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music business
Why Music Supervisors Are Not Listening To Your Music.
Get a paper and pen. Just do it, it’ll totally be worth it. I’m about to blow your mind.
Quick – tell me 3 people you want to listen to your music that you think will be able to put it in a commercial, film, or TV promo! Even if you’ve already contacted them, write down a name with a little space beneath to complete this exercise.
Done? Great! Now write down 3 things you said to persuade each person to listen to your music (they can all be similar or the same if you do a lot of copy/paste).
Easy, right?
Alright, now for each person list 3 things about them that have nothing to do with their job, or music.
Hmmm…alright, take some more time and think about it…times up!
Now, as fast as you can, write down 3 things you can do for that person based on their needs or wants!
If you can come up with 1 thing for that last one, I’ll give you props. But only if it isn’t ridiculous (like “give them a million dollars” or “cut them in on license fees they secure for me” – because that’s payola, and payola is illegal…unless you’re Clear Channel).
The above exercise should prove to you that your emails suck. “Me, me, me.” That’s what you write about. “Listen to this! Check that out! I’d LOVE for you to put my song in a commercial!”
Great. I’m sure there aren’t 100,000 other people out there sending the same thing.
However, if you’re far enough along to know who to contact and actually have gotten some contact info, you’re STILL ahead of the game, as sad as it is. But you need to know something and you need to PRACTICE and GET BETTER at it as soon as you can:
The music business, and life in general, doesn’t work the way you think it does.
You cannot just sell yourself cold. It’s a waste of time. If you don’t have a good relationship with someone, it’s really tough to break through and make a connection. Especially one strong enough where they have confidence and enough trust in you and your music that they’ll give it a real shot.
How many emails have you received from someone or some entity that you didn’t know or agree to take part in? How did it make you feel? Did you read it carefully and take action doing what they ask? No?! What a surprise!
Here’s a gigantic tip:
Find a genuine connection to EVERY person you want to listen to your music before you ask them to listen to it.
That is HUGE takeaway. Huge. You should read it again, think about it, write any immediate ideas that come to mind, and then read it again.
Is it coming full circle yet? Do you get it?
Music supervisors are inundated with requests from people they don’t know and therefore don’t care about every day. They are flooded with emails like the ones you’ll find here. What makes you different?
Do you think changing your wording or coming up with a better email subject line makes you better? Wrong.
What most music supervisors will tell you is that they want a ‘filter,’ someone or some entity that they know well who they can reach out to for their music needs. What you need is to either discover one of those filters and partner up with them, or look for pre-existing relationships that act as that filter for you.
Whatever you do, don’t write another crappy email.
No one cares about the 8-word catch-phrase that sums up your music perfectly. Your album art is NOT good enough to get someone’s attention. Your 15MB attachment consisting of your amateur band photo, 1 sheet, and latest ‘single’ from 2 years ago? You guessed it. It couldn’t penetrate chocolate pudding.
Don’t get mad or frustrated – get smart. CHANGE your approach. Make yourself relevant to the person you’re contacting. Emphasize key elements that will filter you out from the crowds of morons or partner up with someone who can. The intelligent independent musician can find ways to make themselves valuable IMMEDIATELY. Sure, it takes work. Yes, you have to do more than copy and paste the same form email to 200 people. You’re better of sending 10 effective emails in an hour than 200 bogus ones.
Shape up. Get relevant, get genuine, and start focusing on the right things. You’ll find it goes a lot further than the lame attempts made by most everyone trying to get their music licensed.
If you’re not sure where to start when reaching out to music supervisors, you should subscribe to my free newsletter where you’ll get an 8-part course to help you do just that.
Should You Choose An Exclusive Contract To Get Your Music Licensed?
Previously I discussed some of the pros and cons of signing a non-exclusive contract to get your music licensed. It’s definitely an interesting option and can provide a lot of opportunity. But before you go uploading your music to Pump Audio, why not consider all options?
Exclusive deals can be very rewarding experiences not just from a monetary stand point (though that’s certainly nice), but also from an artistic one. However, they’re definitely not as easy to come by and there can be other drawbacks to signing on with a major publisher or label.
Let’s check out a the pros
Pros:
- Perceived Value is Higher
- Retain Greater Performance Royalties
- Better Synch Fees
- Better Percentages
- Creative Control
It all starts with perceived value
When I was pitching music for ads at a music library it was usually a struggle to get them to consider a library song versus a commercial track. In most cases I got the phone call only when the budget was low and not before.
