So you’ve just finished a great cue, and the director decides he doesn’t like it at all – “scrap it, start again“. Well that was a bit of a waste of music wasn’t it? Not necessarily…

Selling and licensing your unused, or even used tracks and cues in some cases, can be a great way to supplement your income as a composer in your spare time. There are literally hundreds of websites out there (Music Libraries), where you can upload and sell your tracks as mp3 downloads for people to listen to on their ipod, or where you can even license your tracks to potential clients for films, video games, websites and more. I can’t remember where it was, but I read online recently that over 1/3 of the music industry in America is based on music licensing – if thats even anywhere close to being true, it gives you an idea of how big an industry music licensing really is. Here’s another way of looking at it – do a google search for “Music Licensing” – you’ll get 19,300,000 results for that phrase alone…

Selling your music online is a great way to supplement your income, but how exactly do you go about it? Well, firstly you can upload your tracks to different libraries (an overview on that, shown here) and sell licenses to use your tracks. Another way to do it, is to sell music downloads, and/or licenses via your own website. This can be particularly beneficial if you have a modest amount of traffic coming to your own website from anywhere and everywhere on the web. I’ve been experimenting with a number of different ways to sell and license my music in the past two or three years, and I’ve found a number of different ways to do it. I’ve failed miserably in some cases, had some good experiences in others, and also had a great time in the process.

In this article, I’d like to point you towards some of the products that are out there, which can help you achieve another stream of income as a composer – in particular products which will allow you to sell your music online via your own website, rather than uploading to another library and selling directly from their website.

Before we go anywhere, for those of us who don’t know what it is, we have to ask – “What is a Widget”? According to Wikipedia, a widget is:

“A portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. ”

There are two types of widgets available to musicians – those that allows sale as personal listening, and those that allow sales as licensing sales. There are far more “personal listening” widgets available, which allow you to sell your mp3 tracks for a few dollars per download, compared to the “licensing” widgets, which allow you to license your tracks directly from the widget on your website, meaning less work for you overall. I installed a number of different widgets on my website, and reviewed them below….

The Widgets

Band Camp

Example: Here

What they have to say:

Bandcamp isn’t Yet Another Place to Put Your Music. Rather, we power a site that’s yours. So instead of ads for Sexy Singles Chat, your fans see your design, your music, your URL. You retain all ownership rights, and we just hang out in the background handling the tech stuff.

Choice. We offer your tracks in mp3, AAC, FLAC, Ogg…all the formats your überfans demand. Choose between giving away your music, setting a price, letting folks name their price – it’s up to you.
Viral distribution. We give your fans drop-dead easy tools to share your music with their friends, and most importantly we do it in a way that drives traffic back to you. We also give you complete transparency into how your music is spreading, with…

The motherflippin’ stats party. We show you where your fans are coming from, what they’re listening to, even which tracks they’re obsessed with versus which ones they’re skipping over. And we make it real purdy, too.
Your fifth (very nerdy) Beatle. We provide fast, dependable streaming and downloads of your entire catalog, adorn your tracks with all the metadata they need to sail into iTunes with artwork, titles, and so on intact, and mutter the various incantations necessary to get your site top-ranked in Google. All things we know you could do, but we suspect you’d rather focus on your music. Well, think of us as your invisible bandmate who loves that other stuff. And we won’t even ask to play tambourine.

Review: Not technically a “widget“, Bandcamp made the list as it is an interesting and unique service for musicians and composers alike. A quick look at their website will show you just how simple and intuitive it is. Uploading music is simple, as is changing the colours, background images, and artwork for your personal page. The entire website has been created based on the concept of being simple and easy to use, and they definitively get full marks for it. Once you sign up you get a choice of your own domain name at bandcamp (yourdomain.bandcamp.com). You can integrate this into your website, or use it as another site. A couple of questions I had were immediately answered in their FAQ section, and I have to say I found it very easy and almost fun to use their service.

One simply great feature of Bandcamp is that you upload either a wav, aif, or flac file to their server, and they will in turn convert it to all the possible formats anyone could want to download, and offer them as downloads – saves you having to upload lots of different formats! Bandcamp also offers custom domains which is a great service that I haven’t seen around much with these type of sites. Custom domain service means that you might own “http://filmcomposer.com” and everytime someone goes to it, it goes straight to your bandcamp site and the domain in the address bar stays as “http://filmcomposer.com” so it looks like its your website. Obviously you need to own your own domain name for that, but its an unusual but great feature.

Bandcamp is totally free as they are just starting up, and haven’t actually built a business model for the monetization side of it yet, but would rather see how it goes first. That does mean that certain parts might be subscription based in the future, but even taking that into consideration, its still a great service for selling your music.

They say on their website that they also do all of the SEO and marketing of your music for you, so I decided to try it out a few days later. I did a search for “my name + music track name” and it came up 9th on google which is very good going indeed considering its a completely free service.

The bottom line: Its not technically a “widget” in that you can embed it onto your site, but you can use it as a page on your website, or even point a domain of yours at it, so in that sense its in the same type of category. Bandcamp is a pretty awesome service , considering its totally free. Its not a feature rich website, but rather a simple and great way of selling your music. Some of the great features of the service are how they convert all of your music to numerous formats for you, provide you with your own domain name, and have unlimited free storage – you can also sell merchandise from the website aswell.

Reverb Nation

Example: Here

What they have to say:

ReverbNation.com is the leading online music marketing platform used by over 500,000 artists, managers, record labels, and venues to grow their reach, influence, and business across the internet. ReverbNation.com provides free and affordable solutions to individual artists and the music industry professionals that support them in the areas of web promotion, fan-relationship management, digital distribution, social-media marketing, direct-to-fan e-commerce, fan-behavior measurement, sentiment tracking, web-site hosting, and concert booking and promotion.

ReverbNation.com’s innovation is in developing technologies that integrate the wide array of distribution, marketing, and promotional functions used by the music industry into one comprehensive and easy-to-use business application — helping virtually any artist grow their revenues, and providing insight into how each marketing input contributes to overall outcomes.

Review: The process for creating your own music store on Reverb Nation is quick and easy, and was probably the quickest one to setup out of all of the stores I tested. Once you have your RN account created, you can log into your “Control Room”, click on your “Reverb Store”, and start adding products and even merchandise. The Reverb Nation store seems to lean slightly more towards people who play live shows, like bands etc. as they have a number of handy options for you to choose from in your control panel. For instance, you can bulk purchase CDs before a live show, to sell to your fans.

Creating your own widget for music sales was a very easy process – you click on “Get a Widget”, select “Store” and it will immediately give you the code to embed into your website for your store to show up. Track uploads are limited to up to 8mb

The Reverb Nation store is probably the least customizable of all the stores I have tested, as the only options you can change are the size of the store. Nearly all the other stores will let you at least change the colours so it blends in better with your website. The store loads up in average time compared to others, and is very simple in layout and presenation. As you can see from my example, it is quite clean and effective – not overloaded with options, just a simple play button for each track and the price and download option also. It also contains a cart system so if you have a large number of tracks, people can add them to their shopping cart, and pay for them all in one go.

