Nine Year Update
Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2024 4:10 am
As 2024 rapidly comes to a close it's time to share Year 9 of my Sync Journey
As I previewed in my Year 8 update, I fully relocated studios in April this year. Out of a cold windowless garage and into the relative luxury of my eldest Son's former bedroom since he's moved out. This brings studio life full circle as I had a bedroom studio before he was born but had to move out shortly after he came into the world, and apart from a short spell in the cupboard under stairs Harry Potter style, I've been in one garage or another in each of our houses.
For anyone interested there is a studio photo in my instagram here : https://www.instagram.com/p/C5POMsoixJF ... BiNWFlZA==
I've also added some new gear whilst I was at it, an Arc Studio has helped tame some of the room resonances although more physical acoustic treatment is still required and I've ordered a new Palmer Monicon monitor controller to replace my old Behringer unit which is getting a little crackly with age. If I'm not relegated to the naughty list then Santa will be bringing a new RME Babyface Pro FS to replace another Behringer bit of kit, my UMC204HD interface which I bought as a cheap stop gap when my Audient interface failed about 3yrs ago. To be fair it's been hard to fault for the money but I want something with better convertors now.
But enough gear talk, on with the results:-
----------------
It says last years update has 45k views which seems crazy but if you need a reminder it's linked here : eight-year-update-t151428.html
For those in a hurry, my TL:DR for 2024 is “Another record breaking year”
----------------
Here are the updated numbers:
2024 - 74 cues produced - No Libraries Deals - Total Annual Earnings £12,838 ( Around $16k US )
2023 - 82 cues produced - 1 more LIbrary Deal - Total Annual Earnings £7,558
2022 - 82 cues produced - 3 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings £3,347
2021 - 100 cues produced - No additional Libraries this year - Total Annual Earnings £582
2020 - 100 cues produced - 3 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings £ 700
2019 - 50 cues produced - 2 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings - £763
2018 - 88 cues produced - 2 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings - £127
2017 - 70 cues produced - 2 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings - £50
2016 - 87 cues produced - 1 Library Deal - Total Annual Earnings £0
As you can see, earnings this year are almost as much as all the other years combined. It's purely a compounding effect of more tracks in more shows in more countries as I've continued to pump tracks into my favorite publisher which continues to deliver results. I've been kept busy with a regular supply of varied briefs which keep things interesting and as I mentioned last year I doubled down on this Library throughout 2023 focusing more of my efforts in the place that gets me the best results. I've been able to sign more tracks with them than previous years although they are quite picky so I also have growing reject pile which sometimes is suitable for other publishers too.
Earnings wise £10.5k came from my PRO and the rest came from direct library payments for mechanical royalties and sync fees of which I had a number of smaller ones this year.
My placement counter also continues to grow as I track this via Tunesat. It's not a perfect system as it doesn't cover all countries is but good enough to know where the trends are heading. Hopefully by the time you read this it will have clicked over 500 for the year. It's quite an uplift over 2023 though which has surprised me.
2024 - 504
2023 - 368
2022 - 222
2021 - 145
2020 - 21
2019 - 29
2018 - 8
2017 - 1
2016 - 1
Total number of placements is now 1297 from 715 cues
Once again this is a big increase on 2023 when I had 792 placements from 643 cues and they still keep rolling on with almost daily Tunesat detections for various tracks.
I will reitereate what I've said for the last few of these roundups, the success I've had is mostly down to finding a good library that gets me lots of placements. I had music that's every bit as good sat on library shelves gathering dust, so if you've been hammering away at this for a few years with a lots of signed tracks but not much to show for it then keep trying to find new libraries as you may land in one where their clients like your music more than the others. It really can make or break Sync as a viable side gig or career.
A new income stream this year came from AI dataset payments where old forgotten Pond5 tracks from 6yrs ago made a few hundred pounds. I'm not too worried about AI personally and I think ChatGpt makes a great personal assistant but as impressive as the music is it can generate, it still sounds like AI and I think it's going to be a non-starter for professional use such as exclusive sync libraries as they can't guarantee it won't spit out fragments of infringing works so the industry will err on the side of caution and demand only human musicans.
-------------------------
Some notable 2024 events this time around include :-
Breaking the 4,000 detections threshold on my Tunesat Account.