Was the music quality THAT much different between the two tracks? Generally speaking, no. In many cases you could easily send a library track and commercial track and save for the name attached to it have no idea which was which. That’s the power of perceived value; big money opportunities are more available.
Performance royalties, sync fees, and percentages…
The number 1 fantastic thing about an exclusive deal is that all fees and percentages are negotiable. It doesn’t matter if you’re U2 or You Who?, you too (see what I did there?) CAN negotiate to some extent (and I’ll talk about how to do that as a little guy in a future article).
The bottom line is: any additional percentage you can get negotiate pays dividends.
Creative control
For the most part music doesn’t get pitched for political or religious advertisements just out of principle. However, how stoked would you be if your song got placed in an ad for a discount furniture store? If your answer is “ehhh,†that should be a clue about which contract to pursue.
Think of all the products you see at your local drug store and if any of those (like adult diapers or prescription drugs) are not something you’d want to attach your music to, then creative control is an important thing for you. You also get the opportunity to turn down jobs that don’t pay enough (you hoity-toity art-nerd).
Looking at the list initially it may seem like a no-brainer – hit the pavement and get after a major label or publisher. But hold on, there are some cons to consider before you go hucking your wares to Universal.
Cons:
- Difficult to secure
- Lost in the shuffle
- Are they pro-active?
- Organization
Don’t overlook how difficult it can be
It can take years. In fact they can just not happen at all. However they DO still happen and they are out there. If you decide to go for it, do it with all your heart and soul. Just know that like anything worth having, it is tough work!
Lost in the shuffle
Major labels and publishers have some pretty amazing music to tout when it comes to placing music in film, TV, and advertising. On top of that, they also have a ton of other music that is maybe not so amazing, but that they still need to make money on.
For that reason its possible you’ll get lost among the other artists in the catalog. You might make the same case for non-exclusive style companies, but keep reading as the next two items are what REALLY separates the wheat from the chaff.
Are they pro-active?
Many companies are changing but still far too many wait for the phone to ring or depend on clients to reach out to them. So sure, they may get a call when someone has $200K to spend on a Super Bowl spot, but guess which artists get first dibs on that kind of money? So if you’re not a superstar, you need to MAKE SURE the company you’re signing with is abreast of as many opportunities, large and small, as possible.
Organization
They’re not sure who wrote what, they don’t have useful systems in place to help them find the right music, and maybe they don’t even know who represents the other side of the sync placement. Yikes. This means you could miss an opportunity simply because the company doesn’t know some critical business facet. Some entities really have it together, and some can barely make it to work.
In the end, whichever route you decide to go just be aware of the potential caveats. Now there are more and more people offering services and opportunities to up-and-coming writers. If you do your homework, chances are you can land somewhere that will be a great fit!
As always please leave a comment with your own stories. I’m always looking to hear more about your experience and answer questions!
Exclusive vs. Non-Exclusive Music Licensing Contracts: Non-Exclusive Basics
A lot of my friends are great musicians who really pour their heart and soul into their work and I am truly lucky. Why? Because having worked in the industry for so long for both production music and commercial music entities, from independent to major publishers, and from focusing on strict marketing and sales to careful copyright consideration, I have learned a lot and get to help them out.
One question has come up consistently over the years whenever artists come across a company like Pump Audio or Crucial Music. After reading through their sites an artist see the term “…represented on a non-exclusive basis…” and gets excited.
Score! Someone’s going to put my music on TV and I get to keep my all my rights!
But hold on – what does “non-exclusive” really mean? In this two part blog, we’ll take a look at some of the differences between exclusive and non-exclusive contracts and how they could potentially effect your copyright value and revenue as an artist.
Non-Exclusive Basics
- You retain your rights.
- You typically get royalties from the artist’s share of your performance royalty.
- They typically keep the publisher’s share of the performance royalty.
- They typically take 50% of the synchronization fee (65% in the case of Pump!)
Exclusive Basics
- You retain your rights.
- You typically get 100% of the artist’s share of your performance royalty.
- The publisher’s share of performance royalty is negotiable.
- They typically take a negotiated percentage of the synchronization fee.
Hmm, doesn’t look too different does it? Let’s dig deeper.
Non-Exclusive:
Alright, the big benefit of being non-exclusive is that you can literally get your music out there, to anyone. You can register with as many non-exclusive entities that you like, you can get 3rd party PR representation, and you can shop your music to agency producers and TV/Film supervisors yourself. This is definitely a great thing. It means you can literally put your song in multiple places and have multiple people getting your music out to lots of supervisors and agencies.