The payment system allows for payment via American Express, Discover, Mastercard or Visa. It is suprising that perhaps one of the most popular forms of online payment – paypal – was ommited from this, as in my opinion its a lot safer and easier to work with.

The Bottom Line: The Reverb Nation widget is fairly simple and intuitive to use. Uploading and adding products to your store is quick and easy, but the plain looking user interface the customer sees, can look amateur and quite bland. In order to encourage customers to your store, it should be able to blend in elegantly with your website, and still have enough options to be usable, but unfortunately the RN widget falls a little short in my opinion.

YouLicense

Example: Here

What they have to say:

YouLicense is an online music licensing marketplace. We have developed a platform which enables artists and those seeking musical content to conduct business directly with one another in a safe and secure environment. Our unique search engine and standardized contracts allow for a quick and easy process.


Whether you’re looking to license music for Film & Television, Advertising Campaigns, Music on Hold, Mobile Phone Content, Web Content, Audio Projects, or you are a small business in need of musical content, YouLicense is your marketplace.


The world of music licensing is known to be complex, exclusive and expensive. It is often the case that those seeking to license music have great difficulty obtaining what they need and that only a small percentage of artists and composers have the means to offer their music for licensing.


Our aim is to break down these limitations and simplify the process.


YouLicense is non-exclusive and welcomes anyone with musical content to upload music and offer licenses for sale. This allows for a large range of musical content; from ringtones to sheet music to songs and beats; and is combined with a unique search engine to increase the chances of finding the much needed musical content.


YouLicense makes music license and copyright trade a simpler and more direct process, offering a service which is inexpensive and secure.

Review: I installed the YouLicense widget on my website to test it, and I was pleasantly surprised when it was finished. It blended in well with the colours, and looked sleek and simple like the rest of the website. Making the widget is absolutely simple – you simply join up to youlicense, upload your tracks, and then get your widget. When you get the code for your widget, they give you a few options in terms of colour, so you can incorporate your website colour scheme into the player which is a nice touch.

Unfortunately, that is the only options you are given in the widget – one missing feature which I found annoying was the fact that you can’t opt out of the choice to sell your tracks as mp3s in the player. What this means is, if when you uploaded the tracks originally to you license, you chose the option to not sell the tracks as mp3s, then it will still show up on the player, and when you click on it, it will bring you to amazon.com strangely enough. I emailed support regarding this, and they told me that if you choose not to sell your music as mp3s for personal listening, then it will still keep the “buy mp3″ link in the player, but default to amazon.com – it is something they are working on, and hopefully will resolve in the next version of their player – no update on the time frame for that.

Uploading to Youlicense was fairly simple – you can either “hard upload” (ie. actually upload the tracks) or give a link where the files are located on your server and stream them from there everytime someone listens to them on the youlicense website or via the widget on your website (you need to make sure your server can handle the amount of traffic this can bring). Another great option here is to upload all of your tracks from soundcloud.com if you have them stored on a soundcloud account. This saves you a lot of time and bandwidth if you have a lot of tracks!

After uploading, you are required to describe the song (Genre, Style, Mood, Instruments, Keywords, Pace, Resembles Artist, Subject, Lyrics, Vocal Type, Key, Language, Writer, Composer), select licenses and then select file versions on offer.

You can see the licenses you can offer in the picture on the right. You can either select an Indie, Web Value, Commercal or Premium (limited uses, premium members only). At this point you can also choose whether or not to offer to sell the track as an mp3 for personal listening, or if you’d just like to offer it purely for licensing purposes.

You License are a great company for customer service – they answered all of my emails usually within 24hrs, and as a music licensing business, they do well in offering numerous music licensing opportunities on their website which you can submit to.

The Bottom Line: A well designed and thought-out widget which can definitively do the job required for composers. The You License widget is customizable enough to blend in well with any website, looks clean and elegant, but you will be charged 9% of any licensing sales you make via the widget/website and $0.10 for any mp3 sales you make if you are on the basic account, aswell as be limited to only 10 tracks. Upgrading to the Pro Musician account for $29.95 a year, means 0% commision on mp3 sales and licensing sales, aswell as unlimited tracks in your widget. The You License widget is a great option for most musicians who want to make a bit of extra cash on their tracks either by sales as MP3s, or through licensing deals.

Soundloud

Example: Here

What they have to say:

SoundLoud is a leading provider of digital music distribution services that make it easy for artists and labels to sell downloadable content directly to and through fans over the Internet. Our mission is to empower the web 2.0 generation of major and independent musicians with dramatically powerful tools for digital music e-commerce, marketing and distribution.
SoundLoud is the exclusive provider of SoundStation Music Store widgets. SoundStation widgets are unique e-commerce enabled Flash audio players widely utilized to facilitate the direct buying and selling of digital music on HTML webpages. The widgets seamlessly handle major credit card transactions and delivers downloadable music content to customers while virally spreading themselves throughout the Internet. SoundLoud is free to join and offers content owners the highest royalty payout rate in the music industry. Musicians can quickly begin transforming web traffic from band sites, fan sites, social networks, and blogs into music sales, SoundLoud and SoundStation Music Store makes it easy to conduct e-commerce across an unlimited number of online destinations.
SoundLoud has crafted the SoundStation Music Store to be more than just a selling tool, it also functions as a digital fan mail drop-box. Fans can send web-cam videos or email messages to artists conveniently from the SoundStation widget. Our unique mash-up of direct e-commerce technology along with fan mail communications make the SoundStation widget a vital component of any well orchestrated online music strategy.

Review: Creating an account on SoundLoud is a very quick process – you don’t even need to activate it via email. You create your account, login, and immediately start uploading music.One feature I didn’t like was that you are stuck at selecting one of 11 presets for your track prices, ranging from $0.29 up to $1.99. This drastically limits your choices, and I was curious as to why they don’t just allow you to set your own price.

Soundloud only accept mp3 files, meaing you can’t upload any production quality files – .wav files for instance.

An interesting addition to the player is that you have the option to create your own skin for the player, meaning it could fit in better to your own website. The soundloud basic account only allows for payment via paypal, amazon payments, and google checkout. In order to accept more payments, you have to upgrade to pro for $5 a month to allow mastercard, visa, discover and american express.

When embedded in your webpage, the widget comes in two colours – black or white. You are not given any options in the widget creation process to choose the size, which I felt was annoying as it means it can then be hard to embed it nicely in your site. I didn’t like the large “Soundstation” icon on the music player, but the “shopping cart” system allowing you to add a number of tracks to your cart before paying for all of them in one go is a nice addition, which was omitted from a number of other similar widgets.

The Bottom Line: Soundloud’s service is more based around the idea of selling your music for personal listening, rather than also giving the option of licensing the tracks. The fact that you are limited to selling tracks for between $0.29 and $1.99 isn’t incredibly appealing, but does make sense if you are only going to be selling your tracks for people to listen to – not many people would pay over $2 for a track to listen to on their ipod. I personally don’t think that the large “Soundstation” image on the widget is particularly appealing and can look a little unprofessional depending on its implementation. With a commission rate of $0.19 per song sold/$0.99 per album sold, Soundloud is certainly lower than its competitors.

