Making significant $ with film/TV music

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cosmicdolphin
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Re: Making significant $ with film/TV music

Post by cosmicdolphin » Fri Oct 22, 2021 9:00 am

superblonde wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 8:18 am
only those with Average Taste will make art which appeals to the mass audience in order to reap the financial rewards of the time/$ investment
Congrats it sounds like the penny has dropped. I would replace the word average and call it 'popular' taste. We can all make 'fine art' that nobody cares about and call ourselves avant garde. It's actually harder to make something that has broad appeal. You should try it sometime.

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Re: Making significant $ with film/TV music

Post by superblonde » Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:30 am

I dont know what that "congrats" is all about. I've known that for years, the tabloid phenomenon, the Billboard #1 hit almost always being crap phenomenon because of 'poor' taste, the formulaic music phenomenon. The idea of "5 year plan to make it in library music" is an aspirational ideal, not a given, so the previous poster, "I said I'm 23 this coming Saturday...I will be making six-figures by 28. Not because I'm good, but because I won't stop until it happens" is a nice aspirational dream to pursue but I meet plenty of old musicians working random jobs like building construction contractor or whatever around Los Angeles area who were 'in a past life' gigging regularly on the Sunset Strip in the 80s or 90s trying to "make it" and also some of them doing massive amounts of hard drugs too, often their stories have a punchline "I'm lucky I'm still alive", or a few very focused and smarter and previously highly successful 80s musicians (i.e., with radio hits & weekly airplay) are now unable to find musical success no matter how hard they try or how many times they say "I'm not stopping until it happens!", so they have become music professors in order to have any monthly salary, so yeah, the "I will be making six-figures by 28" is a nice refrigerator slogan especially when deadlines are feeling hard though it doesn't mean it's true, there's a whole lot of other random factors involved, including supposedly being somewhat of below-average or average taste (after all, what kind of music creator is really going to enjoy continually writing triads in a single key for dozens of tracks?).

Formulaic music also does not mean success is a given since the 'winning recipe' is never stated, only implied by vague language unique to each judge/gatekeeper, changes over time, and feedback on attempts is also vague or misdirecting. Formal research studies have literally shown that something like a musical jury panel having coffee in the morning vs. not having coffee in the morning will change jury opinion (musical rating given) in their morning listening panels, for the good or the worse, so the "Selection Process" has a large arbitrary aspect as well, even if a track happens to close in on the 'winning formula'. It's already known that any visual cues will also bias musical opinion even in a supposedly 'expert' panel of listeners, which is why some in-person auditions are double-blind, while a listening of an MP3 track might or might not have a thumbnail as a visual cue, an MP3 track will always have a visual element of some type, such as track title (or title length), or even waveform shape itself, all of these factors add arbitrary scoring bias to the judging process.

This however is a lie, " We can all make 'fine art' that nobody cares about and call ourselves avant garde. It's actually harder to make something that has broad appeal." It is far harder to create 'fine art' in music (not including the crap-yet-celebrated accidents like 4'33 in that, I dont call that 'fine art') because it requires years, and years, and years of formal study, which is why the pool of professional musicians who do this, is very small. Only a really very naive person would suggest that 5 voice counterpoint 'fine art' is something "we can all make", no, that is a blatant lie. It is technique-wise much easier to make something that has broad appeal (i.e. any four triad song) which is why there is so much competition, tens of thousands of entries into a 'singer-songwriter' contest for example. The recent Spitfire Audio youtube film clip scoring competitions had between 10,000 - 15,000 "broad-appeal music" (vs. comparison to 'fine-art') video entries.
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Re: Making significant $ with film/TV music

Post by cosmicdolphin » Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:43 pm

superblonde wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:30 am
I dont know what that "congrats" is all about. I've known that for years
That may be so but you don't seem to have accepted applying it to Taxi until now
superblonde wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:30 am
The idea of "5 year plan to make it in library music" is an aspirational ideal,
I would call it a marketing gimmick
superblonde wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:30 am
there's a whole lot of other random factors involved, including supposedly being somewhat of below-average or average taste
Maybe the people who do well have above average taste in what works for TV. Or rather they have 'current tastes'. The issue most struggling Taxi members have is their musical taste is stuck in their formative years that are long since passed.
superblonde wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:30 am
after all, what kind of music creator is really going to enjoy continually writing triads in a single key for dozens of tracks?
I don't know I only use dyads
superblonde wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:30 am
Formulaic music also does not mean success is a given since the 'winning recipe' is never stated, only implied by vague language unique to each judge/gatekeeper, changes over time, and feedback on attempts is also vague or misdirecting.
The only recipe is that your taste in music needs to be aligned with the end user, which is ultimately the viewers. If you don't listen to what they listen to then it's likely you won't be able to recreate it. The more successful you will be in Sync music.
superblonde wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:30 am
It is technique-wise much easier to make something that has broad appeal (i.e. any four triad song) which is why there is so much competition, tens of thousands of entries into a 'singer-songwriter' contest for example.
Let us know when you've managed it then

