How to Choose the Right Music Licensing Companies

It seems like so many songwriters and artists have given up on the dream of getting a record deal with major record label. Flying around on private jets and trashing hotel rooms is a dream now long forgotten. Film and TV placements are the new “record deal.”

Most musicians don’t know how to choose the right music licensing company or companies, because they haven’t done their homework yet. They haven’t learned how to know which company has the best chance of getting them a film or TV placement period, and they often have no idea which company has the best track record for making the most money for the songwriters ad artists they work with.

Truth be told, it’s not all that hard to set up a web page that looks great, add a database that hosts music, post up a couple of success stories (true or not), and bammo, you’re in business as a music licensing company! Doesn’t matter if you’re in the cow pastures of Wisconsin, the heart of Hollywood, or the plains of Africa. Nobody does due diligence any more. “If they’ve got a cool web page, they must be real!” Uh-huh!

Things to watch out for:

Open submissions — Not ALL companies that allow any old Tom, Dick or Harry to submit to them are schlock shops, but many are. Accepting music from any and everybody seems appealing at first, but it also means that the music supervisors and music editors are going to hear a lot of mediocre music (at best), and quickly leave the site with nothing in hand.

Rating and filtering by fans and competing musicians — Music supervisors want filtered music. They want only the very best music. In many cases (but not necessarily all), music that has been selected or filtered by competing songwriters or artists doesn’t stand up to the quality of music that has been pre-screened by real music industry professionals. Why? Two reasons: The musicians doing the filtering have never worked at a music supervision company, a film company, a TV production company, a record company, or a Film or TV publishing company. They simply don’t know how high the bar is set. They also may not know that just because they personally like a particular song or instrumental track, it doesn’t mean that it will work well for TV or film music companies.

The second reason is that some less than ethical people will “vote down” the competition. It’s become somewhat common for musicians who want their music to rise will ask fans, friends and family members to visit the music web sites that have “contests,” to give them high scores and give the competition low scores.

Companies that are too quick to accept music into their catalogs – There are companies who will sign almost anything. even though the deals are often non-exclusive, it can be a sign that the company is just trying to fatten the catalog or music library for a later sale, and is more interested in quantity, not quality.

Companies that don’t have solid, long-term relationships with the industry — Music supervisors have go-to people that they’ve worked with for years. They trust their ears. They know they can rely on them for great music. If you can’t find solid evidence that those relationships exists at te company you’re about to sign with, you might want to keep looking and find a company that does!

If you’d like to lean more about how to get started licensing your music through production music libraries and how to pick the right film & TV licensing companies for your music, watch this series of short videos I did with Matt Hirt. Matt is a long-time TAXI member, and through diligent work, persistence and getting his music picked up by the best music licensing companies (mostly through TAXI, if I can be so immodest)  he’s created an income that any songwriter, artist or composer would be happy to have.

Watch the video. I promise you’ll learn just about everything you need to know about music licensing in a very short time.

Enjoy!

Michael

Film and TV Music Licensing Opportunities For Independent Musicians

Running opportunities for Film and TV placements in our Music Industry Listings back in 1992 made me the laughing stock of the music business. It was unheard of for Indie artists and songwriters to get their songs placed in network TV shows or better yet, feature films put out by major Hollywood studios back then.

Nobody seemed to know much about Production Music Libraries (which are Film & TV music publishers) - what they did, how they worked, or what kind of music they needed to license to TV or Film productions. I knew because at one point in my career I managed the largest audio post-production studio on the planet, and we used tracks from the best Production Music Libraries every day.

We used them for background music on TV shows and commercials. We used library tracks under voiceovers for radio spots. We licensed music from Production Music Libraries for Industrial Videos… you know, those cheesy videos that widget manufacturers and big pharmaceutical companies put out.

The point is, it just wasn’t cool to license your music for anything but records. Indie musicians and major label artists all turned up their noses at the very thought of having their music in a TV show or movie.

Funny how all that’s changed! Now, even the Rolling Stones and the Beatles will license their music for film, TV and video game projects. Major labels are more than happy to license music from their acts for TV shows, simply to get some exposure.

And who do you think was one of the earliest pioneers of helping Indie artists, bands and composers license their music? Yes, TAXI, the company that everybody in the music business laughed at. Trust me, they are definitely not laughing any more.

