Tag Archives: music industry

Film Composer Survival Guide

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I recently found this “white paper” from Filmmusic.net while perusing the filmandgamecomposers.com forums:

http://www.filmmusic.net/dlx/Getting_Your_Music_Into_Film_TV_in_Economy_Today.pdf

Mainly, it explains that, in today’s economy, the value of custom work is being diminished daily by over-saturation of talent and declining budgets and spending. The key to success in the creative field of composing relies heavily on a little financial savvy and a whole lot of networking.

While it’s an excellent practical guide for career survival in today’s marketplace, I have to disagree with their notion that music libraries are partially to blame for the devaluation of custom scoring work. Custom work and library music serve two distinct market segments that have traditionally been separated by budget and deadlines/production process. Low budget films, student projects, fly-by-night radio ads, low budget and local tv commercials, all call for quick, low-cost solutions that simply cannot be met by a composer who specializes in custom work. Extend that to personal slide shows, corporate office presentations and the like. The meetings, spotting, and time commitment, not to mention creative mind-power required for custom scores are simply not worth the allotted budget for these types of projects. Hence the need for low-cost library music. On the other hand, scoring a feature film, or a national commercial campaign, or a mass-market video game release all call for a huge time commitment and a high level of expertise.

The mentality that composers should avoid the music library business is ridiculous, especially if one wants to survive in today’s business climate. Creatives should embrace the opportunity to diversify their business, and expand into new creative markets. If devaluation is a concern, Productiontrax.com gives all of our contributors full price control.

It is true that there are a ton of composers and songwriters today, and it seems as though everyone with a Mac is a musician. But media buyers, music supervisors, and film directors are not stupid — they have ears for musical quality as well, and for both library music and custom scoring jobs alike, there is always room at the top for the uniquely qualified and super talented.

Songsmith – Intuitive Music Creation Tool or Just Plain Creativity-Zapping

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Songsmith (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/), a supposed creative tool for music novices and professional musicians alike, is the latest arrival onto the computer music scene. However, unlike samples, loops, and other instrument tools, Songsmith auto-generates a musical track to your singing. Sounds pretty cool, huh?

Now, anyone who can hold together a tune, or has a musical idea in their head, can quickly find the chords to their musical thought — all without a lick of musical theory knowledge or performance experience.

My first inclination was to gag. But maybe it’s just the videos that Microsoft put on their site to show off the product. After all, this is the holy grail of song-writing — it’s as close to writing what you hear as you can get without having to spend 10,000 hours of cultivating musical expertise. I can see a product like this leading to musical innovation in a time when creativity has seemed to stagnate.

I can also see our creativity stagnating further as a result of complete stupification… Just rely on the computer to do the creative work for you. Soon we’ll have thousands of “new” songs where the emotion and creativity has been thrown out the window and replaced with computer generated algorithms. So much for personality and originality.

So how do you feel about it? An incredible music composition tool in the beginning stages? Or the complete and utter demise of the craft and creativity involved in creating new music?

Will The State of New York Kill The Music Industry?

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“Gov. David Paterson has proposed a so-called ‘iPod tax’ on downloaded music and entertainment services to help his state close a $15.4 billion budget deficit.

However, Apple Inc.’s products aren’t Paterson’s only targets. He has proposed 88 new fees and taxes that go far beyond, including on movie tickets, taxi rides, soda, beer, wine, cigars, massages, cable and satellite TV.

That’s just one aspect of Paterson’s proposed $121.1 billion budget released yesterday. The budget attempts to make state government leaner while relying on a wave of new taxes and fees that will be passed down to businesses.

The proposed budget is balanced and holds state spending just under the inflation rate. The budget also erases a combined $15.4 billion in budget gaps over the next 15 months.

Paterson revealed his budget amid the unrelenting shake-up on Wall Street that has already depleted state tax revenue and triggered tens of thousands of layoffs. Before this recession, the state’s financial services sector had produced 20 percent of state tax revenue through income taxes, year-end bonuses, real estate deals and initial public offerings on the stock markets.”

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I hope all people in the internet and music industry will speak out against unfair, unrealistic, and economically damaging taxes such as this one. While we’re not located in New York, their recent taxation policies have been a source of concern for not only businesses in the music industry, but every business that has a website and sells online (see their sales tax law currently being fought by major online retailers: http://www.newrules.org/retail/efairny.html)

How Amazon and Overstock responded to New York:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/overstockcom-throws-new-york-affiliates-overboard-to-avoid-sales-tax/?ref=nyregion

Productiontrax Introduces New Cue Sheet Tool

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The new cue sheet tool allows customers to quickly and easily create a cue sheet for their project, using pre-completed information taken directly from your track information.

License B customers will receive an automatic email reminder to complete cue sheets a couple days after their purchase. The cue sheet tool is available right from the download page (which has also been re-designed). The customer will be able to enter the info about their project, how much of your track was used, and how it was used. The composer and publisher information is pulled directly from the information you have provided in your account.

Once the cue sheet is finished, the completed form will be assembled and automatically get emailed directly to the appropriate performing rights organization. A copy will also be cc’d to you via email, as well as a copy for the customer. We will also keep a copy on file. Because the cue sheets are being sent in completed form, the info will not be stored in your account, so be sure to keep your email address current on your account.

You can edit publisher information for individual tracks right on the track pages. If you already have entered publisher information in the composer profile, it has already been pulled to match the corresponding tracks (no need to go in and edit all your tracks). If you aren’t sure, you should check a few of your tracks.

If you do not have a publishing company set up, entered in your track information, or just don’t care about performance royalties, Productiontrax will be listed as your publisher (Twin Light Music Publishing – ASCAP), and will distribute you any publishing royalties we receive on your usual 65/35 split, and will be listed on your monthly statement as ‘additional royalties.’ We recommend setting up your own publishing company to collect these royalties yourself.

For more information about cue sheets please visit the cue sheet information page on our web site.

And don’t forget to check out the latest Royalty Free Music, Sound Effects, Video Footage and Stock Photography.