The Bizmo

Example: Here

What they have to say:

The music
Everybody here has music business backgrounds giving us a great cross section of music business experience.
thebizmo was built by musicians for musicians. It is our shot at leveling the playing field for everyone both big and small.
thebizmo is an Instant free opportunity to get your wares to market. No need to pay anyone anything. Just set up your store and start selling
The technology
We were part of the software team that conceptualized and built one of the world’s first digital download services and then moved on to build the world’s largest mobile music service Groove-mobile. This experience made us realize that what the next generation of the music business needed was a 360 degree microstore to sell and market everything music — so we built thebizmo.

The money
We are backed by a number of venture capitalists including German Acton capital and Boston based East Coast Angels. These companies represent some of the best tech funding available !

Review: Uploading to The Bizmo was a very simple experience – select track and artwork, type in artists name and info, and its uploaded. A few minutes after, it will show up in your widget and you can start selling your tracks.

The backend administration panel for the widget in your account on The Bizmo website, is very simple, and definitively not overloaded with features. In fact, it does not offer very many features at all compared to other widgets, and it appears that most of the handy options such as selling cds and dvds aswell as store customization, is limited to Bizmo Silver accounts – $34.95 per year – which is a slight let down.

The Bizmo’s widget, like most others reviewed, only allows for the sale of mp3 tracks and a maximum price of $4.50 per track. This means its not an option if you are looking for a widget to license your tracks with (unless you’re willing to license your tracks for $4.50 or less!).

The Bottom Line: Another widget which allows you to sell mp3 tracks via your website. No licensing options, you only earn 62% of each sale which is a dramatically smaller amount than other widgets out there, and the fact that you have to upgrade to the Silver account to just customize the widget seems a little unfair. The large logo on the widget may look OK on myspace or facebook, but doesn’t do your website much justice if you are a professional.

Other Options

So all of the above widgets rely on someone elses website/server/service in order to sell your music through them. Thats sort of against the whole reason you want to sell your music on your website right? I mean, I originally got interested in selling my music on my website as I wanted to get all of the money from the sale – not a percentage of it as would usually be the case with any websites you sell on. Therefore, I started to look into other ways to sell music online via your website, and found the following alternatives:

Paypal IPN – Free

Example: Here

Possibly the easiest way to sell music on your website is via paypal. Paypal offer a very easy way of selling goods online, and receiving payments for them. To sign up for paypal takes only 2mins, and once you have an account, anyone can pay you via their bank account, or credit card (or a number of other ways also). In your paypal account, you can create “buy now” buttons, which you can put anywhere on your website, and customise to allow customers to send you money for whatever the product. Another great thing about this system is that paypal actually gives you the option of “IPN” (Instant Payment Notification), which can in turn offer “Digital Delivery”.

So what does this mean? Basically, lets say you have one track on your website that you want to sell. You create the paypal button, set the amount for $10, and put the button on your website. When someone clicks on that paypal button, they are brought to the paypal website, asked to pay $10, and then get given a link immediately to download the file from, once they have paid. “Digital delivery” allows you to accept payment, and send the file to the client, all while you’re asleep in bed! Once set up, it automates the entire process, and you can sit back and wait for the money to come rolling in.

Digital Delivery Scipt- 25% off for SCOREcast readers!

Demo: Here

Theres also a really great script that you can buy and get installed called “Delivery Script”. I bought this myself originally when I was on the search for ways to sell music online via my website. This script basically makes the entire process of selling your tracks via paypal a HUGE amount easier by giving you a backend administration panel on your website to log into, and create your own links for people to click on. Once they click on the link, they are brought to paypal, asked to pay, and once the payment has been processed and received, they are given a unique download link via email which they can download your track from. Within your admin panel, you can set the generic download time for these links, aswell as a load of other handy options like creating a one-off download link for someone if say they paid you by cash, or somehow a payment went through incorrectly and didn’t give them a download link originally.

Oh and by the way…did I mention the owner of the script, Yuniar, is giving all SCOREcast readers 25% off the price meaning it is only $30! Thats a fairly awesome deal considering he installs it for you on your site aswell!


XML MP3 Store – 25% off for SCOREcast readers!

Example: Here

If you would like to be totally independent and sell music on your website without having to pay any other companies a % on sales from your own website, then a great alternative would be to have a look at some of the premade flash stores that are available out there. Perhaps one of the best examples of these that I have come across would be the “XML MP3 Store” by TPN Web Design. The XML MP3 Store is the option I finally went with after trying all of the free options out there in the form of popular 3rd party widgets…..

The XML MP3 store is quite expensive (usual price of $400) when you compare it to the free alternatives out there, but a closer inspection reveals some really cool features which in my eyes really make it worthwhile. First off, lets look at the backend/administration panel of the store…

In the admin panel, uploading tracks and albums is simple. Select your .zip file of your album, upload it, then add your tracks one by one. When uploading your tracks, you are not limited to any price – choose $100 or $1.00 – the choice is up to you, unlike some of the other free widgets which limit you to certain price brackets.

In the general settings, you can input your own paypal email address, so that once someone pays for a track, you are sent the payment immediately to your own paypal account. Also in the general settings, you can change the currency – the standard is set at US dollars, but you can change it to Euros, Yen, or any other currency out there. This is handy as if you are located in Europe, and want to price all of your tracks in Euros, rather than using dollars, is a simple click and you’re done.

In the admin panel, another great feature is the ability to change the colours of the store – literally every single part of the store is customizable in terms of the colors you would like to use. This makes it one of the most customizable stores I have found out there . You can edits the colours in any and every way in order to make it blend in better with your website, making it look a lot more professional in my opinion.

One more option in the admin panel is the ability to track all of your orders from the store. You are given the paypal email address, price paid, date, as well as a few more handy options here. What I like about paypal is that you are given the email address of the person that sent you the payment for your track. As a composer starting off in the industry, I’ve found this helpful as I always follow up with people after they have bought a track from me for licensing purposes, to see if they would mind sharing what they’ve used it for with me. I can then add this to my demo reel to use later on if needed, and also keep in contact with them and possibly work with them in the future.

The XML MP3 store also has a shopping cart system like other previous stores reviewed, but it is a lot more sleet and professional looking, to my eyes at least. The amount of tracks you “Add to the cart”, show up just above the “Featured Albums” part of the store in the top left hand corner. Once you view your cart, you can add/remove items, then go to the checkout process at paypal, and complete the transaction.

Oh and yet again, for all you SCOREcasters, Thinesh – the creator of the store – is giving you all 25% off, and offers the store at a reduced rate of $300 (just include the code “SCOREcast” when you contact him!) It looks like a lot to fork out, but in my opinion it is definitively worth it (and no I don’t work for him lol – I just think its great!)

