— Daily Journal Entry 021 —
First, let me say that I have never attempted sync licensing, or writing music that could eventaully be heard in a movie, or television commercial. I do like the idea and would like to muster up the courage to submit something in the future, but for now, I’ll stick to YouTube and maybe a little social stuff…
Back to the question… I’m refering to the music you might hear in other YouTube creators videos, or perhaps on television during the viewing of your favorite reality television show, or what’s played during TV commercials. Beleive it, or not, but there are evenidentaly a lot of people acorss the globe that make a great living writing specifically for these purposes.
Most of us musicians, would rather say that we are writing and recording music for the sake of the music – the art – rather than the money we could potentially make in the process, but sync licensing is not something to be overlooked or taken lightly. This post will be too short to get into all the details. I’ll conduct the necessary research for a lrger post later…
Once you understand the process of sync licensing, one aspect of it comes quite clear. You are not necessarily creating music for you, but rather for the “customer.” The customer being the person with some sort of video, or piece of film, that needs music crafted for it. The music needs to fit the scene. Instead of attempting to create the next hit song, you are writing for an emotion that being expressed on screen, and it might only last 6-8 seconds (depending…).
Some might say writing music in this way takes away from an artist’s true cfreative expression, but I would have to disagree. I think the experiences from writing within specific constraints would stregthen and refine creativity overall.
I do have some concerns about sync licensing. One would be, can I produce a piece of music that I plan to use in, say a gear demo, on my YouTube channel, then turn around a pitch that same recording to a music library for a non-exclusive deal? Or, should a musician pick one or the other, or combination of some sort?
From what I’ve learned from Taxi A & R’s YouTube channel, there’s quite a bit to learn about this process. I mean, there’s learning how to write the music in this fashion, that’s pretty important, of course, but there’s also the business side of this field. What’s the difference between an exclusivce and non-exclusive contract? How do I manage the meta data for the tracks I submit (How do I create the meta data in the first place?), etc. etc.
To be continued…
Until Next Time,
Featured Image: A shot of my humble basement honme studio area…
Note: These “Daily Journal Entries” are part of a mini blog within the main blog where I make every effort to publish a 250+ word post per day on top of the regular, longer posts. The idea is to just create a daily habit of publishing written content. And also, to try and become a better overall writer… We’ll see…
