 The following is an excerpt from my 17 page guide, The Music Licensing Manifesto. Available in both PDF and video format. One of the most important things you should be doing, on your music licensing journey, is to focus on creating an amazing catalog of music. How many songs do you need? Great question. I don’t have a precise answer, but think about it this way, the income you make will more than likely, be directly proportionate to the size of your catalog. The more songs you make, the more songs you’ll be able to license. The more topics and moods your songs address, the more potential scenes and uses your music will be a good fit for. The more songs you license, the more money you’ll make. Your ongoing mission should be to create a diverse, vibrant catalog of amazing music that will meet the needs of the licensing community you’ll be serving. Of course, you don’t need hundreds of songs to get started, but your goal should always be to create more songs that will work for more productions, shows, films, ads and so on. At the end of the day, this is what it’s all about; making music. The money you invest initially should be on tools and resources to help you get to a place where you can consistently create high quality music on an ongoing basis that is “on target” for licensing. If you’re going to be producing your own tracks, then obviously you need to invest in things like instruments, recording equipment, your DAW, microphones and so on. If you’re going to be working with other producers, then you’ll need to have some sort of budget for your recording projects that you can afford on a regular basis as you’re building your catalog and creating music for projects you pitch to. Where will you get the money for all of this? Well, unfortunately, I don’t have any top-secret sources of money to tell you about. Licensing music isn’t a get rick quick scheme. It’s a business and like any other business, it’s going to take time and money to build and turn into something profitable. The most likely solution is that in the beginning, you’ll probably need to have some sort of day job that will allow you to sustain yourself and invest into your licensing business as you’re getting started. I was a guitar teacher when I got started and did that for seven years until I was making enough money from all my side projects to stop doing that. Bottom line: everyone’s situation is different. Do whatever it takes. The New Music Licensing Paradigm Back in the day, there was this model that bands and artists seemed to follow, that went something like this: 1) Record and release an “album” of ten to twelve tracks 2) Tour for two years or so to promote the album 3) Repeat That was the model that worked for recording/touring artists for many years. I think that a lot of artists my age are sort of stuck in that paradigm. They’re still looking at the music industry through the lens of the old model. They’re not adapting to the new music industry. The old model worked when people were buying millions of albums and it probably still works for a few elite bands and artists. But the above model doesn’t really apply to licensing at all. If you’re only creating ten tracks every couple years, it’s going to be really hard to turn that into a full time revenue stream. Of course, there are always exceptions and I know a couple artists that do pretty well with small, niche catalogs. But for most artists, you’re going to need volume to create a significant revenue stream. You’re going to need to create a lot of music if you’re hoping to make a lot of money. Remember, more music = more money. And if you think about, this is good news! You went into this because you love making music, right? Yeah? Well, great, you’re going to get to make a lot of it as you build your licensing catalog. And here’s the really cool thing: This all might seem a little daunting in the beginning. But in my experience, when you get into a flow of writing a lot of music and creating music more frequently, more and more songs and ideas come! When you get into the habit of writing music on a daily basis, it starts to feel as if you’re priming your musical pump, and the songs and inspiration just keep coming. These days, I never run out of song ideas or feel I lack inspiration. In fact, my biggest problem these days is trying to keep up with all my song ideas and get them recorded and produced quickly enough. I have a backlog of like 20 songs right now, that are all in various stages of production and I’ve written three new songs in the last week or so. When you really get into this, you can get into a rhythm and flow with songwriting and composing that is truly amazing. The more music you compose and create, the easier it gets. Bottom line: Work towards creating a large, diverse catalog of music. More music = more money. (Of course, it goes without saying, the music you create needs to be of high quality.) If you know music licensing is for you and you’re ready to start turning this into a career, then go premium and take advantage of all of our in depth courses, monthly webinars with music licensing experts, daily music licensing leads, in depth directories and much, much more. We have over 200 hours of the most in depth, cutting edge information on how to make money licensing your music in tv, films, ads and more you’ll find anywhere. GO PREMIUM HERE.
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 2020 marks the 12th year that I’ve been running How To License Your Music dot com and its related sites, Youtube channel and podcast. It’s mind blowing when I stop and think about how long I’ve been doing this.
Next year is the third anniversary of How To License Your Music Premium, our premium member site that hosts all of our courses, webinar and training in one convenient place. HTLYM Premium is like a Netflix for music licensing that has grown to a community of over 400 songwriters and composers that are all utilizing our in depth content and training in order to further their careers. Our members have had syncs in a wide variety of projects as a result of using our site, including Netflix, Toyota, NBC, ABC, CBS, Bravo, A & E, Showtime, HBO, Fuse TV, Oxygen Network, Discovery, VH1, MTV, Spike TV, Fox Sports and many more. The majority of my time these days, apart from time spent on making my own music, is focused on improving our premium site, creating new content, researching and posting daily licensing leads, hosting webinars, creating and editing video content, and much, much more. My team and I have invested countless hours into creating what we confidently feel is the single best resource available for musicians who want to learn how to license their music in tv, films, ads and more. As a reminder, between now and December 31, save 50% on all of our membership packages and be enrolled free of charge in our upcoming 365 Day Music Licensing Challenge. Details here: https://www.htlympremium.com/ By working and connecting with supervisors, publishers and songwriters all working full time in the business over the last 12 years, I’ve been able to get a real “bird’s eye” view of how the business works. The big picture, if you will, of the music licensing industry. The life of a musician can be lonely at times, and one of my main goals with HTLYM Premium is to bring as many different people as possible working in the business together to share their stories, so that you can learn from a really wide range of people that work in the industry. So that you’ll get a better perspective on your own journey and hopefully feel a little less isolated and alone. In today’s post I thought I’d break down 7 key takeaways that I’ve gotten from the last several years of working in the music licensing business and networking with a variety of people in the business. These are 7 points that pretty much everyone I’ve interviewed and spoken with has been in agreement on. 1) You can make a full time living, but it’s takes a lot of time and effort – One of the questions I’ve been asking everyone I interview is about the viability of turning music licensing into a career. Is it possible? Feasible? Is it practical to try to make music licensing a full time career? Everyone I’ve spoken with has said more or less the same thing. Yes, it’s possible, but it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to get to that point. Music licensing, most of the people I speak with say, should be approached more like a long-term investment. Sort of like a 401k plan for musicians. It’s something that you need to build up over time. You need to approach music licensing like you would investing in the stock market. In other words, think long term and diversify. Write a lot of different songs. Place them in different libraries and with different publishers. Go direct to supervisors if you can. You might get lucky and land a huge placement right away. It could happen. But don’t necessarily count on that happening. Keep writing and pitching and over time the money you make will grow. If you persist long enough (usually several years or more) you can build up your catalog to a point that it generates a full time income. 