He is a great guy (did I say that already?) and I just have to quote him from the AudioLife blog page:

“One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, ‘Wait – you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they’ll sign anything’ – like I did. When we found out we’d been released (from their recording contract) it was like, ‘Thank God!’. But 20 minutes later it was, ‘Uh-oh, now what are we going to do?’ It was incredibly liberating, and it was terrifying.”

The only thing I would like to add to this is that the great rock and roll swindle is still out there, but its now on the Internet too. So musicians beware!

But beware guys! some of the new guys are trying to screw you too! hear about the licensing site that just cut their artists earnings by 30% to finance their own expansion? (cheaper than paying a bank interest or shareholders dividends I guess). Also the guys who are offering only 25% cut on music earnings yet are charging the clients nearly $400 for device installations to listen to the music?

Here at Electronic Music Library all deals are as they should be with artists: 50 50. My costs, your costs. You earn, I earn. Make it simple, everyone wins, happy world

Fair Trade Royalty Free Music Rules

©2010 Electronic Music Library's Blog. All Rights Reserved.

News that Pump Audio reduce royalty rates from 50/50 to 65/35 means
that artists signed to Pump will see a reduction in their incomes of 30%.

Pump make the excuse that .. ??this move is being made to support the growth
of our business on a global stage??

So, effectively, they are using the cash that would have gone to the artists
to invest in growth. I guess that?s one way to find money when there is no
cash in the world for new investments. Lets think about that for a moment..
Its like taking money from investors without asking them and also not
allowing them to get a return for their investment!. Its like telling
suppliers that they are going to get less for their products that you sell,
then make it more painful by saying its for business development.

I think this is a big mistake by Pump Audio. How better could you alienate
your artists. As far as I am concerned, once you have that split figure
agreed, you should never change it. Don?t forget also, this is a share of a
sale. Its the ?cost of sales? pretty much. There isn?t much else to add to
each sale. Overheads and indirect costs however, are another thing. A
company getting too big, bloated with fat managers in offices full of staff
doing stuff they feel is above them… Now that?s where a company starts to
bloat operating costs.

Before this announcement Pump Audio would get 50% from every sale PLUS a
share of the publishing earnings from performing royalties. Was that not
enough for them?

What really is going on at Pump Audio? Cash crisis? Sales reducing?
Customers looking to reduce their costs by licensing royalty free music
instead?

This is another nail in the coffin of the performing royalty related music
licensing industry. More and more artists will look to new innovative ways
to sell their music and, with the growth of royalty free music rising they
will see that it is a real and attractive alternative to the costly
lisensing and royalty fee process that is more costly to license buyers.

With the credit crunch redefining the way businesses think about the costs
of their business there has never been a better time for artists to build a
catalogue of royalty free music and never been a better time for businesses
to strip a layer of cost from their businesses by purchasing quality royalty
free music.

©2010 Electronic Music Library's Blog. All Rights Reserved.

For starters the market is all over the place. I feel sorry for you guys looking for the right music and the right deal, it can’t be easy to weed out the right solution for your project. It would be so easy to be tripped up by missing terms or paying more than you need for royalty free music that meets your needs.

There are a couple of guys out there who I think are great. Firstly Michael Bielenberg of RoyaltyFreeMusic.com who flies the flag for a wide range of different music genre needs. Plus old timer Mark Lewis who has been stacking rock bottom blanket royalty free license collections high from when most of us were still at college.

The rest of the players are quite a mixed bunch of guys. Firstly, there is ambiguity over what ‘royalty free’ music means. Whilst some argue it only covers the synchronization license, so additional fees will be payable for distribution (online and offline) others say their work is royalty free for everything except broadcasting.

Help me here, but it seems to me that this isn’t going to help any music supervisor have much confidence when hunting out royalty free music for download or even CD distribution.

As far as I see it, a performing royalty, is a royalty. Yes or No?

So, by marketing music to you as royalty free, I can’t see how some of these guys sleep at night knowing that it is royalty free.. but not quite.
Some guys try to explain this but I think they only make it more confusing trying to argue that ‘Royalty Free Music’ is a term that means you still have to pay some royalties depending on what you are going to use the music for.

Perhaps they should call their music ‘Buy Out’ music which from my experience means that you offer a single one off payment for a sync license which will incur royalty payments to the musician and publisher if the piece is included in some form of broadcast.

The times are changing and I do feel that some of these guys are not only hindering the royalty free music market, but also their own ability to serve music supervisors well.

Let me continue anyway. Some of the sites I found at the top of the Google listings for ‘Royalty Free Music’ included a couple of guys marketing their own work. Impressive as this is, it means that purchasers will only get access to one artist on that site and will not be able to easily compare musicians who have music in the same categories. I am sure these guys do well but I am not sure this helps purchasers particularly. It would not take much for them to open their doors to another few, trusted musician pals as partners.