Alternative MP3 Stores

Heres a few more examples of some mp3 stores which are available for quite a low price – no subscription models or hidden costs – just a pre-made flash store which you can download and embed in your website immediately:

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

More Widgets

There are a few other widgets that didn’t make it into this article in the end, such as Musicane, SNOcap as their websites were down, and still are as far as I know. I tried to test the Amie Street widget also but after spending literally hours looking for it on their website, I hit a brick wall. I email support asking for information on it, but unfortunately have not got any reply. There are a number of other widgets out there also, such as Project Opus, Audiolife, and Fizzkicks which I did not review as they were either similar to the other widgets, or based more around bands and live musicians, rather than composers.

In Conclusion

Hopefully this article has given you an idea of what is available out there for musicians and composers alike to supplement your income. One thing that I didn’t mention in the article is how you can technically license your tracks on your website. The YouLicense widget does all of the licensing with contracts etc. for you, but thats the only one. If you are selling your tracks through a store like the XML MP3 store, then you could state on your website that people can download the tracks and use them in certain projects for the price determined on the player and ask them to keep your PRO details and fill in a cue sheet where necessary.

Another option to look at, is to offer your tracks for download under the Creative Commons licenses which are available for everyone to use. These are thing you will need to look into yourself, as to be honest, I’m still learning all of this, and don’t know all of the legal side of music licensing – so be sure what you’re doing is safe and correct before doing it

A few things to take into mind when looking to sell music via your website using a widget, are:

• How much commission will the company who owns the widget take?
• How adaptable and customizable is the widget to blend into my website?
• How easy is it to use the widget, and keep track of sales etc.?
• What licensing options does it offer and how well created are they legally?

So there you have it – an introduction to how to sell and/or license your tracks on your own website. Please bare in mind, this article is only an introduction to it all, and I’m a toddler in the industry – what I’ve learnt and wrote here is just my thoughts and discoveries so far – its not the be all and end all by any means.

A few side notes – my website (SonicOctave.com) is currently still being finished off, so some parts of it are still unfinished, such as the header image being too small. Also, the prices I have selected on my music store are just for purposes of example – the entire model is likely to change once I decide on a few things. I wouldn’t advise you to license your tracks for $20 at all Remember to put your PRO/ASCAP etc. number on your website, and encourage people to fill in cue sheets so you are also getting royalties for your music.

Remember to hit me up in the comments section if you have any questions, or anything to add or say on the subject!

Editor’s Note: In the spirit of December’s theme (Gear and Software), we asked our contributors to weigh in with their Top 3 gear finds and why they like them, and we are bringing them to you in a series that we are calling “My Perfect 3″. Here are the three that Emmett Cooke chose, and a short rundown on why he picked them.
My choices for my Perfect 3 weren’t difficult ones at all. These really stand out to me as great purchases, and more importantly investments:

KRK RP5s: I bought a pair of these when I was finished college a few years back, and I still think they’re pretty awesome. The first great thing about them is their price – about $150 each (which was cheaper when buying in euros). Not a bad price if you’re on a budget. I didn’t have much of an idea about monitors when I was buying them, so just went by the online reviews about them, and haven’t regretted the purchase since. Hell, they even look cool! The only thing I could think of that’s bad about them if I had to try would be a tiny lack of bass, but still – if you have a bit of extra dosh, you could get the sub-woofer option with them. One seriously great purchase!

Access Virus Ti Keyboard: When I was originally buying all of my gear for my studio (bedroom studio that is!), I wanted to spend a bit of money on a good keyboard, that would first of all do me as a midi controller, while at the same time have some pretty cool sounds to use in projects, and also be fun to play around with in my spare time. I asked around, and I was advised to have a look at the Access Virus Ti Keyboard. Its most definitively not a cheap keyboard at about $3500, but its most definitively one of the best investments I’ve ever bought. First off, its just plain great fun to turn on and mess around with – the amount of sounds you can get out of the beast is just almost unlimited. I guess its a bit more geared towards electronic music, but if you have the dosh sitting around, and want to try something new – go to your nearest music store and try it out. Its built like a tank, and yet again, it even looks cool! Don’t think I could live without this, having used it for the last few years.

East West/Quantum Leap Software: EastWest have so many great pieces of software out there, that its hard to narrow it down to just one, or even a couple. When I was buying my first orchestral VSTs, I came across East West, and in particular, their Symphonic Orchestra software. It’s such a great price for what you’re getting, and if you’re just starting off, and have the cash, I definitively can’t advise you enough to buy it. Software like Stormdrum 2. Time and time again, they come out with awesome VSTs, and can save you a lot of time, effort and money in the long run.

And my perfect 3 on Santa’s Wishlist:

Zoom H4N – really want a portable recorder, and this is an excellent little one!
A1 Edit Workstation – would love a new desk, and this one is the perfect choice!
LA Scoring Strings – they’re just so realistic – I want!

What do you SCOREcasters think of my choices? Hit me up in the comments!

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EMMETT COOKE is relatively new to the film composing scene having only finished his Degree in Music three years ago, but is quickly learning the tools of the trade. Based in Ireland, and currently traveling the world, Emmett also runs THE SCORE, where he interviews current composers on the scene – ranging from amateur to professional. You can find his SCOREcast bio (and links to his other sites) here.

“Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self” – Erich Fromm

I’ll be honest – I’ve only been composing a relatively short while in comparison to a lot of other composers on here, so I don’t think that my creative process is in anyway matured – its probably all over the place and changes every time I create a score, or even music in general. I believe that I don’t have enough experience in composing yet, to think about my own creative process and see what it looks like, so while I was thinking about what to write about in this article, I started looking into the psychological side of the creative process, and look at some literature on the subject. I think the actual reasoning behind why and how your brain does something c an be a real eye opener in some topics of conversation, and I think its the case here also.

Do “successful” people have the same creative process, or does it change from person to person, and even project to project. As I was searching for information on the psychological aspects of creativity, I came across an interesting article on “Creativity Models” and the literature that has been written on them in the last century. One creativity model that caught my eye was that of Robert Fritz in 1991.

Fritz wrote about a model called the “Process for Creation” (PFC) which reflected the stages in creative thinking, and creativity. These steps are found below:

I looked at the model and wondered – “does this reflect the process of composers while scoring for a film or even when creating music for any type of media/medium”. Below is my thoughts on how this creative process model works in relation to scoring – maybe your thoughts on it will be different – let me know!

Conception - “Something conceived in the mind; a concept, plan, design, idea, or thought”
You’re handed the film, and watch it tens of times over. In your mind you start to hear sounds, musical lines, instruments etc. over different scenes and start to get a rough idea of what you’ll be doing for the score (varying degrees of roughness ranging from “I haven’t a clue” to “I know exactly what I want to do here”)

Vision – “The manner in which one sees or conceives of something”
You have a rough idea of what you want, next is something that I have read about a lot, and tried a number of times – it applies to all areas of creativity, and even goal setting. You have to see (or hear) the end result. You have to be able to imagine the finished product as though its right in front of you – know how it sounds, feels, looks. The more vivid your vision of the end product or goal, the more likely you are to be able to make it a reality. I read an NLP book once by Tony Robbins where he describes how he asked a number of successful people how they saw their goals. He said that all of those people were able to literally feel, smell, touch and hear their goals – they were able to sit in the ferrari they wanted, and know the smell of the leather. That strong vision of the end goal made it more real for them, and a lot easier for their brain to process just how to make it happen for them. Long story short – having a strong vision of your end goal helps your brain to figure out what needs to be done in order to reach that goal.

