The 90-Day Music Licensing Challenge: Week 10 Summary
This week started with a pair of submissions to the United Kingdom. The first was to www.music-library.co.uk, a site that encourages composers to read their agreement before submitting. The agreement was pretty much straight ahead so I mailed off the CD. The second was to Audio Network, a site which I had found from the listing on www.iconmusic.com.
With bills for material and postage to England adding up, I started to shift my focus to finding places where I could submit online. Continuing to try various search phrases such as “send links to your music”; “send mp3s” and more, I found a few. One was www.cre8ivemusic.com, followed by www.looplibrary.com. Incidentally, I found one site, whose name escapes me, that invited composers to send links but specifically said “we don’t listen to music on Myspace players.”
My fifth submission was to www.eclectichousepublishing.com, a relatively new company. They specialize in “traditional and modern gospel, pop and country music in instrumental, group, choral and vocal music.” It seemed like a longshot, but one of my more popular instrumentals, “Not Long Ago”, is in a folk-type style that might pass for country music. The beauty of online submissions is that with less time and no money invested, even longshots might just be worth it.
The last two submissions were to www.pp-music.net and www.reallyfreemusic.co.uk. I also heard back from two companies: Quest Worldwide Production Music (www.qwpm.com), who said they enjoyed the stuff I uploaded but needed something heavier (so I uploaded my loudest, most obnoxious track, with the unlikely name “Partial Asphyxiation”, the one I left off of most of the demos I sent out and that I need to warn people about when I give them the full CD). I also heard back from www.1-800play.com, who liked my jazz/swing track “Look but Don’t Touch” but wanted me to sign an exclusive deal with them. Their argument for signing an exclusive deal is that, down the line, should a big company want to sign the track for a large sum, having several companies representing the track (even if it’s renamed) could prove problematic. I have noticed more and more companies that I research seeming to want to sign composers to exclusive deals. For my part, I still opt for non-exclusive deals, although if an objective observer could convince me that exclusive was the way to go I would reconsider. Either way, it’s nice to continue to get feedback and to know that some of my submissions are panning out.
