I've seen $250 for 100% of the Composition and Master rights

[admin]

I think people do both - they crank out quick, simple, but high quality instrumental cues AND they also do songs or more complex pieces that require more time and love. You can paint houses, portraits, and landscapes. Paint houses to support your love of painting portraits and landscapes. Doing what I lovingly call "stupid little instrumental cues" takes skills and love too.

It's often most difficult to know how to make something simple. Knowing what to leave out and when to stop is a learned skill and craft. I am just as much in awe of a wonderfully crafted cue as I am of a beautifully written song. I admire people who invest themselves at becoming great at anything.

Michael

[Casey H]

Another thing to keep in mind is if you look at the AVERAGE income earned lifetime for a given track, $250 is not really bad. And that doesn't include performance royalties should it get airplay. Yes, this assumes you write a lot of tracks and may not apply to "special" vocal songs that may have much higher earning potential. But you do have to remember that for a given 100 tracks (let's say), quite a few will earn $0, others $100, $200, $300, etc. and a few may earn over $1000 with POSSIBLY an occasional big one for many thousands.

$250 is actually not a small number. It only seems that way because of opportunities you see for high sync placements. Those opps ARE real but you also have to be realistic that they only come along once in a while for most people.

As others have pointed out, if you write a lot of reality TV instrumental cues and bang them out quickly (That isn't me BTW), these can be good deals.

Casey

[hummingbird]

I think people do both - they crank out quick, simple, but high quality instrumental cues AND they also do songs or more complex pieces that require more time and love. You can paint houses, portraits, and landscapes. Paint houses to support your love of painting portraits and landscapes. Doing what I lovingly call "stupid little instrumental cues" takes skills and love too.

It's often most difficult to know how to make something simple. Knowing what to leave out and when to stop is a learned skill and craft. I am just as much in awe of a wonderfully crafted cue as I am of a beautifully written song. I admire people who invest themselves at becoming great at anything.

Michael

As someone who is still in search of the elusive 'quick' and 'simple' track that gets instantly forwarded, signed and placed... thanks for this post, Michael *grins*

[Russell Landwehr]

Some Libraries don't pay an upfront fee for exclusive master and composition rights... so $250 is $250 more than that.

[Markzilla]

Good day, Folks. I'm new to Taxi and have a question in respect to these types of listings.

If you're writing instrumental cues and they happen to be placed in a non-Exclusive deal; can you expand on them and turn them into full length songs (particularly adding Vox) to be pitched to a different listing or is this generally frowned upon?

[andygabrys]

Good day, Folks. I'm new to Taxi and have a question in respect to these types of listings.

If you're writing instrumental cues and they happen to be placed in a non-Exclusive deal; can you expand on them and turn them into full length songs (particularly adding Vox) to be pitched to a different listing or is this generally frowned upon?

this one really deserves its own thread and you will likely find more threads and info if you search the forums more.

basically - a cue or a song is the same thing. Its one copyright (even if you don't bother registering the copyright with the gov'ment which is a whole different discussion).

if you sign stuff to non-exclusive deals only, or choose to pitch it yourself direct to supervisors you can do whatever you want. Extend, change, mess with it, add vocals, remix. It might be called different names in different signings but its still based on the same work.

So as long as you always keep that work and any derivations non-exclusive you likely will have little issue.

If you sign stuff to exclusive deals you cannot do anything. But there are a number of exclusive publishers which sign songs and often place the instrumental versions of those songs. So you would be making a mess of things if you used ONE instrumental and wrote TWO DIFFERENT top lines and tried to sign it to two different exclusive publishers or one exclusive and one non-exclusive.

Hope that is clear and makes sense.

[Paulie]

I think Casey nailed it for my perspective. From what I've seen in the forums, most cues pay small amounts, so getting $250 up front for something would be awesome, IMHO. The odds of something going national and you losing thousands of dollars are probably small. My take: go for as many of these as you can, if you have one that goes national, use it as a portfolio/resume booster and chalk the "loss" up as a marketing investment.

[Markzilla]

Thank you for the advice and I do understand. I can pitch many versions of a piece unless/until it's signed in an exclusive deal.

Thank you for your time and the thoughtfulness of your response.

[VanderBoegh]

If someone offers me $250 per track and I keep 100% of the writer's royalties on the backend, I'll take it in a heartbeat. Wouldn't even have to think about that one for a second!

~~Matt

[MattCurious]

I've probably misunderstood, but I don't think it's fair to say that people who write fast, or for money, don't care about their work. Indeed, in my experience (in a couple of industries), it tends to be the ones that care about their work that get good at it, can work faster, and are most successful.