Some success, with reservations..

[kazr88]

I've been plugging away at this for a few years now. I've had a lot of forwards, signed about 10 tracks plus 2 whole albums. I've enjoyed trying all sorts of genres and have signed hiphop, epic trailer, electro, lounge, solo piano and a few others. Only trouble is I haven't seen any sign of these tracks with my PRO Apra in Australia yet, or a single sign of any royalties. It's been over a year for some of them. Is this normal? I know if things start to (hopefully) pop I'll become enthusiastic again but I'm starting to lose my mojo! Of course my insecurity says "I guess my music isn't good enough" but I guess these companies signed the tracks because they believe in them...

[Casey H]

It's a very slow moving business. You might get placements in weeks, months, years, or never. All you can do is keep feeding more tracks to libraries. Write, Submit, Forget, Repeat. The more tracks you have out there, the better your chances.

Not all libraries register tracks with PROs routinely. Some do, some only register if there is a placement or a pitch with good chances of placement.

The fact that you got forwards and deals means you are doing something right!

Casey

[cosmicdolphin]

Is this normal?

With only 30 tracks in the system it is somewhat normal but as ever " it depends "

I could give "Library A" 30 tracks and get little to no placements across a period of years ( true story ) and they don't register anything because there are no placements to register for.

But "Library B" on the other hand might be ultra effiecient and register everything within a couple of months and within weeks I start to see placements pop up on Tunesat ( also true story )

So there's an element of right place , right time type luck. But also some libraries can be a black hole waste of music whilst others can do great things for you and everything inbetween. If all goes well it can still take 12-18 months before you see any backend royalties, and if it doesn't go well the music can be stuck there doing nothing in perpituity.

The best thing I have found is to use Tunesat as some sort of measuring stick to see who gets you the most traction. Whilst it's not infallible it's the best indicator I've found so far that I can rely on. The slow libaries rarely show up and take months and months between placements ( or never ) and the good ones show up with placements a few weeks or months later after signing the tracks and keep getting the odler tracks on new shows too.

Bear in mind the old 80-20 rule too, most of the music is not gonna get used. Out of 600+ tracks I'm on around 25% that have made it on to TV

Mark

[Telefunkin]

Is this normal?

It depends on who you ask. Do you know anybody who makes music that sounds exactly like yours, and who has put it in the same libraries as you at the same time? Even if you do, there's still an element of chance that your music gets chosen over theirs (or v.v.) for placements. Every last one of us has different skills, knowledge, equipment, work ethic, sounds, tastes, contacts, collaborators, libraries and luck. Mark's examples are a good illustration of the variation in just his own catalogue, but I reckon most of us have such variations. I've met people who are pretty high up in the sync world, and others who can't make anything happen at all despite their best efforts, but the rest of us are scattered throughout the huge spectrum in-between. Basically, there is no 'normal', so all you can do is keep plugging and trying to make your 'normal' better than the next guy's 'normal'.

[kazr88]

Thanks guys, sorry I can't reply to each but I haven't figured out this interface yet.. It's been a great experience trying all of these genres out. I actually signed a nice deal outside of Taxi too, with a playlist of various Taxi tracks. They pay advances too. I have a salary job so it will take a while before I have the number of tracks you guys must have out there. 600!? I'm gonna get my calculator out for that one!

I'll just keep plugging away, as everyone says! And hope things start to kick in at some stage.

At the end of the day, Taxi has been a minor success for me, getting some tracks out into the world again. Fun briefs and it has really lifted my game.