Current Reality – “Determining the availability of the tools and expertise required to complete the job” (my definition at least!)
You have a vision of the end result – you know what it is going to sound like (either a rough or detailed idea) – but you have to figure out what tools are required to complete the job. Things to be taken into consideration are time, software, money, talent, relationship with director (does he like your idea?) etc. For example, your vision of the score is of a beautiful symphonic piece scored on the Newman Scoring Stage with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (not sure why they’d be in the US, but you never know!). Of course unless you’re a multmillionaire and know a lot of people to pull the strings, this isn’t become reality, and if you continue to try and pursue this goal, it will most likely end in tears. You need to evaluate the tools available to you, and determine if your vision of the score can become a reality, for example, within the confines of your schedule. If it can’t, then you need to re-evaluate the vision, and sculpt it to suit the reality.

Take Action – “Just do It! (Nike)”
I don’t think we need to go into great detail here do we? Probably the hardest of all the stages of creativity – actually doing it. Deliberation is a great killer at this stage, aswell as a short attentio…what was I saying? You know what you want at this stage, you know you can do it – just do it!

Adjust, Learn, Evaluate, Learn - “To gain knowledge, comprehension, or mastery of through experience or study”
This, in my opinion, is where the director enters the picture once again – you show him/her your mockup of the score and get some feedback. You run back to the cave with the feedback from the director, and compose compose compose. You learn from the feedback, from the numerous hours of composing put in during the project (where you might learn new tricks, ideas, tips etc.) and from the whole experience of working on a film score. I think subconciously, no matter what task you are doing, you brain evaluates for you, and you’ll most likely remember the next time you do that task, what worked, and what didn’t.

Building Momentum - “Impetus of a nonphysical process, such as an idea or a course of events”
The score is due in 14 hours, and you’ve already been at it for a straight 12 hours today. We all know that feeling of impending doom – its in those last few hours that you’ll get some of your best work done in my experience. Everyone is different, but I know I am one of those people who loves a nice deadline far away, but will only do the work once I start to realise “oh crap…its like due in less time than I have to do it!”. (its a trait I’m working on!). Its a nice feeling though being on on a roll, with the music flowing out of you like a runny nose on a winter’s day! In the process of a film score, for a composer, a lot of things happen at this stage I think. You’re preparing to get a live recording done (if you have the budget), you’re sending off your music to the orchestrator/copier etc. It all starts to come together and you get mixed feelings of “I can see the end” and “oh dear god, I hope this works!”

Completion – “The act of finishing or the state of being completed”
Relax, the work is done. Get some sleep, see your girlfriend, open the curtains and let the sunlight in for the first time in how long?

Living with your Creation
This is an interesting part of the process that Fritz included, and I’ve been thinking about it most of the day today. In the last 1 or 2 years, I’ve interview a number of composers, ranging from amateur to professional, and asked them all the same question – “Do you find that when you’ve finished a cue/score/track, you’re sick of hearing it?”. You’d be suprised the range of different answers I’ve received – from “I can’t stand listening to it” to “Yes of course! I love it!“. I think being happy with your creation is quite an important part of the creativity process – perhaps even one of the most important parts in the long term. If you’re not happy with what you’ve done, and you can’t stand back and go “Yea…this is awesome, and I created it”, then in my opinion you won’t be happy with yourself and your ability to do the work in the future. Sure we’ve all done some crappy work at some stage of our lives, but you can at least see the potential in what you’ve done, and be happy with that at the very least.

Tell me in the COMMENTS what YOU think about this model – total codswallop or bang on target?

I’m about to embark on an experiment of sorts, and I’d like to share my progress with you as I go. We all know how tough it can be sometimes to make enough money from composing – in particular when starting off. Some of us have a part time job while starting off, some have a full time job – others have no side jobs – just composing.

So… how can we make more money from our music, even after it has been used for its original purpose of a film score, etc.? We sometimes forget that the money making process doesn’t always have to stop there – we can keep licensing our music (depending on the original license we signed with the director/creator) after the original project. It’s not all about the money, but let’s not fool ourselves – we all need money to survive, and the more the merrier.

I currently sell some of my music on stock music libraries and make between $200-$350 per month – which is nice pocket money for paying the bills, or buying whatever. However, that money is generally only 50% or less, of the net profit that my music makes – the websites I sell on can take from 50% – 75% of the money my music earns, which can often be quite disheartening.

Therefore, I looked into ways to make 100% profit on selling my music – then it hit me – I sell a collection of about 12 piano tracks on a website about 4 or 5 times a month, and it sells for $100 a pop (of which I earn 50%). So…if I could sell a CD for $100, why not sell it on my own website for $100 for licensing purposes or $20 for personal listening, and earn all of the profit? So I contacted some CD duplication companies to see how much it would cost to get 50 CDs created, and started looking at the sums:

Expenditure:
50 CDs = $283 (CDs include colour artwork printed on CD, jewelcases, album cover and back)
Delivery = $24
__________
Total = $307

If we then take a look at the total possible income, the money starts to add up nicely. Lets say I sell 30 CDs for personal listening (I’m sure I could find enough friends and family to buy them! LOL) and then 20 CDs for licensing purposes.

30 x $20 = $600
20 x $100 = $2000
_____________
Net Total = $2600
______________________________
Gross Total Possible Income= $2293
_____________________________

OK – so the above sums may be wishful thinking, but it certainly looks like it could be a profitable venture, so why not try? My CDs are being made this week and should be ready in a few days time. I’ll share my progress with you as I go – I think it will be a worthwhile experiment.

The next questions is – how do I sell them/market them? That’s where things get interesting… I want to make 100% of the profit so I won’t be using services such as CD Baby to sell my CDs for me – at least for now. I’ll be trying a few different marketing ideas and I’ll let you know which work, and which don’t.

In Part 2 of this article (coming soon), I’ll show you how to license music on your website, rather than relying on other sites to do it for you.

Have you looked into CD Duplication services in your area, and have you tried selling CDs of your music? How do they stack up against services like DiscMakers or Oasis? How did you get on? Let me know in the comments!

Following on from the Top 10 Most Influential Scores of the Past Decade of last week, I’d like to take a look at how these scores, and many others have affected the creative output, as well as the creative process of a number of film composers – amateur to professional.

Lee Sanders wrote in his Weekend Provocation: The Locus of Cool, that “It’s a truism that as artists we begin with an “imitative phase,” in which we tend to mimic works that already exist.” He continues that “somewhere along the line though, all the disparate influences coalesce into something new. Something unique to us”. We become a new voice in world of music – we have something new to say, and something that makes us stand out from the crowd.