As a matter of fact, hundreds of companies have tried to imitate what TAXI does, but they all lack one very critical element - human ears. TAXI filters the music companies ask us to find. We use industry experts under our roof to find the very best. While the music supervisors like using music from Independent artists and songwriters, they don’t want to search a database full of less than wonderful music.

It takes more than a website and a database full of mediocre music to get the job done well.

That’s exactly why I created TAXI, and that’s why we are still the world’s leading independent A&R company. People from the TV, Film and Music industries don’t have the time to filter. We do it for them. We give them what they ask for. We give them what they need. We give them top notch music from the very best Indie artists, songwriters and composers.

The irony in all of this was best demonstrated when I asked an A&R person from Interscope Records this question during our annual, members-only convention, the Road Rally, last year, “What do you think is the best thing the people in this audience can do to get on your radar? Where do they start getting your attention so you’ll sign them to a record deal?”

The answer he offered up? “The best thing you can do is try to get your music placed on a TV show or in a movie!”

Wow, seventeen years later and TAXI is finally cool. That A&R person was right of course. Getting your music placed in TV shows and Films is just as much about the exposure as it is about the money. And if you do it persistently, and for a period of years, you’ll be able to turn it into a full-time gig because the money can really add up over time.

More specifics about how to make money by placing your music in Films and TV shows in a future blog!

My staff and I often get asked if there are Film and TV licensing opportunities for songwriters and artists who make Christian music. The answer is “yes,” though maybe not as frequently as secular music.

But fear not! Because the overall market is smaller, the number of people producing Christian Music is also smaller. It’s proportionate. You could end up being a bigger fish in a smaller pond!

But there’s an often overlooked aspect to all this. Most artists and songwriters also do mixes without vocals as a matter of course these days. If your Christian lyrics and vocals are subtracted, guess what? You’ve got yourself an instrumental track that could be licensed in any TV Show or Movie, religious or secular!

I just saw an article on TAXI as it relates to the Christian music Industry from a musician and author named Abbie Stancato, who’s doing a series of articles on the music business for a site called, Everyday Christian, called, “So You Wanna Be a Star?”

Check it out. Mikey likes it!

I recently had a member of TAXI’s forum ask what the difference was between a production music library and a music publisher. Great question! Here’s the answer I posted:

Production Music Libraries and Publishers are both publishers, and it’s my observation that the best music libraries get most of their best placements by doing hand to hand combat — meaning that they develop relationships and actively pitch. Another observation is that Film and TV music supervisors really don’t like to search databases for music. They’d rather email or call a human, have them cull a few tracks they think would work and pitch them, whether by email or in some cases, in person. The world’s biggest and best music libraries have sales forces all over the world.

A straight up music publisher like Warner Chappel or Universal Music Pub might have as many as 250,000 (or more) titles in their catalog (spanning decades) and a staff of creative people who act kind of like TAXI, in that they tell their writers which songs are best, give their writers some creative advice and hand-holding, sometimes in the form of pairing up co-writes, as well as pitching their songs to artists, and yes, even film and TV opportunities.

A couple of major differences are that publishers like Universal typically don’t sign single songs. Instead, they sign songwriters, give them an advance against future income, and the songwriters need to turn in a song or two per month (that meet the pub’s standards), depending on the number of co-writers they will be splitting the income with.

To get a staff songwriter deal, it typically takes having a song that’s already been cut to get the publishers interested. Once they know there’s an income stream, they’re much more interested. They often want a piece of the existing cut. Another way to get a pub deal is to get a record deal and be the songwriter in the band, or for yourself if you’re a solo artist. Once you’ve inked the record deal, a publisher will often offer you a pub deal because there is some probability that the record will generate mechanicals, and with tons of good fortune, performance income as well through airplay, etc.

A big difference with libraries is that they typically don’t give advances (unless you’re creating custom projects/CDs they commission you to create to order), and many of them offer non-exclusive contracts on single songs. I think it will be quite some time before the majors do non-exclusives, as they’re interested in building equity. Exclusive rights build equity, much like equity in stocks or real estate. Eventually, they cash in their chips and sell off the entire catalog for what is called a multiple, similar to selling a business for X times net profit.

Gotta stop now before I write a book. Hope this helps,
Michael