled with detailed accounts of the making of the visual effects of The Lord of the Rings films along with in depth observations on what it is they learned about leaving their home, friends and family in California to live and work in a new country.

If you’re interested at all in how Partners In Rhyme Inc came about and grew into what is today then check out Horizontal Rain: Memoirs from Middle Earth.

We all need a bit of stress relief now and then. For those of you who just need a quick fix while you’re doing the rounds on the web you might want to bookmark our Guided Relaxation and Stress Relief product page where you can get a free 6 minute fix of guided relaxation to wind you down and relax you so you can get through the next few hours of the day without losing the plot.

Check out this link for Free Stress Relief

With increased competition in the royalty free music marketplace there are lots of sites popping up that are selling music for ridiculously low fees. They are asking composers to upload their tracks promising them only 40% or 45% of a $10.00 fee. The composer would take home whopping $4.50 for a high quality full length track.
$4.50 will barely get you a gallon of gas.
These sites do not offer any backend royalties either.

I urge all royalty free music composers to avoid these types of sites or at least give some serious thought to what you are doing before you upload. These sites will only devalue your catalog and make it hard for other distribution channels to accept your music. If your track is on sale for $10.00 on eCheapMusic.com then it will make it very difficult for a proper site to justify charging a higher price for your music elsewhere.

Just my 2 cents but I know that many other royalty free music site owners agree with me on this one.

You can now download high quality royalty free classical music to use in your commercial project for a low, one-time fee at:
Royalty Free Classical Music

These royalty music clips were performed by a real symphony orchestra playing the most popular favorites from these famous composers:
Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Dukas, Dvorak, Elgar, Grieg, Handel, Haydn, Liszt, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Mussorgsky, Offenbach, Pachelbel, Paganini, Parry, Ponchielli, Puccini, Purcell, Respighi, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rossini, Satie, Schubert, Schumann, Smetana, Sousa, Strauss, Suppe, Tchaikovsky, Traditional, Verdi, Vivaldi, Von Weber, Wagner

Some royalty free music websites will charge you up to $370.00 to use this music in your broadcast TV show or film. Royalty Free Classical Music only charges $34.95.

Partners In Rhyme is a US corporation but we are based in Barcelona, Spain. We are currently visiting family and friends and taking care of misc business in California. We are fortunate to be staying at a nice bungalow right on the beach at the end of Topanga Canyon Rd.
We have been catching up with some of our LA based composers while staying here.
Our first visitor was Bob Mann who I have known for almost 30 years now. He is the composer for our Auraspheres ambient music collection and a contributor to musicloops.com.

Mark and Bob

Tonight we met Gayle Ellett and his wife who had just flown in from New Zealand. We had a wonderful chat with them over a bottle of wine. Gayle has been part of Partners In Rhyme for a very long time now and has been a steady contributor. His latest collections are Exotic Acoustic and Dreamscapes.

Mark and Gayle

Paul Black is a friend of mine since the early punk days back in Hollywood. We have been in a few bands together and have always made great music together.
Paul was a founding member and lead singer of LA Guns who are now on a comeback trail with a new record deal and worldwide tours.
It was great to catch up with Paul again after more than 10 years. We sang songs for each other and talked about old times and old friends. Paul is also a film composer and might be contributing to the Partners In Rhyme catalog in the future.

Paul Black and Mark

Christopher Mast is posting some nice music available for YouTube videos and videoblogs under the Creative Commons 3.0 apportioned attribution.

Check out his page here and download his royalty free music clips in WAV format
Download Clips from Christopher Mast.

Sam Levin from CoolMacPicks.com
is using royalty free music clips from musicloops.com or his Barcelona Digital Music 2.0 iPod slide show and for all of his new Mac Product Review podcasts