Everything You Need to Know about Production Music Libraries

by Brian Casel | May 5, 2009 | One Comment

photo by BL1961

Welcome back to our series on making money with production music libraries. If you’re a music composer looking to find placements in television, film, video games, and other places, submitting your music to production music libraries is a great place to start. In this installment, we will look at the process of evaluating online production music libraries, and submitting your music.

For those songwriters and composers who are new here, check out the other articles in this series and be sure to sign up for free email updates or the RSS feed to keep up!

Introduction / What are production music libraries
Produce tracks that sell
Copyright your music
Register with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO)
Submit your songs to production music libraries
Leverage your music placements to gain future music for picture work

Find Online Production Music Libraries

Through just a bit of Googling or Twitter search, you will quickly find a ton of online production music libraries. Some of the terms that generate lots of results are, “Production Music Library“, “Stock Music Library“, and “Royalty Free Music Library“.

Included at the end of this article is a list of production music libraries that openly encourage music submissions. This could be a good starting point for finding the right set of libraries to shoot for.

Differences Among Music Libraries

Online music libraries tend to fall into one of three categories:

1) Those that act as the Publisher

These production music libraries will generally control 100% publisher’s share of performance royalties. You, the composer, will still retain 100% writer’s share. In addition, each library varies in the way they split licensing fees (if any) with the composer. A song that is licensed through this type of music library cannot be licensed through another library under the same song title.

While this option may seem to offer the least financial benefit to the composer, these libraries do offer the potential for lots of placements, which can generate a sizable amount of performance royalties over time. Remember, your tracks can be licensed over and over on a non-exclusive basis, which makes them a continuous money-maker over the long-term.

One example of this type of music library is Freeplay Music.

2) Those that act as the Administrative Agent

These production music libraries allow you the flexibility to submit and license your music through other libraries in addition to theirs. Here’s how these types of music libraries generally work: Upon accepting your submitted music, they will rename your songs. Then they will register your renamed songs with their PRO, and handle all collections and distributions of performance royalties. This renaming and PRO registration process is for the purposes of this library only. You are free to submit your songs (under your own titles) to other music libraries.

An example of this type of music library is Pump Audio. Through their system, Pump Audio takes 50% of the publisher’s share of performance royalties. You, the composer retains 100% of the writer’s share (150% total for you). In addition, all licensing fee’s are split 50/50 between you and Pump Audio.

Pump Audio is a great place to submit music to since they are among the most popular services out there. Aside from the large amount of TV placements they can deliver, their service also drives the music section of Getty Images.

3) Micro-payment sites

These music libraries stay out of the publishing game altogether. You are free to submit your music for their library as well as others. Your music is posted on their site for relatively small licensing fees (usually only a couple bucks per download). They offer you a percentage of the licensing fees collected through downloads of your music. Your cut is usually fairly small so it requires a long period of time to really accumulate a decent amount of cash from licensing. Of course, you still retain 200% of the performance royalties should your music end up on a TV show, radio spot, or other royalty-generating exposure.

An example of this type of music library is Audio Jungle. They offer the composer 25% of the download fee, which ranges from $1 to $10. Not much, but give it time. They also offer you the option to become an “exclusive” composer, which means you agree not to offer your music anywhere else besides Audio Jungle. Exclusive composers get 40% - 70% of sales, depending on volume.

Research / Contact / Submit

As you can see, it takes a bit of digging through the fine print on these websites to figure out which category of music library they are. Some offer extensive FAQ’s while others simply offer an email address. Find out as much as you can, then use the provided contact form or email address to get in touch.

Follow the instructions they provide for submitting music. This usually involves mailing in a CD, but it may be as simple as uploading your tracks through the website. Each library has a different system, and some have more advanced websites than others. Sometimes this info may be a bit hard to find. If the website doesn’t have a dedicated page for composers, the info is usually located in the “Help”, “FAQ”, or “Contact” sections.

List of Production Music Libraries

Here’s a list of production music libraries to get you started on your search. Some of these have generated nice sums of money for my music, others just seem to show potential (although I have not personally used them for my music). Dig in:

The Business, promotion

One Comment:

03/2/2010
4:54 am

Roaylty Free Music Library

Would like to add a high quality music library to the list: http://www.hollywoodproductionmusic.com

This site distinguishes itself from most others not only by its quality music cues, but also with its clever user interface and advanced search and filtering techniques.

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Everything You Need to Know about Production Music Libraries

Find Online Production Music Libraries