Year 8 seems to have flown by as once again the holiday season is in full swing and I write this from my garage studio. This may be the last time I do it from this space as my eldest Son has bought a house with his wife meaning we once again have a spare bedroom to use as a studio. It was 22 yrs ago when I first made way for him and relocated, and although we moved to a bigger house in 2012 we wanted each of our 3 boys to have their own room so I remained in the garage with it's lack of heating and no natural light. Moving back upstairs brings things full circle and has its own challenges of acoustic treatment, something I have dialed in really well in my current space which is also bigger. We plan to do some renovations whilst we have chance so no doubt I'll be posting a "new studio" picture in a couple of months time.
That’s for the future though, on to the past & present and if you would like to read any of my previous years posts on the subject they can be found here:-
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4 Year Update : four-year-update-t144067.html
5 Year Update : five-year-update-t147037.html
6 Year Update : six-year-update-t148673.html
7 Year Update : seven-year-update-t150215.html
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If you don't want to read the whole post - My TL:DR for 2023 is “The best year so far”
Here are the updated numbers:
2016 - 87 cues produced - 1 Library Deal - Total Annual Earnings £0
2017 - 70 cues produced - 2 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings - £50
2018 - 88 cues produced - 2 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings - £127
2019 - 50 cues produced - 2 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings - £763
2020 - 100 cues produced - 3 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings £ 700
2021 - 100 cues produced - No additional Libraries this year - Total Annual Earnings £582
2022 - 82 cues produced - 3 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings £3,347
2023 - 82 cues produced - 1 more LIbrary Deal - Total Annual Earnings £7,558
Eight years into the 5yr plan things seem to be gathering momentum. My favorite publisher continues its regular supply of briefs which are varied and challenging enough to keep me on my toes. I doubled down on this Library throughout 2023 focusing more of my efforts in the place that gets me the best results. The net result was I signed almost the exact same number of tracks with them as last year but wound up with a bigger rejection pile ! Luckily many of those rejections have been accepted by other libraries so they won’t go to waste but it shows that even if you’re doing well it doesn’t get any easier.
It’s good news again on the earnings front as my music income more than doubled over what I earned in 2022. This is the result of the placements that I reported last year making their way through the system from international PRO’s and eventually to PRS. As my main library is European, the bulk of my placements are on German TV but with sub-publishing I also get a good number of UK, US and other terriotories worldwide.
Once again there is more positivity this year as we look at how many placements have been detected in 2023 Vs other years:
2016 - 1
2017 - 1
2018 - 8
2019 - 29
2020 - 21
2021 - 145
2022 - 222
2023 - 368 ( acheivement unlocked : over one TV placement a day on average
) Total number of placements is now 792 from 643 cues.
Once again this is a big increase on 2022 when I had 427 placements from 561 and they don’t seem to show any signs of stopping with December 23 almost doubling my December 22 tally.
I put most of this down to working hard for a great library that I chanced upon in late 2020 and with 3 solid years of writing behind me the results speak for themselves. Whilst it would be wrong to say my first 5yrs were a waste of time, if I knew then what I know now I wouldn’t have signed as much music to many of those early libraries where I gained very little traction. IMHO If you’re waiting months and months between placement then it’s probably never going to be lucrative enough in the longer term. With almost all of the libraries being exclusive now all I can do is focus on the better performing libraries and not bother with the rest.
Another income stream I’ve discovered this year is Content ID. A bunch of my early music was Non-Exclusive and wound up in various RF sites like Pond5. It barely made many sales there but I signed up for an Identifyy account and put all my Non-Ex music in where it’s generated over $1200 this year from Youtube Ad revenue which I split with my original co-writer. Much of this was for one track that got used in a 5 minute video for an art gallery and uses an Imagine Dragons stye track originally submitted to Taxi Listing #Y171019AR in October 2017. Annoyingly it was a Return but 6 years later it’s earned back many times that $5 submission fee!