2) It’s better to write from the heart than to try and write what you think will work for licensing – Although it’s important to be aware of what works and why in the context of licensing, the overwhelming consensus has been that, at the end of the day, you should just focus on writing great songs and compositions that are inspired and from the heart. This advice that I’ve gotten, over and over, sort of took me by surprise, in a good way. I hate the idea of trying to force my music into some sort of pre-conceived, pre-determined, homogenized mold. The “artist” in me cringes at this thought. I went into this business to make art! If I wanted to just create cookie cutter widgets, void of substance and meaning I’d work in a factory or something. So the fact that the majority of people I’ve interviewed, from supervisors to publishers to songwriters to composers, all agree that we should, first and foremost, strive to write great, inspired music gives me hope. Of course, you should still pay attention to things like lyrics and arrangement and make sure they’re not too far out of the realm of what works for licensing. You still need to consider the way in which your songs will be used, if and when they’re licensed. But don’t do this at the expense of the music you’re creating. Don’t forego writing a great song too simply try and make it fit the music licensing mold. Music supervisors are music fans. They’re drawn to the music business because, for the most part, they love music. Don’t forget this when you’re creating music you plan to pitch for licensing opportunities. 3) It takes a lot of pitching and submitting your music to land placements - The music business is competitive. There is a lot of music being pitched. I spoke with one prominent music supervisor who told me that she gets as many as 1,000 submissions a week! Many supervisors simply don’t have time to listen to everything that is being sent to them. Your job as a songwriter, is to rise above this noise and competition and get your music heard. Going through libraries and publishers is a good way to do this, as they can help you do the job of pitching and finding out about projects. They’ll take a cut of what you make of course, but it’s well worth it in my experience to have the extra help. You can go directly to music supervisors as well and if you catch them at the right time, with the right track they might be open to it. In my experience, supervisors draw from a lot of different sources to meet their music needs and many are open to working directly with artists when it makes sense to do so. Whatever route you go, if you want to do this at serious level, you need to devote considerable time to pitching your music and finding out about projects. Most writers that do this full time, devote at least two to three days a week to doing nothing but pitching. It really is where the true work comes in when it comes to landing placements. I wish there was an easier way, but the consensus is that to be successful at licensing, you need to keep pitching and networking on a regular basis. 4) You have to approach this like a job if you want to be successful – I think this piece of advice applies to any aspect of the music industry. You have to approach this like a job or business if you want this to be your job. Songwriters that make a full time living doing this, work full time hours! I think what Sam Beam, aka Iron And Wine, said about the music business sums it up succintly, “if you treat music like a job, they’ll pay you like it’s a job”. Apply this mindset to everything you do in terms of being a musician. Set up regular hours to write and record music. Have a set schedule you adhere to when you’re pitching music. Be consistent. There are a lot of musicians out there, but in terms of musicians that are really going for this in a serious way, it’s a much smaller pool. 5) You need to have thick skin for this business – This probably comes as no surprise, but the music business is really hard. It’s competitive. You will be rejected, most likely a lot. Don’t even pay attention to the rejection. Keep making music. Keep improving your music and keep pitching your music. If you’re passionate and motivated, eventually you’ll win other people over. Of course, listen to the feedback you get, if you send your tracks to 20 people and they all say that your vocals are off key, take note and work on improving that. We all have things to improve. But, music isn’t an exact science. What one music supervisor hates, another might love. That’s why I don’t pay too much attention to criticism or rejection in general, unless it points to something specific that I hear over and over. There’s a difference between someone just not feeling a track and someone not liking it for specific reasons. If you know deep down you’re writing and recording great songs, keep pitching them until you find others that agree. 6) There are no guarantees when it comes to licensing, until a track is actually licensed - At the end of the day, there are no guarantees in this business until a song is actually licensed. You might find ten publishers who love your tracks and they all pitch them to no avail. It happens. Until a specific supervisor wants to use your track for a specific project and the song has been synced, it’s all speculation. Don’t let this discourage you, but also don’t forget this reality of the industry. This is why the ongoing pitching of your material is so important if you want to approach this like a career. You never really know if something is going to happen, until it happens. Unless you are on staff for a network or hired by a production company to write music on a salaried basis, you’re always going to be looking for the next project and the next place to license your tracks. Of course, you’ll be building up residual income too, as some of your tracks will likely be used repeatedly and in different projects over time. But for most writers that are doing this on a freelance basis, in other words, most of us, the pitching never really stops. 7) You might decide this isn’t for you, and that’s ok - With all this talk about competition, rejection and how hard licensing is, you might come to the conclusion that this simply isn’t for you and that’s ok too. I feel like the only real reason to go into the music business in general is because you absolutely love making music more than anything else. If you don’t have that sort of intense passion for making music, then it really doesn’t make much sense as a career path in my mine. I believe success is possible for all of us, but if you don’t have an innate sense of passion for music, it’s doubtful that you’ll be able to push through the inevitable challenges that you’ll face. Music, to me, is a calling. It’s almost a religious like calling. It's something I have to do. Any money and success I may happen to attain is really just a byproduct of my desire to get my music out into the world and have it heard. That’s really what drives me more than anything. At the end of the day, I don’t really care if my music is played in the background of a soap opera or a reality tv show. It’s nice when it happens, but more than anything I just love playing music and you know, I have to eat and pay bills.  