Scoring for film is a collaboration between director and composer. Collaborations are almost always creative in some way or another, but what happens when you remove some of that creative angle from the collaboration? What happens when a director asks you to go against your principles and imitate the style of another composer – take on their creative voice, and push yours aside?

The Questions

1. How do you deal with this and make it work in your favour, or do you just not even take the job in the first place?

2. Would it be ok to take a job like this in your early years, when you don’t have a particular style/voice of your own?

3. If you are a professional composer, do you take a job like this, or would it be career suicide?

4. What harm do you think these offers are doing to the industry?

I’ll try and answer these myself (yes I know – having a questions and answers with myself is rather strange…possibly one of the signs of madness!) but I’d love to hear what you guys think on the subjects. I’m by no means an expert on the subject, so hit me up in the comments and tell me what you think!

The (Possible) Answers

Q: “How do you deal with this and make it work in your favour, or do you just not even take the job in the first place?”

A: In my honest opinion, I think it would be beneficial to take this job either way if you are “starting off” (ie. in your first few years of becoming a film composer). I believe any experience is good experience – you might take away from the project not to ever do another that requires you to copy another composer’s style, or you might learn a number of new techniques from imitating that composer’s music. One thing I have learnt in the past few years is the more mistakes you make in the beginning, the less you are likely to make further down the road. Make your mistakes early in your career, screw things up and learn from it.

One way to make the project work in your favour would be to discuss it with the director and say “OK, I can write music like that, but how about I try it my way and see if you like it – if not we’ll go with your original idea”. Prove to him that your own style would work better with the film, rather than an imitation of another score. That way you might have a possibility of the director coming over to your side of thinking and saying “You know what – you’re right – lets go with your style of scoring” – win!

Another small point that I feel is important here, is how imitating another composer can sometimes be beneficial to you. When you imitate another composer, you learn his techniques, and even his thought process sometimes if you break down the original score enough. Imitating another composer can be a great compositional excercise and can work wonders for your creative side.

Q: “Would it be ok to take a job like this in your early years, when you don’t have a particular style/voice of your own?”

As Lee said, we all begin with that imitative phase of composing, so taking on a project like this could be beneficial to us, as long as we remember what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it. I would never have learnt how to score if I hadn’t of imitated other film scores, at least for a short while, so as to learn scoring techniques for the orchestra and how to score for different types of scenes. I think I would take on this job for the reason, but I wonder further down the road how likely I would be to do so.

Q: “If you are a professional composer, do you take a job like this, or would it be career suicide?”

A: I would love to hear from some of the professional composers as to what their stance on this is. I think it would most likely be career suicide, but maybe you have all been around long enough to know what to do in this situation?

Q: “What harm do you think these offers are doing to the industry?”

A: I wonder sometimes do these offers really do any harm to the industry at all. I mean, when you really think about it, what might be happening is that there are more and more imitative composers popping up out there who are looking for jobs like this. Is that such a bad thing? Surely that means that original composers will become more sought after further down the line when the trends such as the Zimmer trend diminish (if it ever does) – after all its the original composers who set those trends – not the imitative composers.

Another thing to bare in mind is – there will always be requests like this from directors. There always have been, and the always will be – all we can do is try and persuade them to come over to our side of thinking and show them that the film score is an art, and art should always be original.

So there’s my answers to the questions – I really would love to hear your answers and thoughts on these questions guys (how wrong I am or if I’m right!) – lets discuss them in the comments!

How do you think that the Top 10 Most Influential Scores of the Past Decade have influenced the collaboration between composers and directors on films?

Increasing Productivity in the Studio

- Draw some boundaries. Keep your place of work seperate to your chillout/play area. Having a defining line between your work area, and your chillout area, allows your brain to focus a lot easier with less distractions. This has been mentioned a number of times on SCOREcast, and I’m sure all professional composers will tell you the same.

- Use templates in your DAW. Sick of having to load up instruments seperately every time you want to create a new cue/track. Why not create an empty template with your orchestra already set out for you – or go a step further, and have a number of different orchestral templates – ranging in size and dynamics.

- Take naps. Benjamin Franklin, John F. Kennedy, Thatcher, Clinton, Einstein, Da Vinci, Brahms, and Beethoven all have it in common. They all took power naps during the day. Even Winston Churchill had it down to a tee – “You must sleep some time between lunch and dinner and no halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will accomplish more. You get two days in one – well, at least one and a half, I’m sure”.

- Plan your milestones. Create your goals for the day, then break them into smaller goals, and smaller goals again. In my experience, creating goals means absolutely nothing for me, as I usually say to myself “yes I know I need to finish this piece of music before the end of the day”. However, when you break it down into easy to digest pieces, it becomes a lot easier to see the end and know how to get there. Even if you for some reason don’t complete your goal for the day, you know exactly how many smaller goals you will have to complete in the morning to get there.

- Find your power band. Figure out what time of the day you are productive at, and try work with it. Most people are either morning people, or evening people. I don’t know as many people that are as productive in the day time, as they are at morning/night.

- Go silent. If you’re writing an email to a director/client, putting on your headphones blocks out outside noises, and can help you concentrate a lot more. Having no sound, or even just the sound of music, helps your brain stay on track and stay focused (I even know someone who listens to just pink noise as he works – I wouldn’t advise that though…)

I would like to leave you with a question, and look forward to discussing it in the COMMENTS:

“How much of an effect do you think that the availability of cheaper music licenses online, as well as the huge rise in amateur composers in the last number of years, has had on the film industry in terms of budgeting and scheduling?”

How many of you buy photos or have even heard of the website, iStockphoto.com? Well…the stock audio market is pretty much the same – license music tracks for a one off small fee. It is “royalty free”, meaning (obviously) you won’t receive any back-end royalties from it. Due to this, you would think that you would be rewarded by this with a greater one off payment – but you would be wrong
The “Royalty Free/Stock Audio” market can be a small stream of income for you, and it can be enough to pay your bills in those months where an income is scarce (quite a deal for a professional composer OR composer on his way there).

Before I go any further, I just want to make you aware of some of the terms that will be used:

Exclusive: You sell your music exclusively on that website, and cannot sell it anywhere else if you sell it there.

Non-exclusive: You can sell your music on any and every website at the same time.

Royalty Free: You will not receive any back-end performance royalties if your music is used for TV.

Selling Online
Selling music online in the stock music market, can be easy or hard, profitable or unprofitable, great for your career, or not so great for it. It all depends on what you are selling, the quantity of it, and where you are selling it. Ok – so thats very vague, but I’m being vague for a reason – I know quite a few people who sell music online in the stock music market, and the difference in income they receive from it is huge. Some people have a portfolio of tracks that is close to 400-500 tracks, and some have about 80-100 and both could make the exact same each month from it.

What I have learnt over the past 2 years or so that I’ve been selling music online in the royalty free market, is that quality resides over quantity, and generic works better than specific. Allow me to explain.

