Category Archives: Dave’s Blog

Production Music and Creative Commons

Posted on by
Reply

When licensing production music, there are a few options out there. There’s some interesting discussion over at the Copyright and Technology blog about the usefulness (or lackthereof) of Creative Commons as a licensing tool.

Here’s the full story.

I commented briefly, but thought I’d post here to get our users’ feedback. We deliberately chose against using Creative Commons when developing Productiontrax.com. With no enforcement mechanism built into CC, it really is just like a garment-care label. With royalty free production music licenses specifically developed for our artists and end-users, we are able to provide better legal protections for all parties involved and actually police usage to a point moreso than we’d be able to with CC.

What’s your take on Creative Commons and it’s role in music licensing?

Selling Royalty Free Music: Are You Giving Up Too Soon?

Posted on by
Reply

The following is a real life email from a real life customer on Productiontrax.com:

Hi Dave,

Last week I found some great music tracks on your website. The track ID numbers were 1234 and 5432. I tried out the free low-res demos and they worked perfectly in my film, and now I’m ready to license them and download the hi-res versions. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find them anymore on Productiontrax. Can you help?

Sincerely,

Joe Customer

It never fails. A composer puts some music up on PT looking to make a quick sale, and then hides or removes the track completely after only a couple of days, disappointed and frustrated that it hasn’t licensed yet.

Granted, there are many good reasons to pull tracks from your account: you signed a deal with an “old skool” library, you’re changing careers, you just licensed the same track to another customer on an exclusive basis. But what we tend to see are composers who get impatient, expecting customers to immediately buy tracks within minutes.

So what should you do? What is a reasonable amount of time to give a track to sell before considering other options? I suggest these following rules of thumb for selling royalty free music, sound effects, stock footage, and photos on Productiontrax:

1. Know your audience, and their buying habits. This is true for any business. Multimedia producers are just as finicky as you are, and they’re more of a perfectionist than you are. They want the music they buy to be perfect, and every hit, pulse, and beep should line up perfectly with all their edit points. They want free comps to test out for days, weeks, months, until they get the rough draft just right. Then they buy.

2. Diversify and build your library. It’s true, the more you have on PT, the more you sell. But you don’t need as many as you think. Don’t upload 37,000 garbage files, because then no one will buy your stuff, and you’ll just be flooding the marketplace with useless media. Focus on quality, and create media in a wide variety of styles and genres. Challenge yourself in new areas, maybe weekly, or even daily. Take each track you write, and make a :15, :30, and:60 cut. Make a stinger. If you write one song a week, you can make it into 5 useful tracks. That’s 20 tracks a month. That’s 240 tracks a year.

3. Be patient. Building sales consistency takes time. Consider leaving your files up indefinitely – you will see the return. What is it to you anyway? It’s not like you have to sit there and stare at the screen. Just upload and forget about it. The most successful contributors have racked up tens of thousands of dollars in sales over the course of just 2 to 3 years. They simply upload a lot of good useful music, describe and keyword their files well, and then they leave it up there whether it sells or not.

4. Be aware of seasonal dips and quiet production months.Many of Productiontrax.com’s clients tend to be professional media creators, or work for businesses. This means they go on vacations. They take holidays. Think of the times of year when you’re not working, and expect those few weeks to be slow for you – but don’t think it’s a sign that you need to move on. All good things take time.

Christmas carols make easy royalty free music projects

Posted on by
Reply

Need some inspiration for your next round of production music tracks for Productiontrax? With so many Christmas carols in the public domain, it’s no secret that Christmas music is one of the most popular royalty free music genres out there.

However, that doesn’t mean we have too much. Companies and media producers around the world are constantly looking for fresh takes on the old classics. Afterall, Christmas happens once a year, every year. As one of the biggest holidays (ever), it makes sense that demand is so high. Clients are creating electronic greeting cards, holiday videos, goofy office party presentations, and so on. A new royalty free holiday track is a useful one, and probably one that sells.

So, my friends, take another sip of egg nog, light the yule log, and crank up the volume to 11 and prepare to Deck the Halls like no music artist has decked them before.

Just remember: just because it’s a Christmas song, doesn’t mean it’s fair game. Be sure to check that the song you’re planning to reinvigorate is actually public domain. To help you out, here are some public domain classics that are ripe and ready, and some not-so-public domain songs that are off limits.

Public Domain (OK to use):
Deck The Halls
Jingle Bells
Silent Night
Joy To The World
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Away In A Manger

Not OK To Use:
White Christmas
Silver Bells
Frosty The Snowman
Little Drummer Boy
Do You Hear What I Hear?
Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire
Jingle Bell Rock

Taking Lightboxes to the Power of Awesome

Posted on by
Reply

We just added lightboxes to the site this week, a feature that has been sorely needed for quite some time now. While we finish tweaking and updating our pages with the new code, I thought I’d share some of the cool features of the Productiontrax.com Lightbox system, and how it can help you with your projects — whether you’re a customer or a contributor.

1. Save your favorites. Lightboxes help you organize your favorite royalty free items on Productiontrax into folders, projects, or whatever system works for you. You need to register to create a lightbox account first, and then just click “Create New Lightbox” to start making lightboxes. You can have different lightboxes for different purposes, ie: a Short Film Lightbox for your upcoming short, or a Client Preview Lightbox, for example. Then, to add a file to your lightboxes, just click on the little lightbulb next to any file listing on PT.

2. Custom Settings. On our lightboxes, you can set them to be private or public. A private lightbox requires a password to access, whereas a public lightbox can be seen without any password. You can also elect to hide the prices on any lightbox, which is handy for showing preview choices to your clients.

3. Embeddable in iFrames. That’s right. One of the most powerful features of our lightbox is that you can embed them in any website that supports iFrams — your personal site, your businesses’ client preview systems, your Facebook Pages. By utilizing a combination of embedding, public, and hide prices, you can create a seamless selection tool for your clients (approval/selection features coming soon). Or, if you show prices, you can offer royalty free music, sound effects, footage, or photos for sale right on your website, complete with streaming previews — very handy if you are a contributor or looking to expand your offerings.

4. Share with your friends, clients, and colleagues. We provide you with a custom URL for every lightbox, which you can share with your friends to make selecting your favorite items easier for groups and long-distance productions. A quick email feature is on its way.