The Music Licensing Manifesto By Aaron Davison – Founder Of htlympremium.com Download PDF Of "The Music Licensing Manifesto" I’m happy to say, that after 17 years of working in the licensing space, both licensing my own music since 2002, and running my website, How To License Your Music dot com since 2008, I feel like I finally, truly “get” the music licensing industry, at least to the extent that “getting” a business like this is actually possible. I’ll admit it. I’m a slow learner. There were of course pieces of the business that I’ve understood and have been able to assimilate along the way. I’ve had a lot of “aha” moments about music and the music business over the last 17 years, many of which I’ve shared on my blog, podcast and in my courses over the last few years. The business has also changed a lot since I started back in 2002, and my understanding of the business has evolved and changed alongside the changes in the industry. But lately, I feel like I really “get” this industry in a much clearer way than I did when I was younger, and in a much clearer way than even just a few years ago. It’s taken a lot of trial and error, ups and downs, spending a lot of money, experimenting with different styles of music, working with a variety of musicians, vocalists, publishers and producers and so on, to get here. I’ve made multiple trips to places like LA and Nashville since I started and have attended multiple conferences and seminars over the years. I attended Berklee for two years, from age 19 to 21, where I learned everything I could about songwriting and how the business of songwriting works. I then moved back to Chicago, where I’m from originally, finished college at Eastern Illinois University with a degree in music, then formed a band in the city and spent about a decade playing in bands in and around Chicago, learning everything I could about performing and the business of playing live music. It took me a long time to figure out how to fit all the pieces of the music business together in a way that would sustain me comfortably. But gradually, over the years, after a lot persistence and hard work, it happened. “It” meaning I figured out how to support myself solely from my passion for music and the music I make. A significant part of my income these days comes from licensing, and this becomes more the case each year as my catalog and the income it generates grows. In this post I’m going to focus on licensing and share some of my missteps along the way. I’m also going to share some of the realizations I’ve had over the last few years that has led to quadrupling my licensing income over the last two years or so. This post is going to be a little longer than usual, because my goal is to layout ALL the fundamentals you need to understand in order to succeed at licensing your music in one single, epic post. I’m calling this post “The Music Licensing Manifesto” because this is my attempt to explain, in a single post, all of the principles it takes to succeed at music licensing. If you want to go deeper into these topics and how to succeed in music licensing, be sure to check out our premium site. How To License Your Music Premium has over 200 hours of in depth, premium content about every possible topic related to music licensing you’ll find. We go deep and granular on very specific topics like music production, music marketing, music supervision, networking, music publishing and much more. We provide daily licensing leads, monthly webinars, in depth courses, directories and resources and more. Learn more here. In the meantime, absorb the information in this “manifesto”. My goal with this manifesto is to make this a document you can return to over and over again, whenever you’re feeling stuck or lost, sort of like the way you’d pull out a map on a journey, whenever you get lost or off track. This “manifesto” doesn’t have all the answers, related to every single action you’ll need to take, but it provides a very thorough overview of the basic steps you’ll need to take to succeed in licensing your music. It doesn’t address every possible hypothetical situation you’ll encounter on the path to licensing success, but it will point you in the right, overall direction. This “manifesto” is, literally, the result of 17 years of experience and time working in this industry. So, with that said, are you ready? Let’s get started…. Attitude & Mindset I think your attitude going into this is probably the single most important piece of the puzzle, in terms of being successful, which is why I want to mention the topic of attitude and mindset first. You have to have a positive mindset that is determined to succeed. This probably sounds pretty cliché at this point, but clichés exist for a reason. Usually there is at least an element of truth to clichés. This one is no exception. The music business is challenging, but success is possible and attainable. You have to know and believe that going into this on a deep level. Don’t approach this as if success in music licensing is akin to winning the lottery. I think that, in retrospect, I approached the music business this way for a long time, because on some fundamental level, that’s what I thought. It was drilled into me from a very young age that being a successful musician would be hard, if not almost impossible, and I think I sort of internalized this mindset from a young age. Sure, I wanted to succeed at music, and I told everyone that’s what I intended to do. But looking back, I don’t know if I really, truly believed that. I think deep down I was scared shitless that I was going to fail and that I was making a colossal life error and was going to be destined to live a life of struggle. That was a mistake looking back, because you can succeed based on your hard work and efforts alone, IF you truly understand the business and the steps you need to take, many of which I will outline below. I think a lot of musicians are completely in the dark about the business and feel like this is all one giant roulette table. It can sure seem that way, but the odds of success are much, much better than roulette, if you understand the business and how things work. You can tilt the odds in your favor if you take the time to truly understand the business and the needs of those working in it and you persist in reaching your goals. And to be clear, I’m talking specifically about the licensing aspect of the music business. Becoming a rock star ala Justin Bieber may actually be sort of analogous to winning the lottery. There is a lot of luck involved in that level of success. But, he doesn’t seem too happy these days anyway, so I’m not even sure that would be a desirable goal to aim for. Britney Spears isn’t happy either. It’s pretty clear at this point that massive fame doesn’t automatically equate to happiness, and could even exacerbate mental health issues in some cases. So, let’s set aside that particular goal for the sake of this manifesto and focus on success we can actually attain, based on our hard work alone. When it comes to licensing, your actions, responses to challenges and the steps you take will ultimately determine whether or not you succeed. It’s really that simple and in the following sections of this “manifesto” I’ll outline what those steps are and what you should focus on. When I look back over the last ten to fifteen years at the periods where I floundered the most and when success seemed to be the most elusive, if I’m completely honest with myself and with you, my attitude at the time played a big role in why I wasn’t progressing. I was my biggest obstacle. Of course, at the time, I couldn’t see this, and I felt like my attitude and the way I approached things was justified. In a way it probably was, because I was simply reacting to things and approaching the business the best way I knew how at the time, based on the limited tools, resources and knowledge I had at my disposal. Let me give you an example: After the first few songs I licensed, which I all paid a producer to produce for me, I started seeking out more cost-effective ways to produce my tracks. I wanted to keep my costs down so that I could make a larger profit. This wasn’t an inherently bad strategy, but I ended up creating a lot of tracks myself or with other inexperienced, but cheaper, producers that simply weren’t good enough to license. I didn’t have the skills or the tools at the time to create tracks that met the needs of those I was working with. This resulted in a sort of two steps forward, one step back period, where I tried and experimented with different production strategies until I eventually found a new system that worked and was sustainable. During this period a lot of my tracks were getting rejected because I was unwilling and perhaps a bit afraid to invest properly in the production of my tracks. I didn’t want to lose money and I didn’t have the confidence I needed at the time to take the necessary steps to move forward, in terms of investing in better gear, mores skilled producers and so on. I wasn’t convinced I would see a good return on my investment. My mistake, in retrospect, is that I was unwilling to take an initial loss on my songs in order to create long term passive income. I tried to cut corners wherever I could to keep my costs down. I used to