how many tracks before your first placement?

[GCampbell]

Hi folks,

Just a general question from a newbie (sort of)- how many tracks did you sign before you got your first placement? I'm referring to instrumental cues.

I say that I'm "sort of" a newbie, because I've actually been a Taxi member for almost 2 years, but have been pretty lazy and slow about submitting. In 2 years, I've only produced 31 tracks for Taxi briefs. Of those, most were forwarded (sometimes to my surprise) and 13 are signed (with 3 different libraries). I think I'm ready to kick things into a higher gear, but I just want to get an idea for what my general expectations should be in terms of landing actual placements. The first tracks I signed were released in March of 2021. So far I haven't seen any placements, and none of my mighty 13 tracks have showed up in my PRO. I realize 13 is a tiny number and I need to do a lot more, but I'm just curious what other people experienced when they were starting out.

I'm also open to any other comments or advice you might have for someone at my stage of things! I'll be renewing my Taxi membership for another 2 years soon, and am promising myself that I will write more, submit more, and also spend more time here on the forum.

[boinkeee2000]

bout 30-40 total spread out, imo knowing "how many tracks signed" has no analytic use. you can have just 1 track, made to brief, and get consistent placements off the bat, or dump 100 to a new lib that's still building a catalog and not see any for years and years (maybe never)

[cosmicdolphin]

Depends massively on the library.

You can get placements from a handful of tracks in a busy library or you can pile loads of tracks into a black hole of a library and never get a single placement.

I've had both scenarios and everything in between. The quickest way to measure libraries against each other is to get a Tunesat Account, sign a decent number of tracks into every library ( I doubt you can draw much conclusion until there are 20-30 in there ) and check it religiously to see who does the biz for you and then focus on them whilst finding more.

Mark

[GCampbell]

Thanks everyone, this is some great advice I hadn't thought of. I figured there's no way of predicting when my first placement will come, but I'm just curious what others experiences are. It sounds like there's a huge range of possibilities. I suppose I just want to know that I can hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst of the situations.

Most of my tracks are in what I assume are niche genres in the production music world (jazz, klezmer, etc), which are my strong point, but I'm trying to branch out and do some more common genres, like the recent dramedy listing. It's tough to know which libraries are successful in the styles I'm doing, so I guess in the beginning there's a lot of blind guessing until I have a big enough sample size to get an idea of what's working?

[cosmicdolphin]

so I guess in the beginning there's a lot of blind guessing until I have a big enough sample size to get an idea of what's working?

Yep.

And it's not even a case of one size fits all. I recently did a count of how many placements my libraries had delivered ( according to Tunesat) per cue I'd signed with them.

The best ratio was 2.88 placements per cue, the rest were all way lower. However the same may not necessarily hold true for yourself as you major in different genres to me and a library that does less well for my music may place tons of yours.

So yeah, it's a complete crap shoot until you have enough data to draw any meaningful conclusions. Best advice is keep plugging away and track everything.

Mark

[Casey H]

So yeah, it's a complete crap shoot until you have enough data to draw any meaningful conclusions.

And even with a lot of data, it still could be a crap shoot as far as numbers. Who are your libraries' clients? What styles are most in demand by those clients relative to what you have signed there? How good are those libraries' current relationships with music sups? And then, there is an element of luck whereby when a client is looking for a track, they hear yours and settle on it before someone else's.

All you can do is keep feeding the pipeline. The more out there, the more chances. And don't put all your eggs in one basket, spread tracks out to a number of libraries.

Best of luck!
Casey

[boinkeee2000]

If i may elaborate for better context gcampbell, my first placement was from a brief, it took about 2 months from brief opp to placement, and been working with the lib for 14 months prior. mind you i've done multiple briefs already for them before getting that placement for the current brief, so just because they accepted & signed your track, even for a brief, still a big chance it may not get used. although sometimes things work out later on, as one of the first briefs i ever did for them (that went nowhere) suddenly shows up 3 years later in the olympics. didnt see that coming as the brief was for a dystopian walking dead type show.

thus if there's ever a barometer on your best chances of getting a quick placement (and i mean this loosely, without factoring in lib rep & saturation), it woukd be . . .

1) Time sensitive and very specific briefs (1 day to 2 weeks, will detail specific show, genre, reference etc)
2) Genre specific briefs ("we dont have enough of this genre and its hot right now")
3) Random full album subs (if they like it enough to promote the crap out of it)
4) Random track subs ("someone might need this one day")

not a cut and dry heirarchy and im sure i missed a few, just my exp (which means moot), and could easily be flipped upside down for others (so put down the pitchforks). Its just makes more sense (on paper) that the more specific with the time and details they are, the better the chances of a quick placement . . (well, until you factor everything else in LOL). hope this rudimentary analytics give you an idea per your original question albeit fairly crude....

[GCampbell]

Interesting insights, thanks folks. My takeaway- I need to write a lot more!

[cosmicdolphin]

My takeaway- I need to write a lot more!

Yep!
Q: How long before I get a hole in one?
A: Keep playing golf and see.

Not too long if you're in charge of N.Korea

[TheElement]

Hi folks,

Just a general question from a newbie (sort of)- how many tracks did you sign before you got your first placement? I'm referring to instrumental cues.

I say that I'm "sort of" a newbie, because I've actually been a Taxi member for almost 2 years, but have been pretty lazy and slow about submitting. In 2 years, I've only produced 31 tracks for Taxi briefs. Of those, most were forwarded (sometimes to my surprise) and 13 are signed (with 3 different libraries). I think I'm ready to kick things into a higher gear, but I just want to get an idea for what my general expectations should be in terms of landing actual placements. The first tracks I signed were released in March of 2021. So far I haven't seen any placements, and none of my mighty 13 tracks have showed up in my PRO. I realize 13 is a tiny number and I need to do a lot more, but I'm just curious what other people experienced when they were starting out.

I'm also open to any other comments or advice you might have for someone at my stage of things! I'll be renewing my Taxi membership for another 2 years soon, and am promising myself that I will write more, submit more, and also spend more time here on the forum.

Took me 6 months to get a forward and like 3 to 4 years to get my first placement.

But a lot get placements faster.

I was eager to fail fast and often as I knew the faster I failed the closer I would be to success.

Good luck
All the best!