My first point is pretty obvious I suppose really – quality nearly always resides over quantity when it comes to selling anything, no matter what the product. However, I know a composer who has about 470 tracks on a particular website, and I have about 40 tracks on the same website. Neither of us market our tracks on the site, but yet in the 2 years that we have both been members on the site, I have made about three times the sales that he has. My point here is that, I have some good quality tracks on the website, that stand out from the crowd a little more than his do, and thus they get bought more often. Filling the website with your tracks won’t make people buy more of them – you’ll just get people who are sick of searching for tracks, and having to trail through hundreds of search results, which are laden with your tracks.

This brings us to my second point – “generic” over “specific”. Say you have 5 tracks that are very generic and could be used for lets say a film, ad, tv, presentation or website, and another person has 5 tracks that only really suit a corporate presentation, who do you think will get more sales? In my experience (which again could be wrong), tracks which can be used for multiple purposes will have a larger potential market than tracks which can only be used for one purpose.

The Websites
Before we go any further, I just want to say that all of this is just my opinion and experience. Its not the “ultimate truth”. It is all built on my experiences from selling on a number of websites, and your experiences could vary to mine (in fact they most likely will!). Also, just because I didn’t do well on any particular websites, doesn’t mean that you won’t either – my portfolio of tracks will be totally different to yours, so try them all out!

Audiojungle
My personal opinion: Micro-pricing for music sales – $10 is average track sale, but if you are non-exclusive, then you will only earn $2.50 per track! They don’t email you when a track is sold, which other sites do, but you can still track your sales easily on the site when you login. Great community, and nice feedback on each track everytime you upload by the reviewer. Three types of licenses do allow you to earn more per track, which is a nice addition (1x, 3x 50x)

Price your own tracks? No
Account-driven or demo/review-driven? Open an account – uploads are reviewed
Accepting submissions from outside composers? Yes
Payout and split arrangement? 25/75 non exclusive, 30/70 exclusive (increases if you sell more)
Any backend royalties? No
Option to be Exclusive/Non-exclusive? Yes

Revostock
My personal opinion: Really easy upload process – upload via ftp, then put description on each track. Have a weekly newsletter which sends out the top tracks of the week to all subscibers, getting your music more views if its on it. Good track pricing – ie. $10- $15 and nice payout out 45% per track. Mail you when a track is sold which is nice to see in your inbox. Also 3 types of licenses to increase your income.

Allow uploads? Yes
Price your own tracks? No
Account-driven or demo/review-driven? You have to submit a demo and be accepted
Accepting submissions from outside composers? Yes
Payout and split arrangement? Payment split is 45/55 for non-exclusive, 60/40 for exclusive.
Any backend royalties? No
Non-exclusive? Yes

Productiontrax
My Personal opinion: I have only ever sold one track on here but I do know a few composers who have had some sales on it, for commercial licenses, and made a nice amount of money from it. Well worth trying and seeing how you get on.

Allow uploads? Yes
Price your own tracks? No
Account-driven or demo/review-driven? Anyone can sign up for an account
Accepting submissions from outside composers? Yes
Payout and split arrangement? 65% of the sales go to the composers, whether a track is exclusive or not.
Any backend royalties? No
Non-exclusive? Yes

Audiosparx
My Personal Opinion: I have only ever sold one track on Audiosparx. Its a huge library, so I think it may be harder to get your music noticed on it, in comparison to other similar sites. It has a huge amount of flexibility, in terms of pricing, licenses, ways of uploading, marketing etc. so could be valuable if you are willing to put in a lot of work into it.

Allow uploads? Yes
Price your own tracks? Yes
Account-driven or demo/review-driven? Free to register, but any music uploaded has to be reviewed first
Accepting submissions from outside composers? Yes
Payout and split arrangement? 50/50
Any backend royalties? “For musicians, we help and guide you in the process end-to-end to help you earn performance royalties for the broadcast production use of your music”
Non-exclusive? Yes

Musicloops
My Personal opinion: Great site – easy to upload and I’ve made a lot of money from this website. Payments are always on time, the library on here is of a good enough size for your music to be found, and its easy to upload. You get an email every time a track sells, which is nice to see, and I’ve had absolutely no problems with this site. Well worth joining in my opinion.

Allow uploads? Yes
Price your own tracks? Yes
Account-driven or demo/review-driven? Submit a demo
Accepting submissions from outside composers? Yes
Payout and split arrangement? 50/50
Any backend royalties? “Yes, but we do not require that the customer report the use to performing rights agencies”
Non-exclusive? Yes

Partnersinrhyme
My Personal Opinion: Brilliant site. Sells music collections, so if your music is good enough, and a unique genre, you may be able to sell a collection of your music on here. Well worth having your tracks on. I’ve made the most money out of this site, and its a great site to be on if you get the opportunity.

Allow uploads? No
Price your own tracks? No (composers have input on what prices might be though)
Account-driven or demo/review-driven? Submit a demo
Accepting submissions from outside composers? Yes, via demo online or CD
Payout and split arrangement? 50/50
Any backend royalties? “Yes, but we do not require that the customer report the use to performing rights agencies”
Non-exclusive? Yes

YouLicense

My personal opinion: I’ve uploaded tracks to their site, and have sold one or two mp3 tracks for a few bucks. They have a fresh approach, and are exactly what a lot of composers I know, are looking for. You get to choose what licenses you can offer on your tracks, and there is a cool opportunites page, with listings of people that are looking for you to submit your tracks to them for projects. Another brilliant thing which they have is the youlicense widget which you can add to your site – you can check out mine here – it lets you sell your music via your own website, without having to embed an mp3 store on your site. Great ideas from this site.

Allow uploads? Yes
Price your own tracks? Yes (You get to choose each price for each license)
Account-driven or demo/review-driven? You can just open an account and start uploading
Accepting submissions from outside composers? Yes
Payout and split arrangement? Free Account = You pay 10 cents per track sold and you set the prices; Pro Musician and Business accounts = You pay nothing on MP3 sales
Any backend royalties? Depends on each project
Non-exclusive? Yes

Soundreef
My personal opinion: Cool idea – swapping music for promotion. I’ve never seen it done before, and I think it could work well. I think the site is currently in its early stages (its currently in Beta, and has been for about 6 months now I believe) – but definitively worth checking out.

Allow uploads? Yes
Price your own tracks? Yes (You get to agree on a price per project)
Account-driven or demo/review-driven? Currently in private beta, but you can get numerous invitations online if you search
Accepting submissions from outside composers? Yes
Payout and split arrangement? Composer – 75%/ Site – 25%
Any backend royalties? Depends on each project
Non-exclusive? Yes

Pumpaudio
My personal opinion: Large site owned by Ghetty Images. Have some huge clients, and you could have your music being viewed by some big names out there. I know some people who have had great experience and sales from it. After approximately a year or more now, my music is not in their library yet, so I’m not certain how long you may be waiting. There is quite a lot of upset over their decision to change the composer payout to 30% and many believe it to be very unfair (large corporation vs. musicians etc.) Check it out yourself and see what you think – there is some great opportunity for success.