think that if I created a song that landed me a thousand dollar placement, that song shouldn’t cost me more than 500 dollars to create. This thinking wasn’t completely wrong, the goal is to make money after all. But what I failed to realize early on, is that one track that initially created a thousand dollars in revenue, has the potential to generate many more thousands of dollars in the future, over the life of the song. In other words, this is a long-term game and you have to think long term in order to create long term, sustainable success. This leads me to the second point that you need to be aware of, when creating a business out of licensing music…. Invest In Your Success You have to invest in your career. In other words, “it takes money to make money”. Many years of being a struggling musician and feeling the pain of not having a lot of money, led to me becoming pretty frugal with my money. I spent the better part of a decade in my twenties and early thirties going for music with all I had. I spent a lot of time and money chasing my dreams during this period and over the years I went down a lot of dead-end roads. As a result, I became much more conservative and careful in how I invested my time and money. I got burned a few times and made some bad decisions that set me back financially. You have to be careful with your money and where you invest it. But, you have to realize that you are most likely going to need to invest money into this initially, if you intend to turn this into a career. It’s almost inevitable, unless you have really rich parents or investors or you find a large bag of cash lying around, which has never happened to me even once. You’ll need to invest money in equipment, producers (if you don’t produce your music), education and training and so on. The key is knowing when and how to invest money and when spending money is a wise decision, and conversely, when it’s not. A lot of musicians are only spending money on things they feel confident they can instantly recoup. This was my mindset for a long time. But licensing needs to be approached like a business and most businesses do not make money right out of the gate. In fact, many businesses are in debt, at least on paper, for many years before they become truly profitable. For example, it took Twitter a decade to become consistently profitable. Most businesses start out in debt and only over time become truly profitable. Of course, you probably won’t have access to the same amount of capital as companies like Twitter do to keep you afloat in the beginning. That’s ok. Think of your licensing business as like a mini twitter or mini Facebook. Your goal is going to be to build a business that, over time, will grow and deliver consistent profits. But it’s going to take time to get there and you’re going to have expenses along the way. You’ll probably have to operate “in the red” for awhile initially. You don’t have to spend or risk a ton of money right out the gate if your risk averse or not in a position to invest a lot. You can start small and scale things as you go. But, and this is the key, when you see something that is working, you have to invest in those areas and nurture them if you want growth. If something is working on a small scale, double down and invest back into what’s working. If you license one of your songs, find out why that song worked and produce ten more like it. When those songs start making you money, create 100 more like those and so on. This is how you scale a licensing business. You have to keep growing, creating new music and investing back into your business. Educate Yourself One of the things you should be doing, on a regular basis, is educating yourself about the business. Before you jump head first into this, spend a ton of money, and create hundreds of songs that may or may not work for licensing, make sure you take the time, upfront, to really research the industry. Get a feel for what kinds of songs are licensed and why and figure out where you and your music fit into things. You could be making amazing music that’s too obscure for licensing and that there isn’t really a demand for. Succeeding in licensing is all about serving the needs of your clients and helping them get their musical needs met. So, before you start just blindly shopping your music around, take some time to really look around at what music is being licensed where and by who. Educate yourself about the business. Your education will come in a few different ways. You can research and learn a lot about the business online. You can go to publishers and music libraries’ websites and check out the kind of projects they’re working on, check out the artists they work with and so on. The more you understand the business and learn how music is licensed, the better decisions you’ll tend to make in terms of reaching out to the right people, with the right music. A lot of people ask me what tracks they should send when initially reaching out to someone. The answer is you should be sending the most relevant tracks you have for each submission. Licensing isn’t an exact science, so you’ll often be making educated guesses. But if you’ve taken the time to learn about the people and companies you’re pitching your music to, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about what tracks you send them. You can also educate yourself by listening to my free podcast, where interview a variety of people succeeding in the licensing space. I find people succeeding at a high level and I ask them how they did it. There are tons of gems in my podcast. Check it out. You can also educate yourself by checking out our in-depth courses and webinars. Our premium members get access to hundreds of hours of in-depth content where we dive deep into all things music licensing related. We have in-depth courses on music production for licensing, music mastering, music marketing, writing tracks for tv and commercials, working with Logic, pitching to supervisors and much, much more. The more you understand going into this business, the quicker you’ll succeed. If you want to sample our courses first, we’re even offering a completely free, four-hour audio/video course that you can check out right away called “The Ultimate Music Licensing Guide”. No strings attached. Get “The Ultimate Music Licensing Guide” here. Create A Catalog Of Music Ok, so you’ve developed a great mindset and attitude, you’ve invested in yourself and you’ve educated yourself about the business, now comes the fun part: The music. The next thing you should do, on your music licensing journey, is to start creating an amazing catalog of music. How many songs do you need? Great question. I don’t have a precise answer, but think about it this way, the income you make will more than likely, be directly proportionate to the size of your catalog. The more songs you make, the more songs you’ll be able to license. The more topics and moods your songs address, the more potential scenes and uses your music will be a good fit for. The more songs you license, the more money you’ll make. Your ongoing mission should be to create a diverse, vibrant catalog of amazing music that will meet the needs of the licensing community you’ll be serving. Of course, you don’t need hundreds of songs to get started, but your goal should always be to create more songs that will work for more productions, shows, films, ads and so on. At the end of the day, this is what it’s all about; making music. The money you invest initially should be on tools and resources to help you get to a place where you can consistently create high quality music on an ongoing basis that is “on target” for licensing. If you’re going to be producing your own tracks, then obviously you need to invest in things like instruments, recording equipment, your DAW, microphones and so on. If you’re going to be working with other producers, then you’ll need to have some sort of budget for your recording projects that you can afford on a regular basis as you’re building your catalog and creating music for projects you pitch to. Where will you get the money for all of this? Well, unfortunately, I don’t have any top-secret sources of money to tell you about. Licensing music isn’t a get rick quick scheme. It’s a business and like any other business, it’s going to take time and money to build and turn into something profitable. The most likely solution is that in the beginning, you’ll probably need to have some sort of day job that will allow you to sustain yourself and invest into your licensing business as you’re