I have been selling royalty free music for more than 10 years now. I receive composer submissions and demos on a daily basis. I also see what sells and what customers are requesting everyday.
I don’t often give advise to composers but thought I would post some basic observations in case it is of any use to composers looking to get into the royalty free music industry.
1. Be Prolific
If you want to make a living at selling your production music the first thing you need is a large library of music.
The composers who have large catalogs on our sites earn the most and earn very consistently. 75-300 tracks and up is considered a large library.
2. Create edits and loops with your full length tracks.
The customers on our websites love the fact that we offer not only full length tracks but edits, loops, underscores and alternate takes. You can also sell the whole package of full length track, edits for a higher price than the full length track alone.
This coupled with a large library will practically guarantee steady sales (as long as the music is top quality of course).
A typical package would be:
Full length track 2 to 3 minutes
60 second edit
30 second edit
15 second edit
2 or 3 loops.
3. Write What You Know
Professional production music composers are a very versatile lot. They can write music in many styles and can do it convincingly. However many of the demos I receive are from composers who are trying to be all things to everybody, writing in as many styles as possible with the majority of the track coming across as mediocre. We pass on these types of demos 99% of the time.
If you are an excellent New Age Music composer don’t try your hand at Nu-Metal just to fill out your catalog, write more New Age Music instead. Write the music you love to write, not what you think will sell.
4. Add Something Real
In this day of laptop studios, garageband and reason it seems that everyone is now trying their hat at being a “composer”. I may be old skool but back in the day musicians used to practice their instruments for hours everyday and went to school to study harmony and composition. Today it seems that anyone who can download some free drum loops from the web calls themselves a composer.
All this to say when you compose try adding something real to your compositions. Instead of only relying on your loop library (the one that thousands of other people are using) try adding some real guitar parts, or a weird vocal part, or a sax, get your friend to play harmonica, pick up any simple percussion instrument, even a tambourine, and record it live. Give your standard loop library composition a soul by adding something real.
5. Melody
Just like in popular music melody plays a big factor in royalty free music. Sure there are lots of instances where you want the music to sit in the background and not attract too much attention but according to our sales stats music with a good, strong, uplifting melody outsells all other types of music.
6. Holiday Music
Would you like a Christmas bonus every year in your royalty free music paycheck? Then do Christmas and holiday music in whatever style your composition skills are strongest. A hip hop version of Jingle Bells, an ozzy osbourne version of The First Noel.
This would go for all types of public domain music, a Nu-Metal version of God Bless America, a jazz version of the Star Spangled Banner, drum n bass Auld Lang Syne, etc.
Our customers just love this kind of stuff.
7. Structure
Make sure to think about the listener when you’re are putting together the structure of your royalty free music tracks.
a. Don’t have a 2 minute intro before getting to the main melody. You need to grab the listener quickly, get to the point as soon as possible (within reason of course).
b. Give them an ending. No fades. Give them a proper ending with a chord and cymbals that ring out. This is very important for the ends of commercials and radio spots.
c. Give them a B section, also known as a bridge. You can do the same thing with a breakdown if it is dance music. You need to give the customer some variety in the track, something to play with in editing.
Hope this helps. Let me know what you think.
I’ll be posting more tips for royalty free music composers in the coming weeks.
-Mark
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.
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.
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.
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.
I found another website that has a small but high quality collection of free music that the composer is making available for use in blogs, podcasts, videos, etc, completely royalty free. He only requires attribution, check it out here:
Partners In Rhyme has been selling royalty free music online since 1996 and as of January 1st 2008 Partners In Rhyme has become incorporated to Partners In Rhyme, Inc.
January and February have been record breaking months in terms of sales for us. Nearly triple the revenue from the same time last year. Our composers are benefiting from this boom as well, our total composer payouts have been over $10,000 for each month with our highest paid composer earning over $3500 in a single month.
Our policy of not requiring our clients to report the use of music from our catalog to performing rights agencies and depending more on frequency of sales seems to be working. Our composers are actually making a living and their checks are bigger and more regular than any back-end payments might have been (had they been reported properly which is rarely the case).
If our clients want to submit cue sheets we of course supply them with all necessary information but we do not require it.
Looking forward to another great year for us at Partners In Rhyme, Inc. and for our roster of 38 (and growing) composers.
I ran across this site at accelerated-ideas.com that has a list of free royalty free music clips available for download to use in your commercial projects:
One of our visitors mentioned our royalty free music clips page in his blog here Caddickisms
He also has links to other sources for free music and describes his experiences in using the different formats and types of free music.
Very enlightening.
As December comes to a close business usually slows down as people go on vacation or generally take a break from work. I know from our websites and from what our composers tell me that the last 1/2 of December is a bit of slow across the board.
This December however we have done very well with our royalty free Christmas music sales. I am sure other royalty free sites have a spike in their Christmas genre sales as well.
Below is a review of some of the sites and prices where you can purchase and download royalty free Christmas music, starting with ours.
Christmas Classics
This is a new collection for us and it sold really well this year. It is a large collection of Christmas music for producers who need more than just one holiday tune. The collection includes 24 tracks some with edits and loops. It comes with a variety of genres including hip hop, techno, traditional and classical.
Royalty Free Christmas Music
This is our standard collection of Christmas music at an affordable price of $29.95
If you only need one or two Christmas tracks our musicloops.com site has a wide variety from many different composers: Christmas and Holiday Music
Prices range from $14.95 to $39.95, edits and loops are available.
