Making significant $ with film/TV music

[Casey H]

I often see questions on the forum like: How much did you make for that placement? Can a person make significant (5 figures) money in film/TV? Can a person make a full time living with film/TV music? ...and so on...These questions have been answered on many threads and a video by Matto, but it would be great to have some of the following in one place. Members like Matto, Hummingbird, Dave, Mazz and others have given info like the following elsewhere. I welcome their suggested edits to what follows- maybe a 'sticky' can come out of this First, this doesn't include custom composing. For this, I am speaking only of tracks forwarded to music libraries. Second, I am simply repeating what I've learned from others such as the names I mentioned above. Those folks are either earning good money or on a targeted 5 year plan toward that. I am not in that category- not prolific enough. Here goes...It takes as much as 5 years (can be more) to start bringing in significant money- by significant I mean the kind that could lead you to a true career path. There is no instant lottery ticket here. You shouldn't start comparing the money spent with taxi, or any other lead source for that matter, against short term financial gain.It's a volume game. You have to be very prolific, cranking out dozens of broadcast quality tracks. Instrumentals do much better- there is a large demand for background music. Words get in the way sometimes. Not that 'songs' don't get placed, but instrumentals outnumber vocals by a huge margin. You need to work toward having a VERY large number of tracks in music libraries, working for you (e.g. being pitched). By large, I mean 100, 150 or more within those first 5 years. Every track in a library increases the odds that there will be a placement. You have to keep feeding the pipeline, by submitting as much on-target material as possible. It's a continual process. If you learn to nail what is "on-target" you can get efficient at it.With a large volume in libraries, actual placements can start- but from the time a track gets into a library until it might be placed could be anywhere from (ballpark) 6 months to 5 years. Placements bring in some license fee revenue but the "back-end" performance royalties (from PRO's such as ASCAP, BMI, etc. - TV placements) can add up to much more. However, PRO payments lag behind broadcasts by 6-9 months domestically and 1-2 years internationally. And since you get paid each time a show is broadcast, as shows are re-run over the years that follow the initial broadcast, more comes in. That's a slow process. Your PRO earnings from a single TV placement might peak years from initial placement. So if you create and maintain a large pipeline of tracks going into libraries, a steady flow of revenue can be significant a few years later. NOT to any time scale but on the over-simplified time line below, the L's represent tracks put in libraries, the P's actual placements, and the $'s some revenue from P's. Picture a repeat of this over and over- more L's, P's, $'s...LLLLLLLLLLLL--------------------P1---------------- P2------------------P3-------------------------------------------------$p1-------------------$p1$p2----------------$p1$p2$p3...Although I left out custom composing, often when you are successful with a library, there is an opportunity with them for custom work which brings in more revenue.I hope this provides some answers regarding making "real" money with film/TV tracks. Once again, I welcome comments and corrections- I am not the foremost expert here. My goal would be to create a decent 'sticky' in this Music Biz section. Casey