getting started. I was a guitar teacher when I got started and did that for seven years until I was making enough money from all my side projects to stop doing that. Bottom line: everyone’s situation is different. Do whatever it takes. The New Music Licensing Paradigm Back in the day, there was this model that bands and artists seemed to follow, that went something like this: 1) Record and release an “album” of ten to twelve tracks 2) Tour for two years or so to promote the album 3) Repeat That was the model that worked for recording/touring artists for many years. I think that a lot of artists my age are sort of stuck in that paradigm. They’re still looking at the music industry through the lens of the old model. They’re not adapting to the new music industry. The old model worked when people were buying millions of albums and it probably still works for a few elite bands and artists. But the above model doesn’t really apply to licensing at all. If you’re only creating ten tracks every couple years, it’s going to be really hard to turn that into a full time revenue stream. Of course, there are always exceptions and I know a couple artists that do pretty well with small, niche catalogs. But for most artists, you’re going to need volume. You’re going to need to create a lot of music if you’re hoping to make a lot of money. Remember, more music = more money. And if you think about, this is good news! You went into this because you love making music, right? Yeah? Well, great, you’re going to get to make a lot of it as you build your licensing catalog. And here’s the really cool thing: This all might seem a little daunting in the beginning. But in my experience, when you get into a flow of writing a lot of music and creating music more frequently, more and more songs and ideas come! When you get into the habit of writing music on a daily basis, it starts to feel as if you’re priming your musical pump, and the songs and inspiration just keep coming. These days, I never run out of song ideas or feel I lack inspiration. In fact, my biggest problem these days is trying to keep up with all my song ideas and get them recorded and produced quickly enough. I have a backlog of like 20 songs right now, that are all in various stages of production and I’ve written three new songs in the last week or so. When you really get into this, you can get into a rhythm and flow with songwriting and composing that is truly amazing. The more music you compose and create, the easier it gets. Bottom line: Work towards creating a large, diverse catalog of music. More music = more money. (Of course, the music needs to high quality.) Ok, moving along. Networking And Persistence So, to recap, at this stage in your journey, you:
At this point in your journey, you’re ready to start bringing your music and your catalog to market. In other words, you’re ready to start making connections and pitching your tracks to people and companies who license music. Who should you send your music to? Do some research and figure it out. There are tons of resources both online and offline to help you get started. How To License Your Music Premium posts daily licensing leads and also has contact information for over 2,000 libraries, publishers and supervisors. Google is a great resource for finding individual music libraries and supervisors. There are a variety of conferences and seminars related to licensing. The information is readily available if you take the time to find it. For this step, you need to go back and revisit the first part of this manifesto regarding your attitude and mindset. This is the part of the journey where you’ll more than likely face a few setbacks, rejection, un-answered emails and so forth. This is all normal and is a part of the process for most artists that end up succeeding in this industry. None of us are batting 100 and none of us are a perfect match for everyone we pitch our music to. However, the good news is that if you actually took the time to do all the steps I outlined above, your odds of success are way higher than most. If you’ve put in the work at the beginning and you have a catalog of music ready to go, that you know works for licensing, based on actual research, you will eventually succeed. It will take time, but YOU WILL succeed if you follow these steps. How long will it take? I wish I could tell you. Everyone is a different. There are simply too many variables involved to tell you how long it will take you to succeed. It depends on a variety of factors, including the music you make, the quality of your music, the style of your music, how aggressively you promote it, how often you pitch it, where you pitch it, and so on and so forth. Most of the artists that I know who are making a full time living doing this, have been at this at least a few years. The nature of the licensing business is such that it takes time to build connections, generate placements, get paid for placements and so on. But keep in mind that you are building a business that has potential to sustain you for many years. You are building your own “mini-twitter” or “mini-facebook”. Don’t forget that as you move forward. Work smart, be strategic and think long term. When you start pitching your music and you start finding places that like your music and want to work with you, focus on those relationships. If you sign ten songs to a company and they get you a couple placements, thank them and offer to send them 20 more tracks. Double down on anything that is working and keep expanding. At the same time, keep reaching out to new people and making new connections. Don’t rely on just one company to get you placements. Diversify. Have so much music, with so many places, that if one or two sources of income dry up, you still have ten more in the pipeline that will step up and assure that you always have positive cash flow. While that’s happening, keep making new music and creating new connections and relationships. Again, think of this like a business, because that’s exactly what it is. Wash. Rinse. Repeat If you actually do all of the steps outlined in this manifesto, you will succeed. I can’t tell you how long it will take you and I can’t tell you exactly how your success will play out, but eventually, if you follow these steps, you’ll be successful. Once you start having success, you just have to keep repeating the steps that led to your initial success. If you find a library that likes your tracks and they get you a few placements, nurture and cultivate that relationship. Send them more tracks. Find out what they need and how you can help them. At the same time, always keep making new connections, creating new tracks and building new revenue streams. This isn’t a business where you can rest on your laurels and get complacent. The path to success in music licensing is not a mystery. It’s not about luck or getting lucky. This music licensing business isn’t a giant casino with lucky winners and unlucky losers. The music licensing business is a business. When you understand how the business works, how to meet the needs of the marketplace and how to consistently deliver a quality product, you’ll win. I hope you’ve enjoyed “The Music Licensing Manifesto”. Like I said at the beginning, I see this post as a sort of map of how to succeed in music licensing. Evaluate where you are now based on the steps I’ve outlined. Maybe you’ve already taken some of the necessary steps on your journey and you’re on your way to success, but just need to keep going. Use this manifesto to figure out what the next steps are. Maybe you’re completely new to the business and you’re not sure where to even start. Use this manifesto as a map moving forward and refer to it as needed on your journey to success. If you want to explore the topics discussed in this post further, be sure to check out our free four-hour audio/video course called “The Ultimate Music Licensing Guide”. This four-hour program breaks down the steps you need to take to succeed at music licensing even more extensively than this post. The course, like this manifesto, is completely free and you can get it here. If you know music licensing is for you and you’re ready to start turning this into a career, then go premium and take advantage of all of our in depth courses, monthly webinars with music licensing experts, daily music licensing leads, in depth directories and much, much more. We have over 200 hours of the most in depth, cutting edge information on how to make money licensing your music in tv, films, ads and more you’ll find anywhere. GO PREMIUM HERE.
