What exactly is this five year plan?

[coachdebra]

Chuck,

I completely agree. For a collaborative art, I find musicians to be very often isolated and it's critical to be part of a community both for the learning and support that you talked about. But also for the perspective. When you're alone all the time, it can become very hard to see the big picture. And that often leads to forgetting your vision and why you're doing this thing in the first place. It can also be conducive to the "poor me" frame of mind - which is deadly both to creativity and to creating success.

Seeing that there are a lot of people who have experienced what you've experienced, learned what you need to learn and gotten through their tough times can help you keep your head above water when life is challenging and things don't appear to be going your way.

Now that you have a community - the trick is to remember to ask for help when you need it!

Debra

[billg1]

The five year plan means . . .

Give yourself at least five years to reach your career goals but allow some "wiggle" room beyond that . . . like say an additional 30-40 yrs.

[matto]

Now THAT is dedication!

[billg1]

Now THAT is dedication!

or insanity!

[Casey H]

Hmmmm... I wonder what the oldest recorded age is for a Taxi member getting a placement.

Casey

[coachdebra]

Hmmmm... I wonder what the oldest recorded age is for a Taxi member getting a placement.

Casey

152

[mazz]

We didn't touch on this topic on the live show but something that came up later when Michael and I were talking is the subject of "Time Lag" as it relates to the life of a piece of music, and it feeds right into the 5 year plan.

Here's a theoretical situation based on my own experience and the experience of other composers I've spoken with.

Let's say a library decides to put out a CD of Halloween horror music for the 2010 Halloween season. If they want to guarantee a large amount of great music to go through to put this CD together, they would be smart to put out the call some months or even a year in advance so they can be sure to have the best chance to capture the best music. So the library runs a listing with TAXI in, say November 2009. A composer submits to the listing and the piece gets forwarded to the company. The company is in gathering mode right now so they may or may not listen to the forwarded music right away, maybe they have scheduled the month of May 2010 to work on the Halloween CD. So May comes around, 6 months after the composer is forwarded (with no word from the library yet, they are just getting to it). After listening to all the submissions from all the sources, lo and behold, the composer who was forwarded by TAXI has a piece that fits the libraries' specs for the CD and the composer is contacted with a contract. Woo Hoo!!

So now the library releases the Halloween CD in time for the season and it sells nicely to several production companies. One production company likes the piece by our TAXI forwarded composer and puts it into their production slated to air October 30th, 2010. We are now 11+ months from the initial composition, submission and forward of the piece in question.

Everything goes off without a hitch and the production company does their part and files a cue sheet with the PROs. The show airs, reruns a couple of times and that's that. The composer is excited, understandably, that their music was used in a TV show. A small but nice sync fee was paid which the composer splits with the library 50/50 due to their contract.

Now, assuming that everything went perfectly in our scenario, the composer will have to wait 6 to 9 months to get paid by their PRO for that one placement. That's not to mention that the production company has a 90 day net on sending the sync fee and the library probably won't cut a check to the composer the day the check hits the door, so another 4 month wait, minimum, to get paid the sync fee.

So the composer who was very fortunate that everything went perfectly, their piece was forwarded, chosen for the CD out of dozens of competing pieces for 10 or 12 slots, it got placed in the first Halloween season the CD was out, and they are getting paid. The pay is coming, in the case of performance royalties, 2 YEARS after they wrote that piece. If the piece didn't get picked for that Halloween season, it could possibly get picked for the following 2011 season which puts the payment out 3 to 4 years from the time of composition.

This is not an uncommon scenario, which is why a long term view, 5 years minimum, and developing a sizeable high quality catalog, are two incredibly important aspects to the 5 year plan. It's not for the impatient among us!!

Write, submit, repeat.


cheers!

Mazz

[jeffgreenleaf]

More great info from Mazz! Thanks guy!

[mazz]

Thanks Jeff!

As you know, it can, and does, happen faster than that depending on the situation, but that is certainly a common scenario and one that can cause frustration if one is not familiar with the business.

[coachdebra]

And that is really the reasoning behind write, submit, edit, submit, repeat
If you're sitting around waiting for that one piece of music to pay out - you're going to be frustrated and unhappy. If you just keep writing, improving, submitting, then that 2 years was very productive, wasn't it. And your focus is on the work and letting go of the outcome.

Debra