Apart from these observations I saw a couple of sites with different brand names to domain names, which could be confusing for guys trying to remember where they got a particular track.

I also felt what I was seeing was a snapshot in time. Whilst some of the guys have been there a long time, and will continue to dominate and do well, I felt that there were a number who were sliding down the Google pages. There are some out there that are diluting the quality of their catalogue because of their business model. Now I know that sounds vague but I don’t want to give the game away totally here. But lets just say when you are searching and looking for music, do you really want to listen to some guy’s cheesy copy of Autobahn by Kraftwerk?

One thing that stands out as a contrast across the market more than most things is the pricing structures of these guys. The best guys do tend to have some consistency in the license packages, however pricing can be pretty variable. There is becoming a mean of a standard license for around $30 for a full royalty free track. Although of course, the use for this price will vary site to site, this normally covers use as background music for websites at the very least. To match this I also saw other sites dropping their previously high standard licenses to get nearer these guys without clearing out their bank balances. It must be tough to have to accept your price for a license of say, $250 now needs to match the market price of $30.

It feels the right time for the Royalty Free Music market to get their heads together and make some decisions on a standard set of licenses. Sure each of us could choose to have additional license types where we want to be creative, but if we could all agree some standard licenses, say three to cover the main commercial uses, then purchasing royalty free music would be a whole lot easier for the guys we all want to help, that being you.

©2010 Electronic Music Library's Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The first is that the term ‘royalty free’ is something that we assume means the same to everyone. But it may not be the case. You need to check the terms to be really sure they meet your needs.

Consider the following:

Do the terms actually say you can use the music in your DVD? OK that’s the easy part. Next is the term; will the agreement last as long as you plan to sell the DVD? or will, say in ten years time your back catalogue of productions require trashing?

Then how about territory? ha.. the tough one. Does your royalty free music agreement allow you to distribute into the counties or regions that you want to or is it just a national agreement?

What about broadcasting rights? will your agreement ensure that you and your broadcasters not need to pay additional performing royalties? odd that it may sound but you need to be sure of this otherwise there will be additional costs. Some royalty free offers actually require cue sheets and payments to the artist’s performing rights society.

In addition, the type of broadcast network may be of interest. Some differ between national broadcasting, free broadcasting, paid / subscription broadcasting and sometimes more. The logic for this is around the value of the piece of music in the market and how much money is usually sloshing around in that market.

My intent here is not to specifically promote blanket licenses. Whilst they may seem to make terms that explicitly list so many uses look complicated, by not explicity listing your use, you may still be 100% clear you are covered and have the rights to use the music.

So! always check the terms! I know it can be boring but once you have seen a few of them you will start to recognize the common areas and also where they differ.

Good luck!!

©2010 Electronic Music Library's Blog. All Rights Reserved.

In this interview Trent does not cover all areas of opportunity for musicians however. There is so much musicians can do to develop their crafts to meet the needs of business users. I think we have only just started. Traditionally the libraries have approached the business markets by amassing a large catalogue that they are proud to ‘dump’ on music supervisors and hope ‘something sticks’.

In future, more and more the chosen music recordings for any given project will be the chosen one because the artist who crafted the recording had found a niche which they understood and had worked to develop to meet its needs more than any one else was doing.

Watch this space…
Trent can be seen and heard here.

©2010 Electronic Music Library's Blog. All Rights Reserved.

I was recently given the example of an offline library who were proud in
their ability to hand over a hundred CDs to a client and told them to search
for anything they liked. Unfortunately, as much as many libraries boast
about the large amounts of music they have to offer, they don?t offer better
ways to search and filter these tracks to get to a more accurate selection
to audition.

These two issues more than likely ensures that client?s jobs become much
harder than they need to be. Artists will upload music that clients of the
library?s target market might never want to use which also dilute and make
the library unwieldy in size.

My recommendation for anyone using a music library is to test the search
facilities and see how many results return if you provide a very specific
search criteria. For example, choose two or three of the search fields to
enter specific words against to see how many return. If you have more than
25 then make the search more specific.

Good luck!

©2010 Electronic Music Library's Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Our artists are active in producing a regular flow of music for use as
royalty free so that you know once you have purchased for your specific use,
you will not need to budget for additional royalty payments.

Our licensing selection provides you with a very accurate description of
your needs so that you know you are not paying for anything you don?t want.
The music is available in high quality WAV format and is downloadable
automatically once your payment has been cleared. In this way you can
download, edit and produce your production in a dramatically shorter time
than the more traditional means of needing to seek clearance for your use
and negotiating a price.

For more information please use the contact form at Electronic Music Library.

©2010 Electronic Music Library's Blog. All Rights Reserved.