Some good air time on “ The Great British Sewing Bee Xmas Special " this time last year made over £300 with an a purposely out of tune Dramedy track I did for an album called "Drunk Xmas ". Les Dawson fans will appreciate
An upbeat Sports Song I made with Michelle of True Swans did really well in France where it was played a lot in promos and also in US baseball ( Michelle actually heard the baseball placement live on TV in her hotel room whilst travelling ) but for my half I got over £700 this quarter for it - my 2nd biggest earner of the year.
CBS news - One of my tracks has been played over 100 times in a section of CBS this year - it's when they have items like Mothers & Father's day messages, Charity fundraisers, Veterans Day, etc. At the moment it's airing a couple of times each day when they are talking about a Xmas food bank drive in New York. It's an emotional piano piece ( not something I am noted for as a slightly ham fisted keyboard prodder ! ) but they seem to like it.
A cue on a BBC programme called Scam Interceptors has lead me to find I actually quite the show. Most shows my music ends up in are things I'd never watch but I found this one interesting and I know a couple of other people who have had music in it too.
During the Summer we went to see Kasabian play at their homecoming gig in Leicester - Fantasic gig, if you like Kasabaian be sure to catch them live if you can
I am still running regularly to keep up my fitness levels. It doesn't get any easier, especially in the Winter but it's good for mind body and soul and I always feel more alive for having done it.
We did some major renovations to the house this year, thanks in part to the Sync earnings - Revamping the upstairs and remodelling the outside front of the house.
I was able to have a catch up with Graham AKA Telefunkin of these parts. A couple of hours in a pub up North putting the world to rights and talking shop. It's great to meet up with likeminded folks so even if you can't go to a big event like a Road Rally, see if you can do something more low key at least.
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.
----------------------------
Thanks as always to @Telefunkin for the constant feedback loop of endless track revisions and our meetup this year. To the very lovely @helenrobertson who continues to humour me daily over Discord
And to the lovely Michelle and Todd of TrueSwans who have had some notable successes of their own this year which has pleased me no end.
Best of luck for 2025 and I’ll see you around this time next year.
Mark
As I previewed in my Year 8 update, I fully relocated studios in April this year. Out of a cold windowless garage and into the relative luxury of my eldest Son's former bedroom since he's moved out. This brings studio life full circle as I had a bedroom studio before he was born but had to move out shortly after he came into the world, and apart from a short spell in the cupboard under stairs Harry Potter style, I've been in one garage or another in each of our houses.
For anyone interested there is a studio photo in my instagram here : https://www.instagram.com/p/C5POMsoixJF ... BiNWFlZA==
I've also added some new gear whilst I was at it, an Arc Studio has helped tame some of the room resonances although more physical acoustic treatment is still required and I've ordered a new Palmer Monicon monitor controller to replace my old Behringer unit which is getting a little crackly with age. If I'm not relegated to the naughty list then Santa will be bringing a new RME Babyface Pro FS to replace another Behringer bit of kit, my UMC204HD interface which I bought as a cheap stop gap when my Audient interface failed about 3yrs ago. To be fair it's been hard to fault for the money but I want something with better convertors now.
But enough gear talk, on with the results:-
----------------
It says last years update has 45k views which seems crazy but if you need a reminder it's linked here : eight-year-update-t151428.html
For those in a hurry, my TL:DR for 2024 is “Another record breaking year”
----------------
Here are the updated numbers:
2024 - 74 cues produced - No Libraries Deals - Total Annual Earnings £12,838 ( Around $16k US )
2023 - 82 cues produced - 1 more LIbrary Deal - Total Annual Earnings £7,558
2022 - 82 cues produced - 3 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings £3,347
2021 - 100 cues produced - No additional Libraries this year - Total Annual Earnings £582
2020 - 100 cues produced - 3 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings £ 700
2019 - 50 cues produced - 2 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings - £763
2018 - 88 cues produced - 2 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings - £127
2017 - 70 cues produced - 2 more Library Deals - Total Annual Earnings - £50
2016 - 87 cues produced - 1 Library Deal - Total Annual Earnings £0
As you can see, earnings this year are almost as much as all the other years combined. It's purely a compounding effect of more tracks in more shows in more countries as I've continued to pump tracks into my favorite publisher which continues to deliver results. I've been kept busy with a regular supply of varied briefs which keep things interesting and as I mentioned last year I doubled down on this Library throughout 2023 focusing more of my efforts in the place that gets me the best results. I've been able to sign more tracks with them than previous years although they are quite picky so I also have growing reject pile which sometimes is suitable for other publishers too.