This could mean that you get put up for a lot of opportunities, or in case your music is quite niche, that the few opportunities that come up your music is involved in.
But as you can probably tell by the way I’m writing there are some caveats to be aware of with a non-exclusive deal.
First, there are typically terms for these deals even though they’re non-exclusive. That means if you get offered an exclusive publishing deal but have signed a non-exclusive deal, some litigation may be involved to get you out of the non-exclusive contract so you can sign the exclusive one (if you want to).
Next, you MUST realize that these companies do NOT get top-dollar for the tracks that they license. A “low-budget” advertising sychronization fee, let’s just say, is around $15K. But, if the agency is looking for a pre-cleared track, chances are the most they’ll get is $3-4K, and that’s IF the fee is negotiated (in the case of Pump, the agency producer can ‘check-out’ online and fees are assigned at a set, flat-rate). This is BAD. It means that your music is only being put up for opportunities that will yield low dollars and probably have limited air-time (meaning your performance royalties are smaller too).
That said you may have 50 scratch tracks sitting around from 1994 and weirdly, people aren’t listening for that sweet Ace of Bass sound anymore. Or, you may be in a rock band but have a bunch of film trailer tracks that you did for fun that are just collected digital dust – upload away! In this case, it’s bonus money for songs you don’t really care about.
However if you’ve got your heart and soul project and you’ve just started shopping it around, or you don’t know where to start but would LOVE to get your music on TV, it may be best to beat the street a little bit before you turn to a non-exclusive service.
There’s one more thing to consider and it’s something I like to call “perceived copyright value.” This simply means that when someone thinks of your song they associate a price point with it automatically depending on certain factors.
For example, if I told you I have a really great song and all my friends tell me it would be perfect for a commercial, you might roll eyes or punch me in the face depending on how many times you’ve heard that.
But if I say “hey, I JUST released my new EP – it sounds awesome! I recorded in the same studio with the same engineers as Arcade Fire and it was produced by a guy who’s got 5 top fifty songs to his credit,” well, which one do you think sounds more expensive?
The point is this – if an ad agency hears “pre-cleared,” they know that means less-expensive. Sure, it also means “easy to license” and that’s important to them a lot of times, but what they won’t do is bother to remember who the artist is that created the track or put it on their iPod (I mean never say never, but in reality it’s tough enough to get them listening to new major publisher stuff on their iPod).
If you’ve been thinking about doing one of these deals, I encourage you to take a look at the FAQ on their site and be really certain you know what you’re giving for what you get.
You can read more about what an exclusive deal might entail and also evaluate some pros and cons here. By then, you should have a really good idea of where you’re going to focus your efforts when it comes time to shop that shiny new song around!
Get On The Right Track
My commute to work in the morning is a fairly simple process but it does involve two sensible options.
Option 1: I can get on the F train at Delancey/Essex, then change at West 4th street for the uptown C or E. I’ve made the commute as quick as about 20 minutes and typically it doesn’t take longer than 30 minutes.
Option 2: Get on the F at Delancey/Essex, and get off at 34th Street, then walk the rest of the way.
Option 1 means I have to wait for a second train but be slightly closer to my office at the exit. Option 2 means I don’t have to wait for a second train but I do have a little bit further to walk.
It may seem like a snap. Maybe choose to walk a littler further on nice sunny days like today, or perhaps take option 1 when I’m in a hurry. But more goes into it than that. Because some mornings I don’t bring coffee so I like to stop and get iced coffee at Starbucks. Of course, if it’s chilly and I want a hot coffee the cup at the local deli on my way to work on option 1 is just fine.
But of course if I stay at the back of the train on Option 2, I walk fewer short blocks and only 1 long block.
And on, and on it goes and I tell you this isn’t a single-time occurrence. This happens in my mind almost everyday depending on how close to being on time I am vs. my need for coffee, etc.
This morning I realized I was over-analyzing my situation and from now on, I’ll just take option 2. Not for any “good reason,” mostly just because it feels better and I am TIRED of over-thinking about it.
It dawned on me that in life, we often do this.
When we try to achieve a goal, how often do we over-think our situation? And how often are we presented with the same, or similar situations, and continue to choose based on lengthy mental analyzations?
As musicians here’s how it might manifest itself:
Goal: “Today I’m going to submit my music to a label”
Thought process: What if they don’t like it? What if someone doesn’t answer the phone? What if someone does answer the phone? What if I forget to attach my pkit to the email? Should I follow up with the person I’ve just emailed a couple of days ago? What if it bothers them? What if I get the wrong person? I’d better research the right person to talk to. Crap, I can’t find the person I need to talk to. Now what do I do? I found the main line but I’m terrible on the phone.
