How I Got Over 450 TV Placements in 2023 (Sync Licensing)

today I'm going to share with you guys how I got over 450 TV placements in the year 2023 I'm a sync licensing composer and I've been doing this for over 5 years now so I'm going to share with you 10 tips on how you can achieve similar results by the end of this video you will have all the tools necessary to get many TV placements each year so sit back and enjoy and don't skip over any tip in this video because everything's crucial it's all related to each other so let's get started 10 tips for getting more TV placements tip number one write highquality music for exclusive libraries that specialize in TV placements take it from me you're not going to get a lot of TV placements from using uh you know royaltyfree sites like Pond five art list motion array those sites are just not built for um licensing to TV those sites are more for YouTubers and wedding videographers and lowbudget stuff you know if you want your music on TV you going to have to work with TV libraries and they are mostly exclusive I would say at least 99% of my TV placements have come from exclusive libraries if you don't already know an exclusive library is a library that represents your music on an exclusive basis this means that you can only have use those same music tracks with that Library you can't post them to other sites it's exclusive that's what it means a lot of new composers are hesitant to do these exclusive deals because oh what if doesn't get placed or it just sits there and I wasted my time uh I I'm here to say don't be afraid of those because those are what I do I prefer those T types of deals uh and that's where the TV placements are and they're not going to roll the dice on a non-exclusive library like art list a lot of the music on those sites is retitled and you never know where it came from there could be royalty-free Loops in there so it's not safe for them to use that music in most cases so don't be afraid about exclusivity be excited about it how do I find these kinds of libraries one method I use to find exclusive libraries is to browse on sites like APM Universal Warner Chapel uh BMG these are uh your major sub Publishers they represent lots of libraries on their sites so you can uh browse them click through them and find their websites for their own libraries not just uh the umbrella website that would be APM or Universal so find those libraries submit to them personally you're going to have a lot better results if you submit to them uh through their own website versus the BMG or whatever it is cuz those those large ones get a million probably submissions a day you're just going to be um one of so many submissions and you probably won't break through the noise tip number two write lots of music every year I would recommend writing at least a 100 tracks every year I have done usually 120 to 150 per year since I've been doing this make it part of your weekly plan if you're not putting out consistently music then it's going to be a slow build it's a slow build no matter what so you got to get writing write record keep it going uh that's not to say that you shouldn't that you should just pump out stuff and don't care about the quality you have to have good quality music always if you want to succeed if you want someone to to enjoy the music enough to put it in the library and then if if you want to be chosen to get your music on TV by a music supervisor be definitely need good quality music if you would want to listen to it they would want to listen to it you would do better I think with 50 very good tracks compared to 150 you know okay tracks so quality over quantity but still try to keep the numbers going tip number three don't sign any bad deals there's a lot of libraries now especially praying on the new composers they they're putting out just bad deals they're going to say oh we're going to take 75% sync fees and 75% of the backend royalties this is a noo you want to do 50/50 is the standard Library deal 50/50 across the board that is so you're going to get 50% of your of the sync fees that they receive and 50% of the backend royalties this means uh backend royalties through your pro your performing rights organization so if you're with ASCAP or BMI or cesac or whatever the backend royalties are the ones PID through those and typically the live Library will take the full publisher share and you will take the full songwriter share and once again these bad deals you might get placements from libraries like that but where does it end all the other libraries are going to start doing that if if people are signing bad deals it'll become the new Norm nobody wants that especially veterans in the space we all want to make money we want to make a fair amount of money it's up to all of us to make sure that we don't sign anything bad tip number four work with music libraries that have reputable subp Publishers throughout the world this is a big one when I uh browse libraries and I try to search and submit to libraries I make sure that they have worldwide representation uh some major subp Publishers include the ones I mentioned before Universal uh BMG uh a big one is sonaton which is in Germany and Austria we have APM which is in the US and Canada but basically if they have any sub publisher in a territory then you will benefit from that cuz would you rather place all your music only in the US or would you rather have your music all over the world I think we all know the answer to that worldwide distribution will exponentially increase your chances of getting placements I'll say a fun fact for myself uh last year was my highest earning year in music licensing and I live in the US but my top earning country