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Re: Making significant $ with film/TV music

Post by superblonde » Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:55 pm

cosmicdolphin wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:43 pm

That may be so but you don't seem to have accepted applying it to Taxi until now

you dont know anything about me, so would you like to explain to 'the class' what exactly your problem is?
Last edited by superblonde on Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Making significant $ with film/TV music

Post by Casey H » Sat Oct 23, 2021 1:15 pm

superblonde wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:30 am
Formulaic music also does not mean success is a given since the 'winning recipe' is never stated, only implied by vague language unique to each judge/gatekeeper, changes over time, and feedback on attempts is also vague or misdirecting.
Another word for gatekeeper is customer. Is there any business in which you don't give customers what they want but you succeed?

No one is forcing anyone to make any type of music, join Taxi, submit to libraries & sups, etc. If you are not interested in serving a particular market segment out there, don't. No harm in walking away. But what turns people off is the constant complaining about it.

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Re: Making significant $ with film/TV music

Post by superblonde » Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:01 pm

gatekeepers are not "the customer", in the sense of, the true customer. the true customers, the end consumer, is the audience. the gatekeeper is the middleman who attempts to filter for what they 'believe' the actual customers, the audience, really wants and really enjoys. that means there is a disconnect in the service to the customer which exacerbates the inability to match the music request. all of this should be quite obvious and should not need stating. all of this hampers the ability of "Making significant $ with film/TV music" and exposes the fragility of "the five year plan" aspiration. (Which may also suggest that the listings with direct quotes from the gatekeepers, those listings which say, "To quote the library: 'We are looking for ...etc etc..' " are likely better chances at succeeding because it removes one of the many middleman layers, the taxi interpretive layer, from the formula.)
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Re: Making significant $ with film/TV music

Post by cosmicdolphin » Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:11 pm

superblonde wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:55 pm

you dont know anything about me, so would you like to explain to 'the class' what exactly your problem is?
No problem. I just read the forums.

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Re: Making significant $ with film/TV music

Post by Casey H » Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:43 pm

superblonde wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:01 pm
gatekeepers are not "the customer", in the sense of, the true customer. the true customers, the end consumer, is the audience. the gatekeeper is the middleman who attempts to filter for what they 'believe' the actual customers, the audience, really wants and really enjoys. that means there is a disconnect in the service to the customer which exacerbates the inability to match the music request. all of this should be quite obvious and should not need stating. all of this hampers the ability of "Making significant $ with film/TV music" and exposes the fragility of "the five year plan" aspiration. (Which may also suggest that the listings with direct quotes from the gatekeepers, those listings which say, "To quote the library: 'We are looking for ...etc etc..' " are likely better chances at succeeding because it removes one of the many middleman layers, the taxi interpretive layer, from the formula.)
So why are you here? The constant bitching and moaning serves no one any good. Go out on your own. See how well you do.

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Re: Making significant $ with film/TV music

Post by boinkeee2000 » Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:53 pm

superblonde wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:01 pm
gatekeepers are not "the customer", in the sense of, the true customer. the true customers, the end consumer, is the audience. the gatekeeper is the middleman who attempts to filter for what they 'believe' the actual customers, the audience, really wants and really enjoys. that means there is a disconnect in the service to the customer which exacerbates the inability to match the music request. all of this should be quite obvious and should not need stating. all of this hampers the ability of "Making significant $ with film/TV music" and exposes the fragility of "the five year plan" aspiration. (Which may also suggest that the listings with direct quotes from the gatekeepers, those listings which say, "To quote the library: 'We are looking for ...etc etc..' " are likely better chances at succeeding because it removes one of the many middleman layers, the taxi interpretive layer, from the formula.)
in the sync world, our gatekeepers/customers are the libs, their gatekeepers/customers are the music sups/editors, and the audience or end users, are the consumers, although sometimes direct licensing lets you leap over middlemen. I get what you're saying, there maybe a disconnect between the editors and consumers on what is cool to them, but it is what it is , me and you may think we know more on what's hip to the viewer, the same way these youtube movie reviewers posts a video on how they could've made the film better, but that's all anecdotal and after the fact. the only solution viable is for them to direct the next film, and for us to be the music supervisors, and hope we're right on what the viewers really want.

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Re: Making significant $ with film/TV music

Post by cosmicdolphin » Tue Oct 26, 2021 4:41 pm

boinkeee2000 wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:53 pm
, there maybe a disconnect between the editors and consumers on what is cool to them
There's usually way more of a disconnect between struggling Taxi members and what the consumer thinks is cool.

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