…and on and on. The reality is we think too much about almost everything and too many times we manage to convince ourselves into prolonging efforts or even worse, into in-action. Analyzation can be a very useful tool but we need to ACT more on our guts. ACT on the goal.
If you have a goal set for yourself for today, or next week or this year – what are you actively doing to move closer to it? How can you take a step right now to simply DO that thing? If it’s a long term goal can you back-track from end-result to what you can do TODAY to progress just a little more towards the desired result?
Today, choose a path to take and a take the first step to move down it. Put down the Xbox controller and write the chorus to that song. Close down iChat and make a list of 15 main-line phone numbers for labels to call. Turn off the TV, and turn on Spotify and listen to 15 new songs you’ve never heard before.
Your goal can be a simple one so long as you keep moving forward.
3 Key Tips For Getting Your Music In A Commercial
Yes, advertising pays and it pays well. The days of seeing licensing music for use in advertisements as selling out are near an end (for most bands and artists). As long as a song is aligned with a cool brand, the brand will shell out a stupid amount of money, or if a new artist is seeking exposure the placement of music in advertising seen as a smart business move.
When I speak at Universities or at panels inevitably artists will ask a question that’s burning in their minds:
“How do I get my music in a commercial?â€
I’d be lying if I told you it’s easy and didn’t take a long time to get something placed. Even major publishers and labels have dedicated people (like me!) pitching music ALL the time. At the end of the day it’s a combination of a lot of different ideas, connections, and decision-makers and it can STILL get shot down by a final party at the end – more about all that in a later article. However at the most fundamental level there are some things you can consider about getting your music in an ad (please note these are also relevant to placing your music in film and TV).
Leave Copywriting to the Pros – At times people in other departments at Imagem will throw us ideas like “Hey, you should pitch this song for an electric company commercial because the lyrics are all about being in the dark!†or an artist manager might make some obvious connection of a song with one line about “rolling along†and think it’d be just PERFECT for a car commercial. While that may seem highly relevant consider this:
The agency probably already has an idea of the kind of song they want to use (if any) or any type of lyrical theme. These people are paid to be highly creative and the chances of them either changing their original concept or basing one on a blatantly obvious connection to a lyric is really small. Most of the time when choosing a song (unless they’re doing a brand partnership with a certain artist) they already know what they want.
Instead, focus on making your lyrics GREAT. Edit them over and over again until you’re not using too many or too few words, get your metaphors just right, and leave the creative interpretation to the pros. Often times staying on theme and on point with your lyrics can really make your music stand out.
Have Your Splits Ready – While not always necessary, it’s really important to have your backing tracks bounced out and ready to roll. Sometimes agency will want just the instrumental because there’s a lot of VO (Voice Over) on the spot, and sometimes they may want to have just the chorus come in at a certain timing.
The point is, if you don’t have them now it will probably take you too long to track them down once they’re requested. That means if a brief calls for a non-vocal cut, your music simply won’t be considered. And guess what? Non-vocal usage usually pays just as much as a spot with vocals.
Do Your Homework – And you thought your days of homework ended when you handed in your last Schenkerian analysis! Just because you’re not in school anymore doesn’t mean you can’t constantly be improving and learning. Since you’re so keen on getting your music in a commercial, why not learn about trends in advertising?
Ever notice how lots of commercials for the past few years have sounded a heck of a lot like the Juno Soundtrack? And before that all you heard were songs that sounded like “Clocks� The Moldy Peaches and U2 seemed to have made a lasting impression on advertising. Currently, that genre has been expanded and if you’ve got something folky and slightly under-produced that has whistling, hand-claps, a ukelele, or some combination thereof you’re seemingly in good shape.
All half-kidding aside, people involved in branding are susceptible to trends just like everyone else. Head over to AdWeek.com and check out the AdFreak section. Watch a ton of ads and note what musical elements are common in them. Does your sound match anything you hear? What do certain brands choose as the soundtrack to how the want to be presented to millions of people?
Keep in mind I’m not suggesting you immediately run into the studio and record based on what you hear in the latest Old Spice commercial (a solo whistling album probably wouldn’t be on anyone’s top 10 anyway). In my opinion being yourself and finding your own voice will ALWAYS be the MOST important thing. But it does help to take a look at which music brands are choosing to use in their ads.
If you have any more tips or any questions feel free to address them in the comments! Like what you read here? Don’t like it? Let me know, I’m here to help!