To see our entire catalog of courses and resources related to licensing music, visit our online store. One of the keys to getting your tracks placed is writing tracks that work in the context of television and enhance and support the overall dialog and feeling of the scene. Building "tension" and suspense is one of several very common feelings and emotions that music is used to evoke in the context of music licensing. Check out composer Eddie Grey's approach to creating "tension cues" below. GO PREMIUM to access the full webinar, and new ones like it, posted every month. Live Webinar And Q & A With TV Composer Eddie GreyMark you calendars premium members!
Eddie will be discussing some of the techniques and ideas presented in his latest course, How To Write A Track For TV In 60 Minutes Or Less, and will also be taking your questions live, in real time, throughout the webinar. If you're a premium member, you can watch the stream live on Sunday, by logging into the member's area and going to the "Webinars" page. I'll put a big, visible link at the top of the member's home page a few minutes before we go live on Sunday. If you're not yet a premium member, be sure to register here, to access our monthly webinars, daily licensing leads, in depth courses and much more. Premium members get access to hundreds of hours of in depth training, monthly webinars, in depth music business courses, hundreds of interviews with leading music licensing and music business insiders, music industry directories, ebooks and more. If you register as a premium member between now and Sunday, you'll save 50% off the full price. Want to get a sneak peek inside our upcoming course, "How To Write Tracks For TV In 60 Minutes Or Less"? Check out this introductory video to get an idea of what our new course is all about:
As I mentioned previously, we're about to release our latest course here at How To License Your Music Premium, created by composer Eddie Grey, called "How To Write Tracks For TV In 60 Minutes Or Less".
Being able to create tracks quickly and efficiently is key in terms of success in licensing for two reasons: 1) It allows you to create music for specific projects that often times have a very quick turn around. 2) It allows you to simply create tracks more quickly, in general. The more tracks you have, the more money you can potentially make. This is the third course Eddie has created for How To License Your Music Premium. Eddie has also been a guest on my podcast several times and has done two webinars with me for members of How To License Your Music Premium. Check Out Our Recent Podcasts: The Path To Music Licensing Success With Eddie Grey Six Figure Licensing As A TV Composer With Eddie Grey Eddie has been an amazing asset to our community the last couple years. He has a wealth of knowledge about the industry he's accumulated over the course of 10,000 + placements and has an obvious passion and skill for sharing what he's learned. Eddie started as a student of How To License Your Music.com over five years ago and he's gone on to become a powerful force in the music licensing space. I had the chance to meet Eddie in person in LA in 2017 when Eddie spoke at an event hosted by How To License Your Music.com. I even got to go to his apartment and spend a couple hours with him, discussing his approach to licensing, recording, life as a musician and more. I was so impressed with what I saw in person, that I somehow convinced Eddie to join my team here at How To License Your Music Premium and he's gone on to create three amazing, in depth courses. Today I thought I'd share a replay of a webinar I did with Eddie Grey and my producer, Gary Gray, last year, on the topic of how to write instrumental cues for TV. In this hour and twenty minute video presentation, you'll get a sneak peek inside Eddie's home studio in L.A. and his thought process when it comes to crafting music specifically for TV. You'll get to see, up close and personal, why I'm so excited to have Eddie on board as a part of the team here at How To License Your Music Premium. Stay posted to this blog and my newsletter for more information regarding our upcoming course. In the meantime, check out the webinar with Eddie Grey! Want to get a totally free, four hour course, on how you can make money licensing your music in tv, films, ads and more? For a limited time, I'm giving away my newest course, The Ultimate Music Licensing Guide, free of charge, no strings attached. This course took me months to create and I normally charge $77.00 for the course, but I've decided to offer it for a limited time absolutely free of charge. I'm so excited about the information and how much it can help you, that I want to give it to you to check out. Today's post is a guest post from TV composer Eddie Grey. Eddie recently created a new course for How To License Your Music Premium that we'll be releasing later this week all about how to write songs for TV (and beyond) quickly. [If you haven't already, be sure to check out my latest podcast with Eddie: https://musicmoneyandlife.podbean.com/e/the-path-to-music-licensing-success-with-eddie-grey/] One of the keys to success in licensing is being able to create music on demand for opportunities that arise. In many cases these opportunities will be last minute and there won't be a lot of time to just wait around until inspiration strikes. You need to be able to act when opportunities present themselves. It's also helpful, generally speaking, to have a large catalog. The larger your catalog, the more opportunities your music will work for and the more money you'll make. It's really that simple. The quicker you can create new tracks, the quicker you'll be able to grow your catalog to a point where it's earning substantial revenue. In Eddie's latest course, he breaks down how to write songs that work for TV in an hour or less. I'm stoked for this new course because it presents a really important piece of the music licensing puzzle that I haven't seen addressed previously. I'll send a separate email about that later this week when the course is released. In the meantime, over to you Eddie... The Fallacy Of Success
By Eddie Grey I wrote a song sometime ago about climbing up the ranks in the world. “I climbed up the ladder of success and now I’m caught up and lost in the process”. - Eddie Grey This was before I had any national placements, before I landed songs on trailers, before landing huge deals with T.V networks, before selling half of my music library for $20K, before I had any clients whatsoever, and before knowing anything about music production. I based those lyrics on every “Adult” I had ever met in my life. It seemed as if they had sacrificed a major part of themselves in order to be comfortable. I always felt that too much comfort was a dangerous things. Comfort can kill you, if not physically, then perhaps spiritually. There is one thing I have always been sure of and that is my keen ear for Music. I knew what I wanted it to sound like. To be specific, I remember attending a seminar and there was a live band playing there.I was dissecting there musical choices as if my life depended on it. The only person that cared about the music was me in that room and I acknowledge that. That is what makes us Creatives, we think differently. We obsess about details that no one else pays any mind to. I have been in the Music Licensing space for 5 years now and I have seen a lot. Prior to that, I had a position in sales. I was very “successful” but not very stoked about my day to day. Everything was a means to an end. I got through the day so I can get home and work on Music. I am actually very grateful that I had a job as it really provided me the income to buy my computer (over $3000), Interface (over $2000), Mic ($1000), an all my other awesome toys. In other words… “YOU HAVE TO HAVE MONEY TO MAKE MONEY”. I am glad I gambled on myself and invested my time, enegy, and money in my business as now I have the opportunity to do it Full-Time. I knew I could do it, I just did not know how long it would take and how it would occur. Every day is different for me. I find myself making income doing all manner of things:
