Ethan White

Yo James, No doubt, I've definitely had some great experiences with the commercial stuff. Unfortunately it seems like a lot of times you're copying a temp or doing something kind of outrageous, plus you often don't have much connection to the creative directors (several times removed). I don't want to go into specific examples because the world is small! I'm not doing enough of it for it to really ruin my life or anything (I spend most of my time touring playing live). I'm just looking for some other outlets. Anyways, I'm not here to go into the ins and outs of all of that. I'm honestly just looking for folks' 2 cents on their approaches since this is a new thing for me. Thanks so much.

Hey James, That's actually not vague at all. Great references. I've done some work to picture with the commercial stuff, but unfortunately that usually not very rewarding. The direction can be overly confined stylistically, and so much has to happen in 30 seconds with it always being about some product looking awesome. In film (and television recently), there's so much more room for development and genre bending. That's what's drawing me to it. Actually the very things you're talking about. Right now I'm focused on production music (library stock type stuff), since that's a door that is at least cracked for newcomers. The problem there is having to anticipate client needs in this general way. So one day you might compose something for a Darth Vader-type character, but of course you're just imagining this character and hoping it hits someone's needs exactly right. Right time and place sort of thing. So what I pull from your thoughts (in reference to what I'm up to), is to create really special moments with the music for specific moments... something that inspires the filmmaker when they hear it as they're searching through these vollumnous libraries. Hopefully I'll come across some opportunities to actually collaborate down the road, which seems much more rewarding... Thank you very much for your input.

Hey Phil, The second profile I have posted are corporate type tracks, and those are completely royalty free as per my agreement with that retailer. They aren't allowed to be registered with any PROs. I also don't work with adrev or any of those DCMA type orgs that grab YouTube revenue based on copyright (I've noticed several royalty free authors using this loophole to get backend). That just seems a bit dirty. The SoundCloud profile tracks, on the other hand, will depend on which libraries I end up working with and their policies. I believe those companies re-register the works under new titles, and walk licensors through the process of cue sheets, etc. But since I haven't worked with them yet, I can't tell you for sure. I'm sort of holding off registering any of that stuff until I see what's going on out there. For bespoke stuff, it will be a case by case basis... I also do some work with commercial audio houses and they generally take care of the publishing like the boutique libraries, but sometimes it's a buy out. It does appear that royalty free has become a lot more popular these days for the reasons you're mentioning... I can imagine this is a major time sink for indie productions.

Hey this is great information for me. I've definitely been tending towards making an impression - or at least leaving more subdued music to an alternative mix that might not get noticed (including my royalty free stuff). Thank you for your input!

Hey folks, Newbie, and enjoying the wealth of info here. I'm wondering if you can tell me what you look for when you're licensing music for your projects. I'm a professional music producer now for about 15 years, but only recently getting into music for film/tv/ads. I have 2 separate projects going at the moment. I am working on a portfolio of music for license, and/or to represent my abilities for bespoke projects over here: https://soundcloud.com/whitesploits I am also uploading corporate motivational type stuff for the Royalty Free site AudioJungle over here: http://tinyurl.com/secretpony (decided to use a pseudonym to avoid confusion between the 2 projects) Both projects are only about a month old, but so far so good. The SoundCloud (more varied and in depth music) has gotten good response but I haven't felt ready to pitch it to libraries and production houses quite yet. The Royalty Free site is seeing a few sales per upload, which is good for a young account. I want to find out what sort of attributes you look for so I can take this into account as I compose for these 2 projects. I'm sure there are a million different approaches and types of usage that video producers work with, but I'm also sure there are many things I can think about at this stage. I want to develop my skills in a valuable way... Thanks so much for your input, -EW