was actually Germany tip number five structure your music for sync licensing this means make your music build don't just have a static Loop that keeps going for 2 minutes or whatever you want to have uh start with a quick intro Build It Up add some more instruments for the next couple bars add more have breakdowns have a bsection if it's boring then sometimes they like a track but they'll use it for 10 seconds if your track builds and evolves they'll use it for longer they might use it for 30 seconds or a minute or whatever the full track sometimes so make your music build change the drum beat in the B section Etc if you would like listening to it then so would a music supervisor or anybody watching the TV show or anybody if it's good it's good people can tell when you put effort into something tip number six diversify compose lots of different styles of music work with a bunch of different music libraries if all you do is write rock music for Library a and what they do is get Sports placements then okay you got some sports placements but you're not going to get a variety of placements you might not get a variety of countries you want to have different different styles so that they can be used for different situations you want to have music that works with reality TV you want a sports you want scripted TV uh news shows Etc movies commercials trailers promos all the different types of music you have will get different placements and it will build up this whole you know web of music that you have tip number seven mix and master your own music this seems like an obvious one but a lot of newcomers don't really get the idea you're not going to make a lot of money in this business if somebody else is mixing your music especially if you're paying them and if you're not paying them they're going to want to share or something you want to mix get good at mixing and get good at mastering so that you can do it all cuz a lot of placements are not going to pay a lot of money anyway so if you paid this guy you know $100 to mix your song and then somebody else $50 to master it you know you spent $150 on one track what if that track earns you $7 from a placement and then you know you get 25 cents every statement after that then you lose money you have to be able to mix and master your own stuff and some placements won't even pay at all which is I know it's absurd that's a topic for another day but some placements will pay pretty well and some of them won't it's kind of a crapshoot um but you know the goal is to get as many as possible and some of them will be good some of them won't be that good it's just the way it is if you are not confident in your mixing mastering skills then you might want to start on a a royalty free site like Pawn five art list motion array audio jungle uh there's nothing wrong with this so you know people do use these sites it's just more for YouTubers and you know wedding videographers maybe college students uh there's nothing wrong with starting there I started in that space it was different when I started you know five six years ago so um yeah they're subscription based most of those libraries now you're not going to make a ton of money but to get to get your mix mixing skills up to par it's a worthwhile thing and you can make some money along the way so you don't want to submit to Major libraries when your quality is just not there they're not going to take it they might ignore your emails after that so yeah feel free to get your feet wet in the royalty-free market it's not going to get you a lot of TV placements but it is a valuable tool for your growth tip number eight track your music on a website called tunat tunat is a free website you can upload your tracks and it can detect uses of your music on TV and it mostly detects music from the US and Europe there's a lot of stations on those in those countries that it monitors it doesn't monitor everything so you you'll get some idea of what what placements you're getting and uh it's a good tool so you can be like oh hey Library a got me you know six placements in the past four months in Germany they must be doing well in Germany let's say you upload a full album of Library b and they're not getting you're not seeing much action on there you might decide that that library is not going to be a good one to submit to thereafter okay not every library and every album and every track is going to do well so tune SATA is a valuable tool for just seeing how your music is doing and if you are getting uh TV placements it can help you uh track down the money if you haven't gotten paid after a reasonable amount of time uh and if this happens reach out to the library that placed the music don't reach out to your PR they're probably not going to help you you want to reach out to the library that got the placement so they can track down missing Q sheets and stuff like that for commerci uh for ads too it's not Q sheets but it's different tunet will at least be a valuable tool for you to say yes this library is working for me they are getting placements and I should submit more music to to them if I want to get more placements like these tip number nine write music for briefs if you work with exclusive libraries from time to time they will likely receive briefs briefs are calls for specific types of music and they're usually from the clients themselves if a client is asking for a specific type of music from this Library there's a very high chance that they're going to use this type of music in their Productions in their TV shows whatever so your goal when you write for briefs is to you want to m the vibe the instrumentation of the reference tracks that they send you without copying them you go with a