It is I who was the fool as I never saw the “POSSIBILITIES”. Ever since I could remember, I always saw my life through a small scope. I always had these false expectations of what success would be. When I finally got my musical break, I remember the feeling distinctly… “This is NOT going to solve all of my problems”. I had it in my mind that if I broke through this fake ceiling that all of my life would somehow “make sense”. It was a major letdown as I had to re-adapt and re-assess my entire game plan for my family and I. The future did not look bright through these lenses. Once I got over the fact that “SUCCESS” was not real. I got back to the only thing that has ever worked for me and that is “WORK”. Head down, pedal to the metal, grinding it out, singular focus….day in and day out. When I shifted my attention to WHAT I COULD CONTROL, things started moving rapidly. This is when the real shift happened as I now see that our success is determined completely by our efforts. The law of cause in effect is quite real. If you plant a seed, harvest it, water it, and nurture it in the proper environment, it will grow. It does not “self-analyze” and think “When will I grow?” “How much will I grow?”….it merely lets go and things naturally happen. Earl Nightingale says that the definition of success is “the progressive realization of a worthy goal”. If you take this maxim, you and only you, can decide if you are truly a success. Do not let the world dictate your worth, this is your life, and it is up to you to choose happiness and to live the way YOU wish to live. My last piece here is for those of you that are still making the transition. Please read these final words carefully… “Fall in love with your life today and CHOOSE all of your life this very moment. When you truly embrace everything (including your current work) and you aspire to be the very best at everything you do…things will begin to evolve”. How can you receive more if you have not perfected and made the most of the current moment? I wish you the very best in ALL of your endeavors. Happy Music Making. Keep Your Frequency High, Eddie Grey
I’ve been having a blast lately connecting with and interviewing so many different people working in different facets of the licensing business for my podcast, Music, Money And Life. It’s one thing to be able to give you my own anecdotal stories and experiences about licensing my own music. But it’s a whole other thing to be able to bring together and interview dozens of people working successfully in different facets of the licensing industry. I feel like I’m able to provide a much broader perspective by bringing so many different people into the conversation.
[By the way, speaking of my podcast, thanks to everyone who has been leaving me positive feedback. Thanks to you, I made it onto the charts as one of the highest rated podcasts in the music category yesterday! I really appreciate everyone who took the time to leave a review.] 
By interviewing supervisors, publishers and songwriters all working full time in the business, I’ve been able to get a real “bird’s eye” view of how the business works. The big picture, if you will, of the music licensing industry. The life of a musician can be lonely at times, and one of my main goals with my podcast is to bring as many different people as possible working in the business on to share their stories, so that you can learn from a really wide range of people that work in the industry. So that you’ll get a better perspective on your own journey and hopefully feel a little less isolated and alone. One of the best ways to learn, is to hear directly from people who are doing what it you want to do. I have some really great guests lined up for future episodes, so be sure to subscribe to my podcast if you haven’t already here: In today’s post I thought I’d break down 7 key takeaways that I’ve gotten from the last few months of doing my podcast on a weekly basis and networking with a variety of people in the business. These are 7 points that pretty much everyone I’ve interviewed and spoken with has been in agreement on. 1) You can make a full time living, but it’s takes a lot of time and effort – One of the questions I’ve been asking everyone I interview is about the viability of turning music licensing into a career. Is it possible? Feasible? Is it practical to try to make music licensing a full time career? Everyone I’ve spoken with has said more or less the same thing. Yes it’s possible, but it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to get to that point. Music licensing, most of the people I speak with say, should be approached more like a long term investment. Sort of like a 401k plan for musicians. It’s something that you need to build up over time. You need to approach music licensing like you would investing in the stock market. In other words, think long term and diversify. Write a lot of different songs. Place them in different libraries and with different publishers. Go direct to supervisors if you can. You might get lucky and land a huge placement right away. It could happen. But don’t necessarily count on that happening. Keep writing and pitching and over time the money you make will grow. 2) It’s better to write from the heart than to try and write what you think will work for licensing – Although it’s important to be aware of what works and why in the context of licensing, the overwhelming consensus has been that, at the end of the day, you should just write great songs that are inspired and from the heart. This advice that I’ve gotten, over and over, sort of took me by surprise, in a good way. I hate the idea of trying to force my music into some sort of pre-conceived, pre-determined, homogenized mold. The artist in me cringes at this thought. I went into this business to make art! If I wanted to just create cookie cutter widgets, void of substance and meaning I’d work in a factory or something. So the fact that the majority of people I’ve interviewed, from supervisors to publishers to songwriters, all agree that as songwriters we should, first and foremost, strive to write great, inspired music gives me hope. Of course, you should still pay attention to things like lyrics and arrangement and make sure they’re not too far out of the realm of what works for licensing. You still need to consider the way in which your songs will be used, if and when they’re licensed. But don’t do this at the expense of the music you’re creating. Don’t forego writing a great song too simply try and make it fit the music licensing mold. Music supervisors are music fans. They’re drawn to the music business because, for the most part, they love music. Don’t forget this when you’re creating music you plan to pitch for licensing opportunities. 