I used a web service, when I wanted a new design for my logo. The web site had designers around the world making different designs, and I selected the one I liked and the money was released to the winning designer. My question is, does similar web sites exist, just for musicians? A place where I can upload my music for sale for use in tv, movies, commercials or radio?
Yes.
I work in audio-post as an engineer, so my experience comes from working with composers for post. As far as I understand it what really happened was that composers, back when I started in 2000, would compose and arrange and then hire musicians to record in a real studio, even if it was a smaller studio. The engineer would mix it, and it would go to the client. The composers didn’t just write and record only when asked to, but would keep on doing it and that way build up a library. So before the internet really took off different production houses had music libraries that potential customers could get music from, but they’d have to contact the composer’s company more or less directly.
Then, as technology got cheaper, people with less skill and less experience started doing the same thing “at home”, and at lower quality. Not only the recording/mixing was of lower quality but also the compositions. I worked on several shows where I recorded and mixed not just audio for the shows, but music as well. But gradually people stopped asking for custom music and instead bought from online libraries.
So, because nobody wants to pay for anything (that’s why our industry sucks as far as making a living goes) producers started paying less for music to use in their shows and commercials etc. The end result has been that we now have a large amount of “hobby” producers who just want some supplemental income they can use to buy beer or whatever - not pay for a house or a car or their children’s education.
What I’m saying is that ‘yes’, there are such websites, but that the competition is fierce. While many can make money selling their music online there are a lot of people that are actually making very little money off of it, and they don’t care, because they make most of their money some other way. And that kills the market. I’ve seen some absolute horrible examples of how little people get paid for their music. Mind you, in a lot of these cases you may end up giving up either any rights to use your music elsewhere for a certain time, or you might end up with your music promoting something you don’t like.
But to give you a recommendation I’d say go to Gearslutz.com and check out the “Music For Picture” section. I’m sure you can find plenty of discussions there.
Good luck. Don’t “sell out”.
I read this thread almost by accident, but I’m glad I did. Thanks for the detail Mattias!
Thank you for the info, I have found, what I was looking for now.
Mattias,
Thanks for an excellent post and I think you’ve described things well.