Earnings wise £10.5k came from my PRO and the rest came from direct library payments for mechanical royalties and sync fees of which I had a number of smaller ones this year.
My placement counter also continues to grow as I track this via Tunesat. It's not a perfect system as it doesn't cover all countries is but good enough to know where the trends are heading. Hopefully by the time you read this it will have clicked over 500 for the year. It's quite an uplift over 2023 though which has surprised me.
2024 - 504
2023 - 368
2022 - 222
2021 - 145
2020 - 21
2019 - 29
2018 - 8
2017 - 1
2016 - 1
Total number of placements is now 1297 from 715 cues
Once again this is a big increase on 2023 when I had 792 placements from 643 cues and they still keep rolling on with almost daily Tunesat detections for various tracks.
I will reitereate what I've said for the last few of these roundups, the success I've had is mostly down to finding a good library that gets me lots of placements. I had music that's every bit as good sat on library shelves gathering dust, so if you've been hammering away at this for a few years with a lots of signed tracks but not much to show for it then keep trying to find new libraries as you may land in one where their clients like your music more than the others. It really can make or break Sync as a viable side gig or career.
A new income stream this year came from AI dataset payments where old forgotten Pond5 tracks from 6yrs ago made a few hundred pounds. I'm not too worried about AI personally and I think ChatGpt makes a great personal assistant but as impressive as the music is it can generate, it still sounds like AI and I think it's going to be a non-starter for professional use such as exclusive sync libraries as they can't guarantee it won't spit out fragments of infringing works so the industry will err on the side of caution and demand only human musicans.
-------------------------
Some notable 2024 events this time around include :-
Breaking the 4,000 detections threshold on my Tunesat Account.
Some good air time on “ The Great British Sewing Bee Xmas Special " this time last year made over £300 with an a purposely out of tune Dramedy track I did for an album called "Drunk Xmas ". Les Dawson fans will appreciate
An upbeat Sports Song I made with Michelle of True Swans did really well in France where it was played a lot in promos and also in US baseball ( Michelle actually heard the baseball placement live on TV in her hotel room whilst travelling ) but for my half I got over £700 this quarter for it - my 2nd biggest earner of the year.
CBS news - One of my tracks has been played over 100 times in a section of CBS this year - it's when they have items like Mothers & Father's day messages, Charity fundraisers, Veterans Day, etc. At the moment it's airing a couple of times each day when they are talking about a Xmas food bank drive in New York. It's an emotional piano piece ( not something I am noted for as a slightly ham fisted keyboard prodder ! ) but they seem to like it.
A cue on a BBC programme called Scam Interceptors has lead me to find I actually quite the show. Most shows my music ends up in are things I'd never watch but I found this one interesting and I know a couple of other people who have had music in it too.
During the Summer we went to see Kasabian play at their homecoming gig in Leicester - Fantasic gig, if you like Kasabaian be sure to catch them live if you can
I am still running regularly to keep up my fitness levels. It doesn't get any easier, especially in the Winter but it's good for mind body and soul and I always feel more alive for having done it.
We did some major renovations to the house this year, thanks in part to the Sync earnings - Revamping the upstairs and remodelling the outside front of the house.
I was able to have a catch up with Graham AKA Telefunkin of these parts. A couple of hours in a pub up North putting the world to rights and talking shop. It's great to meet up with likeminded folks so even if you can't go to a big event like a Road Rally, see if you can do something more low key at least.
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.
----------------------------
Thanks as always to @Telefunkin for the constant feedback loop of endless track revisions and our meetup this year. To the very lovely @helenrobertson who continues to humour me daily over Discord
And to the lovely Michelle and Todd of TrueSwans who have had some notable successes of their own this year which has pleased me no end.
Best of luck for 2025 and I’ll see you around this time next year.
Mark
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