3) It takes a lot of pitching and submitting your music to land placements - The music business is competitive. There is a lot of music being pitched. I spoke with one prominent music supervisor who told me that she gets as many as 1,000 submissions a day! Many supervisors simply don’t have time to listen to everything that is being sent to them. Your job as a songwriter, is to rise above this noise and competition and get your music heard. Going through libraries and publishers is a good way to do this, as they can help you do the job of pitching and finding out about projects. They’ll take a cut of what you make of course, but it’s well worth it in my experience to have the extra help. You can go directly to music supervisors as well and if you catch them at the right time, with the right track they might be open to it. In my experience, supervisors draw from a lot of different sources to meet their music needs and many are open to working directly with artists when it makes sense to do so. Whatever route you go, if you want to do this at serious level, you need to devote considerable time to pitching your music and finding out about projects. Most writers that do this full time, devote at least two to three days to doing nothing but pitching. It really is where the true work comes in when it comes to landing placements. I wish there was an easier way, but the consensus is that to be successful at licensing, you need to keep pitching and networking on a regular basis. 4) You have to approach this like a job if you want to be successful – I think this piece of advice applies to any aspect of the music industry. You have to approach this like a job or business if you want this to be your job. Songwriters that make a full time living doing this, work full time hours! I think what Sam Beam, aka Iron And Wine, said about the music business sums it up, “if you treat music like a job, they’ll pay you like it’s a job”. Apply this mindset to everything you do in terms of being a musician. Set up regular hours to write and record music. Have a set schedule you adhere to when you’re pitching music. Be consistent. There are a lot of musicians out there, but in terms of musicians that are really going for this in a serious way, it’s a much smaller pool. 5) You need to have thick skin for this business – This probably comes as no surprise, but the music business is really hard. It’s competitive. You will be rejected, most likely a lot. Don’t even pay attention to the rejection. Keep making music. Keep improving your music and keep pitching your music. If you’re passionate and motivated, eventually you’ll win other people over. Of course, listen to the feedback you get, if you send your tracks to 20 people and they all say that your vocals are off key, take note and work on improving that. We all have things to improve. But, music isn’t an exact science. What one music supervisors hates, another might love. That’s why I don’t pay too much attention to criticism or rejection in general, unless it points to something specific that I hear over and over. There’s a difference between someone just not feeling a track and someone not liking it for specific reasons. If you know deep down you’re writing and recording great songs, keep pitching them until you find others that agree. 6) There are no guarantees when it comes to licensing, until a track is actually licensed - At the end of the day, there are no guarantees in this business until a song is actually licensed. You might find ten publishers who love your tracks and they all pitch them to no avail. It happens. Until a specific supervisor wants to use your track for a specific project and the song has been synced, it’s all speculation. Don’t let this discourage you, but also don’t forget this reality of the industry. This is why the ongoing pitching of your material is so important if you want to approach this like a career. You never really know if something is going to happen, until it happens. Unless you are on staff for a network or hired by a production company to write music on a salaried basis, you’re always going to be looking for the next project and the next place to license your tracks. Of course, you’ll be building up residual income too, as some of your tracks will likely be used repeatedly and in different projects over time. But for most writers that are doing this on a freelance basis, in other words, most of us, the pitching never really stops. 7) You might decide this isn’t for you, and that’s ok - With all this talk about competition, rejection and how hard licensing is, you might come to the conclusion that this simply isn’t for you and that’s ok too. I feel like the only real reason to go into the music business in general is because you absolutely love making music more than anything else. If you don’t have that sort of intense passion for making music, than it really doesn’t make much sense as a career path. I believe success is possible for all of us, but if you don’t have an innate sense of passion for music, it’s doubtful that you’ll be able to push through the challenges. Music, to me, is a calling. It’s almost a religious like calling. Any money and success I may happen to attain is really just a byproduct of my desire to get my music out into the world and have it heard. That’s really what drives me more than anything. At the end of the day, I don’t really care if my music is played in the background of a soap opera or a reality tv show. It’s nice when it happens, but more than anything I just love playing music and you know, I have to like eat and pay bills. Want to get a totally free, four hour course, on how you can make money licensing your music in tv, films, ads and more? For a limited time, I'm giving away my newest course, The Ultimate Music Licensing Guide, free of charge, no strings attached. This course took me months to create and I normally charge $77.00 for the course, but I've decided to offer it for a limited time absolutely free of charge. I'm so excited about the information and how much it can help you, that I want to give it to you to check out.
In my latest podcast I speak with TV composer John Delvento about how he's been able to create a six figure income writing music specifically for libraries.
Learn what it takes to build up a solid full time income by writing music for libraries in the latest episode of Music, Money And Life. In this episode you'll learn: -How to get started -How to approach licensing like a business -Why you need "grit" in order to succeed -What styles of music are in demand now -Why your music is being rejected -Pros and cons of starting a publishing company -How location factors into success -and much more! Want to get a totally free, four hour course, on how you can make money licensing your music in tv, films, ads and more? For a limited time, I'm giving away my newest course, The Ultimate Music Licensing Guide, free of charge, no strings attached. This course took me months to create and I normally charge $77.00 for the course, but I've decided to offer it for a limited time absolutely free of charge. I'm so excited about the information and how much it can help you, that I want to give it to you to check out.
Check out this excerpt from a recent webinar I did with Anthony Clint JR. on how to he landed a recent track in a Netflix production.
A lot of you have asked me how to go about getting tracks in Netflix productions and in this video Anthony and I explain how it's done. Check out the video below. GO PREMIUM to access the entire webinar and new ones like it every month, as well as our in depth courses, music licensing leads, up to date directories and more. More info. Want to get a totally free, four hour course, on how you can make money licensing your music in tv, films, ads and more? For a limited time, I'm giving away my newest course, The Ultimate Music Licensing Guide, free of charge, no strings attached. This course took me months to create and I normally charge $77.00 for the course, but I've decided to offer it for a limited time absolutely free of charge. I'm so excited about the information and how much it can help you, that I want to give it to you to check out. |
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