similar key Tempo instrumentation and you want it to sound like the examples they sent if you write for briefs the library will like you they will send them send you briefs more often when they get them and briefs are a great way to establish a working relationship with a library tip number 10 and this is an important one be patient this is a slow mov moving business it's like molasses let's say you compose 50 tracks in your first year and you sign you know 30 of them to various libraries they might take one year to publish them and it might take you 6 months to start seeing placements from those and then you're going to get paid probably 9 months or longer after the air so that's two or three years from when you write the music to when you get paid okay it's a slow moving business it's royalties it's not it's not like uh paying somebody to fix your car or something and even with that so 50 tracks 20 of them were were not taken so they might be you might have to shop those tracks for longer you know it might take you a year or more sometimes to to find a home for those tracks one reason why I'm getting a lot of stuff now is because I did a lot of stuff work a while ago you have to just plant a bunch of seeds eventually some of them will grow some of them won't that's just the nature of it the best situation would be you write a full album of one style right send it to a couple libraries maybe the second or third one will actually take it that'd be great and then they they publish quickly they publish it within three months and then you start to see immediate placements so you know best case scenario when you write the music you're going to get paid about a year afterwards so that's still that's still a long time you know we we must be patient okay guys and for reference I started my licensing journey in 2018 so it's been almost 6 years now that I've been doing this and I had I had a little over 450 TV placements last year and it's building more every year so the previous year I think I had I don't know 250 maybe so quite the jump keep writing keep submitting improve your quality keep working it's possible to get there it's not I'm not there I'm not full-time with this yet yet but you know I think I have 7 or 800 tracks uh some people are saying you know 1,000 or500 tracks is what you need to make a living from it also you need time let's say you did a th tracks in 3 years it would probably still take you at least six seven years to to start earning the royalties and receiving them to a point where you can make a full-time income it's different for everybody some people might need 2,000 tracks or whatever it it's not something to be concerned with the numbers keep writing good music if it's good people will use it and they will come back and they will want to hire you to record more music it's a long-term career here are the methods that I use to find out about my TV placements number one tunat that's a quick way to find out um where your music's being used and what TV show it tells you what TV show and uh everything what channel and what time it played so it's it's cool if you can uh track down the show and watch it and in the early days that's uh some fun stuff you can be like oh yeah this is my music here the uh second way that I found out about placements is through my Pro statements they send you a statement usually quarterly and it lists you know hey you got paid this much for this placement this much for this so since tunat is not foolproof some of the placements on my statements I didn't know about until I got the statements and number three Q sheets so through your PR they'll upload them to your PR if they do such a thing I know as cap put the Q sheets into your account the Q sheets you might may have found out about the placements you may have not from tunet but you'd see the Q sheet and then you'd get paid x amount of months later the libraries don't typically tell you when you've gotten a placement usually you just have to you know wait till you get paid or check it on tun set the libraries are just simply too busy to email or or call everybody when they get a placement some of the boutique libraries will be a little more uh on top of this they'll tell you when they've gotten stuff and like I said guys it took me over five years of really hard work lots of composing and recording learning from my mistakes to get to where I am now so uh it's not an overnight thing but if you keep at it you can get there people say that this industry is saturated and yeah there's a lot of people out there doing it especially in the covid times everyone want is like oh since I'm home I'm going to record and send it out to libraries and they're getting a lot of submissions and stuff but I think the amount of people who are doing it consistently professionally is still not that much some people doing it for a hobby if you really have the luxury of doing this full-time then kudos to you that's the dream so yeah after five five or six years my hard work is paying off I finally saw a really good paying year last last year more TV placements more payments higher payments I'm excited for the future but I'm not going to stop composing because you know sky's the limit right and I'm not fulltime with it yet so I'll admit that to you guys 450 TV placements in one year was not enough for me to go fulltime but anyway that's it for today guys I wish you guys a lot of success in sync licensing uh hit subscribe if you haven't already and we'll see you again next time

Channel: Randy McGravey Music

Views: 21,025

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Id: O-iwus-BRaA

Length: 17min 25sec (1045 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 30 2024