https://youtu.be/y9KnNbPHHE0?si=uk6u4zrzMbMB5n9C
Speaking of Youtube I was honored once again to have one of my cues featured on the 52 Cues Youtube channel with Dave Kropf giving some welcome pointers to enhance an Arabian Orchestral cue I’d made for a brief. You can watch it here but the story didn't end there as a couple of weeks later the library rejected it and it’s currently languishing on my hard drive waiting for a good home.
https://youtu.be/-g0QbLp4lVY?si=tQIBnQuDWPV4Bp0C
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Some notable 2023 events this time around include :-
Breaking the 2,000 detections threshold on my Tunesat Account with the most startling fact being took 7yrs to break 1,000 and only 12 months to hit the 2,000 mark.
Over 5 minutes of air time on “ The Incredible Dog Challenge“ on CBS. My most air time in a single episode to date.
I went along for the PRS Day in Birmingham this year and met up with my co-writer and friend Helen Robinson. We ended up spending the whole day wandering the city drinking coffee, beer and eating cake as the venue had a major power outage and had to re-arrange the event. I was able to return on the re-arranged date and had a great time meeting other musicians, most of whom know nothing about Sync but are all interested.
Talking of meeting people, a group of us who live in this region of the UK organized a composer get together after one of the guys posted on the Facebook Group “ A Composer's Guide To LIbrary Music “. Seven of us including Telefunkin met up at a micropub for an afternoon of putting the world to rights and discussing many sync related topics. It was interesting to hear how they all got into the industry ( none of them had ever joined Taxi ) and we’ve become friendly and met up again since.It’s great to talk with others that know what you’re on about instead of thinking that you write jingles which is what tends to happen when you tell people you write music for TV. The range of experience went from still waiting for the first placement , to a 20+ yr veteran in all the major libraries with a number of theme tunes under his belt and his own ‘man’ at the PRS who gets in touch tells him how much he’s made each quarter!
I wrote a song with the lovely Michelle from True Swans earlier this year which has been on constant rotation on several French TV stations, it seems to be a Promo that aired well over 100 times. My poor Tunesat has been battered - Let’s hope it pays unlike some of the US Promos I’ve had over the years.
I had the weirdest false detection ever recently on Tunesat when it thought my 2016 Chip Tune had aired in the middle of the Tarantino Movie Django Unchained. I think not.
A Netflix show called “ Catching Killers “ used the entire 1:38 of one of my tension cues from beginning to end which is the first time this has happened. Maybe it will pay for a coffee.
A Taxi friendly library finally released my Funk Pop album after waiting for 3 years. Three ####ing years !! Two weeks after it dropped I picked up 2 placements for some US Football coverage in the UK. What a pity they didn’t release it while it was still fresh.
I am taking part in the private beta test for the forthcoming Cakewalk Sonar as it switches back from being a free DAW for the past 5 yrs to a paid product again. As a long term user since the mid 90s I’m under NDA so I can’t can’t reveal much but suffice to say I haven’t held back on the private forum.I’m sure they will get it right in time for the release.
I wrote a children’s book! Not many have read it yet but we welcomed our first grandchild this year so I wrote a short whimsical story intended as a picture book for younger kids. I think it came out quite well and I’m curious to see if it’s of interest to publishers but if it’s not I shall self publish a copy for my granddaughter as a gift for her first birthday.
I took up running in January and have continued on with it for almost a year now. I only do 5k which takes a little under half an hour a few times each week.
That wraps up my year in Sync, please feel free to post below if you’ve anything interesting that’s happened to you on your journey this year.
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Thanks as always to @Telefunkin for the constant feedback loop of endless track revisions and our meetups this year. To the very lovely @helenrobertson who puts up with my terrible Dad jokes, the occasional co-write and proofread my book.
And to the lovely Michelle and Todd of TrueSwans who I’ve worked with on some tracks this year whilst Michalle also gave me some great feedback on my childrens’ story too.
Best of luck for 2024 and I’ll see you around this time next year.
Mark
