Best method of selling your music

[Ty Ford]

Hello Kevin and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

Yes to all. It’s very hard to make a living with music today because there are so many sources.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

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[Kevin Reiner]

Thanks for your response Ty. Maybe a better question is “what should he avoid?” Any hard-learned lessons out there regarding selling your music?

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[Ty Ford]

Ah!,

Well then. Avoid anyone who wants to own your music outright and not license its use from you unless that particular music, in your/his opinion is relatively disposable or unless you get a big enough pay out for its use in perpetuity.

Think of music as an intellectual property. You get paid for its creation and also for the degree of exposure. A ditty for an industrial video should be less expensive than the underscoring for MicroSoft’s next TV campaign. I don’t remember what Bill Gates paid for the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” for the Windows 95 campaign, but the $3 mil, $8 mil and $14 mil you read about are a benchmark that you can only hope for.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[André Engelhardt]

Hi Kevin,

for starters I’d recommend as much exposure as possible. Sign up with every stock music site out there (that offers a fair deal, a lot of them do, a few don’t. Find a stock site, google for reviews then decide if it’s worth joining) eventually when your friend builds a name for themselves they can go exclusive on one website but especially as long as their catalogue isn’t all that extensive yet, it’s really worth having the music available in as many places as possible (even include websites like bandcamp, cdbaby etc.)

As for the stock music creation part itself it’s proven worthwhile to stick to just one to two musical genres to make yourself a name with. If you don’t want to / can’t limit yourself to one or two (that’s ok too!) then use different writer/composer names for each genre. It sounds silly but it’s worth it.

What to avoid? Anything your gut tells you is too good to be true or all out exclusive licenses. Read the websites’ fine print very carefully! Most of us like to just skip the TOS and EULA’s but when putting your material up for sale through a third party you HAVE to read the contract you’re getting into. Also, your music will get ripped off/stolen eventually, be prepared that it will happen and maybe put some money aside for legal costs if you wish to pursue but just know that it will happen and don’t get too upset about it.

Hope that helps a bit and good luck to your friend!

P.S.: Stock music creators can be a very competitive bunch, take critiques with a grain of salt, many will have you believe there’s no more room for more stock music, that’s plain B.S., there really aren’t THAT many people doing stock music in the overall scheme of things! Anyone who tells you that it’s a tough market is usually just afraid of new competition!

—
André Engelhardt
Audio Engineer, Sound Designer
http://www.soundr.net