The hot topic in the media composer community right now is that Discovery Networks (who own Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, HGTV and Food Network amongst others) have announced that, beginning in 2020, composers working on their shows must give up their performance royalties when the shows air in the USA, plus sign away their ability …
There’s an affliction that affects a lot of us composers, music producers and musicians: buying more gear. For many of us, this takes the form of new plug-ins and samples for our DAW’s, be it a new string library, reverb or EQ plug-in. For others, it may be a new guitar, or additional microphones. Should …
TV composing: Is there enough work out there? It can be tough to launch a career scoring TV shows. As you look into getting work in this area, you may, at times, wonder if there is even enough work out there for you to somehow squeeze your way in. It struck me recently how the …
You’re probably looking at the title of this post and thinking: “Both.” And in an ideal world, you’d be right. You’d pump out a large quantity of stunning music each month. Or each week. Yet for most of us, our higher quality tracks take us longer to write and produce than some of the other …
What’s dull, confusing, but a must for composers, producers and songwriters to understand? Music rights! Ok, I admit it: there’s no way to make this appealing or alluring. But give me just over 5 minutes and I’ll explain to you all 7 of the major music rights that you need to know in a clear …
Like many media composers, I split my time between scoring TV shows and licensing music to Music Libraries. Nowadays, in my experience at least, to be chosen to score a TV show you’ll need to pitch even if you’ve worked with some of the team before and/or have been personally recommended. As such, last year …
If the ins and outs of royalties regarding Library Music leave you a bit confused, here’s a simple guide to how it all works, from the very basic through to a few common questions. What is a royalty? What we’ll be talking about here are “performing royalties”. Simply put, these are recurring payments …
Samples these days are pretty amazing. Over the last few decades we’ve seen huge advances in this area. It used to be that samples were used to create “mock ups” within film and TV soundtracks so that directors could hear what the piece would sound like before the track was recorded by an orchestra. The …
Towards the end of 2018 I was a panelist and mentor at a Film and TV composers convention in Los Angeles, California. The panel I had spoken on were critiquing tracks that were played for us at random from audience members and also talking to them of the suitability of these tracks for Production Music …
I went to visit my friend Matt last week in his home studio in Brooklyn. Matt is a really accomplished Library Music writer. He’s always working on several projects, usually for a handful of great Libraries. They pay him good upfront fees for his tracks, (typically $600 to $800 at the time of writing this …