Music Library – what is it?
Music library is a world within world in the music business; it has its on business rules, etiquette, etc. Basically it is music written by music composers for licensing, by Library Music Publishers on their behalf.
The music library compositions can be anything really, any style of music, and lasting anything from 10 seconds to 3 minutes. It tends to cover all grounds of work, and possible scenarios. Be it music for a love scene, sports, corporate music, “elevator music”, dance groves, ambient music (but not be confused with New Age Music, which is again, another totally different market of music). It is music used (usually) in the background for TV Adverts, Radio, Film etc.
Production music library is also in a way very similar to what Film Music composers do, music for Film/TV/Documentaries, but on a much smaller scale though. Film music is of course, a far more elaborate process, one not to be taken slightly, and require months of hard work to write and record all necessary musical pieces and survive the millions of modifications Film directors will require, in search of perfection.
Film music composers actually usually enjoy far better budgets, many more songs pieces to work on, and usually get a lot more joy and success for their work as Film music composers.
As for the business side of music library, The music writer will get his/her percentage of the songs they have written, usually about 50%, with the other 50% of the music royalties going to the Music Library Publishers. This is unusual as in the music industry a song writer will get 60% or 70% of the music royalties, with the remaining 40/30% going to the Music Publisher.
Worse still, there are many cases of music library companies demanding a cut of the music library the composer has written (without of course having written any of the music library in question). They claim this is to offset their high expenditures in sending many copies of these much specialised music library CDs to major record labels, TV & Film companies. Indeed their costs are high, but I, as Music Producer and music library composer feel it is really unfair to all Music Library composers out there, totally wrong and unjustifiable, as it is really a matter of principals, why would any one want to take credit for a piece of music library they have NOT written? I would personally feel very embarrassed to be credited for something I have had nothing to do with!
On the good and positive side, you can write a piece of music library that can be used a million times, by different people and you will still get paid each time. So every time someone licences your library music he/she has to pay a fee, the costs of these fees will depend on what the library music is being used for, air play, radio show, Television or Film advert and so on.
I, myself was involved ( in the early stages ) on the making of a song in Brazil , back in 1992, that has made lots and lots of money worldwide (unfortunately not for me), the main theme for the Mazda cars. The famous Zoom zoom zoom jingle. It is played everywhere, on radio ads, TV and in Film ads (showed before the actual films in cinemas).
I have also done tracks for this particular music library company based in Belgium , called Stock Music International. I have written to date about 12 for them, all published and released on professional CDs and distributed for all the major players in the music library world, some of them were actually requested and I am glad to say, I got paid for them being used, a very nice feeling, whenever it happens indeed! You can of course hear a medley of some of these songs on my official site, www.rickyseraphico.com. Once you are on www.rickyseraphico.com, please select the button (on the left hand side), which interestingly enough, is labelled, Library Music!
You can also have a look at Stock Music own site and download their latest catalogue of thousands of library music titles, or even better still, request my own library music compositions for your own use!
The production music library is a huge market, with probably hundreds of thousands of music library composers, but as with anything in life, not all library music composers or titles are necessarily very exciting and ground breaking music!!
Why, I hear you ask? Because quite simply the money isn't too great, and there are many that call it “pension money”, so I guess you can get the gist of what this expression means, money that could in theory, last forever, but really pocket money. Unless you are very lucky indeed, and/or have written zillions of music library themes, especially whole albums of just your own library music compositions (usually library music CDs have lots of library music tracks written by different library music composer, I guess for variety sake).
So the view of many of these so-called music library composers is that it is hardly justifiable and worth them “giving away” their best music library compositions, preferring instead to keep it for themselves and give lesser songs to their library music publishers.
Once can almost sympathise and understand such position and attitude, as it does to a certain extend make sense, after all, we, music composers tend to be very passionate about our music compositions, however, I cannot bring myself to even think, let alone work in this manner, as besides being extremely passionate about my work, I am also very proud of it and a true perfectionist. So if I have to do anything in life, I will always put 110% of effort and soul into it, there is no other way for me, it just would not work, and I would feel really bad about myself and my work, and on top of that any one that claims to have high standards, cannot do that, even if the money situation isn't quite right.
Do it because you believe in yourself and in your compositions. Hopefully there will be others out there listening to it that will fully appreciated your high standards and attention to details and purchase your music and spread the good word around.
And I would like to think that I actually do all what I am preaching here, just listen to any of my music library compositions and/or high quality demos songs available from my web site www.rickyseraphico.com
Have fun!