Production Music - sting?

[shanegrla]

A music library I am working with is asking for a bunch of alt mixes for each track I submit. Among the different mixes they want (drums & bass only, no lead gtr, etc.) is what they call a sting, which I've never heard of before.

A quick look on Wikipedia leads me to believe it's basically a quick musical tag or phrase (my guess, no more than 4-5 sconds) to end or introduce a scene (like when a sitcom comes back from a commercial). Is this correct? Can anybody elaborate a bit more on this, and possibly would you know of any examples?

Thanks.

Shane

[mazz]

You are correct. Also known as a "stinger". It can typically be an edited down version of the end of your piece or another nice break that you put in the body of the piece somewhere if it makes musical sense. That's the key, is to make the lead in to the stinger (and the end, of course) make musical sense. I was actually editing down some pieces last night for stingers and I took the first two bars and last two bars of an 8 bar phrase to construct one stinger. I also created full mix versions and some alt mix versions (some tracks muted) of the stingers.

For me, one of the most creative parts of the process is creating edits for stingers, etc. Have fun with it!

HTH,

Mazz

[shanegrla]

Ah, thanks Mazz.

So we learn something new every day here! See, I always thought that was what was considered a "cue." But I guess a cue is actually just the regular full-length track?

[Casey H]

You and mazz nailed it... It's a brief burst of music with a hard ending (usually under 10 secs) that is used to transition scenes at the start or end of one. I've been lucky that sometimes the backing tracks to my songs provide good stingers with their endings.

I've been meaning to post a link for this recent placement of a 6 second stinger on "Toddlers And Tiaras" (TLC). It starts 2 seconds into the clip when you see "Corning, Arkansas". It's the ending guitar to my song "So Close To Me". Don't blink, you'll miss it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOomorOoOoc

Although I did not get this placement through a Taxi deal, Taxi had A LOT to do with it. I had stopped writing new material up until about 3 years ago when I attended my first road rally as a guest. Meeting so many of my Taxi friends motivated me to start writing more again and re-join Taxi. Through Taxi, I met our friend Keith L. (keithl) and ended up hiring him to produce my tracks-- hes' done quite a few for me now. I had Keith produce this new song about 2 years ago and it already resulted in this placement-- the ending chords as a stinger.

Thank you Taxi and Keith!

Anyway, this is an example of a stinger...

Casey

[shanegrla]

Ha ha! Wonderful, Casey!

So, just out of curiosity, how much does something like that pay when it's only for a couple seconds? I heard David Trotter (CatHerder) on the Taxi TV interview yesterday just throwing out, as an illustrative example, a 10-second cue being used on say Discovery Channel only paying something like .45 cents! And that sort of scared me. All this work and that's the big payoff? And the guy at my library said Discovery is pretty much the highest paying cable network!

It can't really be that bad, can it?

[Casey H]

I didn't get paid for this one yet but I would guess about 60 cents a broadcast. Another cue of mine on cable that's 10 seconds long paid $1.00.

Matto could shed more light on this but you can't look at this biz based on the amount of money on each placement. Some will be small, some will be bigger. You have to keep building and building the amount of music out there working for you and the credits. Success breeds more success... you've made more contacts, you have better credits, you get better at the music, etc.

BTW, the same library (a frequent lister with Taxi!) has made placements for a friend of mine who ended up getting BMI checks of $1300 a quarter for quite a while. You never know. Keep writing, keep getting tracks in libraries.... over and over... and be patient.

Casey

[mazz]

It's all over the map, from pennies to hundreds of dollars per placement. It's not the amount of the single placement that matters that much to the instrumental composer, it's literally the amount of pages your pro statement is. Mine the last few years have grown to 5 pages or so, I have a friend who regularly has statements approaching 100 pages!!! In order to pull that off, one needs several hundred pieces in circulation and libraries and publishers that are actively working their catalogs, not to mention writing great useable pieces.

[Casey H]

...Mine the last few years have grown to 5 pages or so...

I've noticed that Winston is much better dresssed these days.

Good advice, Mazz! I hope they need a wheelbarrow to bring in your statement one day! Matto has probably killed a few trees in his day.

Casey

[shanegrla]

It's all over the map, from pennies to hundreds of dollars per placement. It's not the amount of the single placement that matters that much to the instrumental composer, it's literally the amount of pages your pro statement is. Mine the last few years have grown to 5 pages or so, I have a friend who regularly has statements approaching 100 pages!!! In order to pull that off, one needs several hundred pieces in circulation and libraries and publishers that are actively working their catalogs, not to mention writing great useable pieces.

Good god, I guess I better get to work then!

Thanks guys.
Shane

[matto]

My highest "line item" (= payment for a single broadcast of one piece of music) was about $2500, the lowest is one penny (that's probably because they don't pay fractions of pennies ).

It should be pointed out that the highest line items are usually long feature placements on major broadcast TV networks, where a single airing actually consists of about 200 individual broadcasts since the Big 3 Networks have about 200 individual affiliate stations nationwide.
On cable each broadcast counts as only one airing, however most episodes will air a considerable number of times in the initial run (as you've probably noticed if you watch cable) as opposed to 1-3 times on broadcast.

I seem to be averaging about $1.50 for a single 10s airing on Discovery, now figure between 15 and 30 airings during the initial run and your line item on that would maybe be around 35 bucks. That's really not too bad, I mean how much did you expect to get paid for a little 10s snippet?

Remember, this song may get used in many other productions and thus hopefully make a respectable amount of money over its lifetime...certainly enough, one would hope, to warrant writing it .

But yes, it has to be pointed out (again and again) that while big hit songs can make their writers hundreds of thousands or even millons of dollars, a production music song isn't gonna be anywhere near that. This is why you need a lot more of them.
That being said, if you consider the odds of having a major hit song with those of having a 10s Discovery placement...it's probably only fair that the hit song is gonna make WAY more money...

HTH,

matto