How Many Music Licensing Catalogs Should You Be In?

[TAXILIZ]

How Many Music Licensing Catalogs Should You Be In? On This Week's TAXI TV

Click the link below to watch LIVE on Monday at 4 PM Pacific!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2LOPZCWT-c

7 pm Eastern (EDT) / 6 pm Central (CDT) / 4 pm Pacific (PDT) 12 am London (GMT) / 11 am Sydney (AEDT)

Dear Composers, Producers, and Songwriters,

For years, I've been preaching about "not putting all your eggs in one basket." My personal opinion is that you should hedge your bets by having your music in several if not many music library catalogs. But not just ANY catalogs!

Join me for this week's episode to learn more about the strategic way you might want to approach how many (and which) companies you want to have representing your music!

I Want to Hear From You!

I want this episode to be pretty interactive, with a lot of feedback from TAXI members (and viewers who have music in music libraries) as to what YOU think is an optimal number of catalogs to be in, and any strategic thinking you might have when deciding which companies you work with!

If you can contribute to this discussion, I would REALLY appreciate it if you could join us for the live show. I plan to spend more time than usual taking comments and questions from the chat during the live show!

Click the link below to watch LIVE on Monday at 4 PM Pacific!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2LOPZCWT-c

To Join the Live Chat During the Broadcast…

You’ll need to be signed up to YouTube (FREE) and be logged in to be able to join in on the chat during the show. Go to youtube.com and click the "Sign In" link in the upper right-hand corner of the page and fill out the short form to join. If you have a Gmail account, you’ll be able to associate your YouTube account with it!

7 pm Eastern (EDT) / 6 pm Central (CDT) / 4 pm Pacific (PDT) 12 am London (GMT) / 11 am Sydney (AEDT)

See you on the show,
Michael

[VanderBoegh]

I won't be able to tune in to the live broadcast tomorrow, but just in case you guys read this thread and pull some comments from it, my personal opinion when it comes to music libraries is "the more, the merrier"! Seriously, you can never have enough people repping your music.... you can never have enough music libraries working for you.

~~Matt

[Casey H]

I agree with MVB, given that libraries often have different clients that they work closely with. And there's just no way to know which libraries with which clients will be the best fit for the music you produce.

[cosmicdolphin]

All of them !

Until you figure out if they work well for you or not. Then drop the old duds and marry some shiny new ones. Ditch & Hitch.

[Telefunkin]

I guess the response consensus here is that library loyalty won't max the royalty.
It'll be interesting to hear the Taxi perspective. IMHO finding the right libraries that work for YOU is a potentially frustrating challenge that can waste a lot of music and several years unless you get 'lucky' early on. I'm sure immense talent helps but its not the whole story, and for mere mortals like me it can be a rocky road through a string of protracted bad dates. Is there a more reliable strategy than a spread-bet on all the libraries that will take your music? That'd be good to know.

[Paulie]

Some very good stuff in this episode. Getting a library that mostly places instrumentals to sign your vocal tracks sounds exciting, but it might actually suck because the library is not known for vocals. So your tracks may languish. Or, the library that signs your Americana may get the bulk of its placements using instrumental music for reality tv, so your tracks might languish. Being in the "right" libraries for your goals is the best move. Otherwise you are wasting time creating tracks and putting them in libraries where they will sit unpitched. Remember, as Michael pointed out in this episode, a lot of libraries don't actively pitch your music, they wait to hear from their clients on what they need and then send over any matches they have. Good episode,

[Casey H]

It's also important to recognize that different libraries may serve different markets. For example, there are those that do mainly reality TV cues and those that do higher end sync fee placements on network TV, in movies, etc. The RF market generally serves youtube videos, small projects, etc. In recent years, I've found that some RF libraries are placing songs for in-store airplay overseas, a totally different market.

Of course, not all tracks are a fit for all these markets, but it's good to be cognizant of what's out there.

Casey