Allow uploads? Yes
Price your own tracks? Yes
Accepting submissions from outside composers? Yes
Payout and split arrangement? 50/50
Any backend royalties? Yes
Non-exclusive? Yes

In Conclusion
So what conclusions can we draw from this? Well…

• The stock audio market can be a great additional/supplemental income for you as a composer in months when your streams of revenue are low

• It can be beneficial to be exclusive on one or two particular sites, depending on how well you do on them, and what their payout/track pricings are. On the other hand, it could be just as beneficial having your music on all of the websites in a non-exlusive deal

• Putting up a track on stock audio websites that has taken you two weeks to create, compared to putting up a track that took you a few hours to create, might not be worthwhile if both will sell for the same low price – choose which tracks to sell for the low price, and keep the good ones to license for higher paying projects

• The stock audio market can be a great marketing tool for you as a composer. I, myself, have had numerous business opportunities and contacts come from selling my music on royalty free libraries, and it has been a very worthwhile venture in terms of extra cash, new contacts, and marketing.

There are literally hundreds of these type of websites out there – the above list is a short list of some I have tried out.

Don’t take my word as the “Be All and End All” of opinions. Try them out yourself and you might have a different experiences.

Also, if any SCOREcasters out there have had experiences with any services *not* listed here, let’s hear about them in the COMMENTS!

I’ve been having some pretty crazy dreams lately. Most likely, the causes of these are the fact that there’s a lot of change going on in my life right now – I’m finishing up my current job, I’m going to see my girlfriend for the first time in 3 months soon, and a load of other things. Anyway….I digress. I’ve been having some cool “music” dreams lately – I’m sure a lot of you can all relate.

One of my latest dreams that I can remember was being in a concert, and the orchestra was playing my music – in real-time as I composed it! In my dream, I understood the entire workings of the orchestra, and exactly how to compose great orchestral music. It was like a revelation – a light bulb went on somewhere, and I suddenly understood it all. Then I woke up…

I’m curious to see what kind of dreams you guys have – I’ve had everything from playing the most amazing music on a church organ, to going shopping for guitars, and trying to drag a Gibson SG out of my dream with my as I woke up. So share your experiences! Let us know what kind of crazy musical dreams you’ve had!

The role of “Moving Up the Ladder” is to discuss the aspects of being a “newbie” in the film scoring industry, and to look at the different ways to evolve and shape your career.

This month, I’d like to discuss the topic of diversifying at the beginning of your career and whether it is beneficial or detrimental – in both the long run and the short run. I’ll be basing these observations mainly on my own experiences, so please don’t feel that anything I say is the “final word” on the subject – I believe you should always try it yourself and make your own conclusion, but there’s definitively advantages to seeing it from someone else’s perspective.

First off – what do we mean by “diversifying”? I’m talking about composing in multiple genres, and for a wide range of media. Lets look at just a few of the the different types of media out there, which at some point or another require music:

- Film (Student films, short films, trailers)
- Animations (Cartoon, CG)
- Video Games (Flash, Mods, Amateur, Low Budget, iPhone)
- Websites (Background tracks)
- Presentations (Office etc.)
- On Hold Music
- Wedding Music/Backing Tracks for singers

The list is endless when you take a look around at plethora of areas you hear music being used in every day.

I firmly believe that the more types of media you compose for, the greater your chances of success as a composer, and so have been composing for all of these since the beginning of my career. However, you may be thinking right now “this guy is an idiot – I want to compose for films, not bloody wedding music!”. Well in one sense, yes you are right – its not the avenue you want to go down, however, what will you learn from venturing down that path? What will you discover about yourself? What will you learn how to do that you didn’t previously know how to do? How will your style evolve from composing for that type of media?

I’d like to show you guys a quick list of places where you can find these types of job opportunities. Below are just a few cool sites where you can start off with:

Modbb – this is a website for game modding enthusiasts and has some really great projects going on all the time. Take a look around and seeing whats being done – remember – all of these modded games are going to need music/sounds, so your skills could be required

StudentFilms -a forum for low budget films – plenty of job opportunities on here for you to start off your career

Humtoo- Interesting site where composers battle it out to have their music used for the project. Worth having a look at the site to see whats on offer.

CGtalk - Some amazing digital artists on here, with some seriously cool projects sometimes.

Animation forum – Great small forum with some good animators on it – I’ve had a few job opportunities from this site just by posting on here, and answering some questions for people.

So go hang out at these places, talk, get to know people, make contacts, and leave a link to your website in your signature. You’ll be suprised how many projects you could be offered, once you start to get your name around on them.

To round all of this up – what has all of this got to do with composing for film? Well I suppose I was kind of rambling for most of this post, but the main point that I want to get across to you is its all about who you know and who knows you. The more types of media you compose for, the more networks of people your name is going to be spread along – and as we all know, the industry is all about networking.

I’ve had a long few days in the “office” at work lately, and the more I think about it, the more I know how hard it would be for me to stick at that job for my life. Maybe it’s because the job is incredibly boring and repetitive, or maybe it’s because I just enjoy composing and music in general too much, and can’t live without my job being in some way related to it.

My last “office” job (administration work in a callcentre) was pretty handy – good money, plenty of time to do my own things while there – such as update my websites, expand my online presence etc. When I was there, I could see myself slowly moving towards “The Darkside” – a light workload, good money, no deadlines etc. – an easy job basically! As Yoda would put it “An easy job leads to laziness…laziness leads to lack of commitment….lack of commitment leads to failure as a composer”. *Cue deadly lightsabre battle*

What I’m getting at here basically is the whole “Office Job vs. Composer” scenario. I think it was covered by Richard Davis in his book The Process of Film Scoring (correct me if I’m wrong) – but basically an office job, once you get into it, can be quite enticing and hard to resist staying there for a long time as the money is good, the hours are regular etc. You can get an office job, and next thing you know, you’ve been there for five years trying to “save some money” for your “Becoming a Professional Composer Fund”, but in relality, saved nothing, and lost a piece of your soul in the process. Beware the office job!

Obviously however, everyone has variying degrees of resistence to these things, but I think its important to always think about what you are doing right now in life, and how it is benefitting your current goals. If it doesn’t benefit your current goals in life, stop doing it right now, and change whatever needs to be changed so that you are at least doing something that is benefitting your goals.

Of course this probably seems quite strange coming from a guy who currently works in an office, and has worked in an office for the last 2 years – my excuse is that I’m travelling the world at the moment so its fair game. Once I’m finished, I’ll be settling down (probably in an office job again) for a while to save for my “Becoming a Professional Composer Fund” – hopefully checking my progress each step along the way.

What I hope you take away from this is that an office job can be a great way to get some money while you’re trying to buy your equipment to start off etc. But it can suck you in and you might be inclined to decide that its a lot easier than trying to become a successful film composer. In the words of Yoda (or what he would say on the subject, were he a composer) “Stay Focused Must You!” – always remember where you are, what you are doing, and why you are doing it.