In recent years, royalty free stock photography has become very popular. With images for around $1, the service helps many who need cheap stock images for their projects. I am a big fan of this. However, it seems that this is now starting to become a worrying trend with certain stock music sites selling royalty free music tracks from $1.
Why is this a problem?
I guess you could say that this is healthy competition… Well, I am sorry, but this is not healthy for the royalty free music industry.
First of all, without even considering the level of skill involved in taking a good photograph, in my opinion, it is drastically less time consuming than composing and producing a piece of original music.
I certainly don’t claim to know anything about photography, but in comparison, it’s literally seconds spent taking a picture compared to days, weeks or even months creating a good original music production.
On this basis, it is no wonder that the quality of this cheap music is poor and in many cases you will have to sift through the rubbish to find the good stuff.
Fortunately, most of the ‘good’ self-respecting composers who are making a living from selling their music through quality royalty free music libraries would not dream of adding their music to these low quality sellers.
The big difference here is that royalty free music licensed from reputable sellers for around $30-$60 per track is infinitely better than 99% of the tracks licensed from these $1 bargain basement music sites.
Put simply, reputable royalty free music sellers carefully select quality music from reliable quality composers, whereas, these websites stocking music at bargain basement prices are usually nothing more than automated user-generated systems where anyone can join and instantly upload their music or audio. Maintaining quality is not their priority.
Furthermore, reputable royalty free music businesses have a business structure that depend on its expert staff to maintain the quality and excellent level of service; they are not just a website. They are concerned with maintaining quality and pricing composers works at a fair and respectable amount.
What is the answer?
Personally, I don’t think many of the serious professional buyers will be tempted by these low quality and low budget music sites. For these people, the quality of the music is more important than the throwaway price.
On a broader point, I believe that if these sites take hold, the royalty free music industry could be seriously damaged. Composers will not be able to sell their music at the price needed to sustain a living as a full time composer. And with revenue reduced to a measly few dollars, the industry could see a turn for the worse.
I recommend that buyers avoid the cheap offerings and continue to support the reputable suppliers of royalty free music. By doing this, the composers and royalty free music distributors will continue to thrive and provide you with an endless source of quality music when you need it.
Likewise, I urge composers not to be tempted by adding their music to these type of bargain basement music libraries. Yes, it is another (small) revenue stream, but it could be very damaging for music distributors that provide your main licensing revenue.
Finally…
For the amount of work and dedication involved in composing music, $30-$60 is not an unreasonable license fee for a royalty free music track. I would say this is more than fair. Many reputable sellers ensure that the composer gets 40-50% of the music sale.
Please help Media Music Now and other reputable sellers to maintain a quality product, to preserve the value of original music, and most importantly, to respect the work and time that independent composers invest in their compositions and their craft.
I believe in good music at a fair and affordable price, with a clear 50% going to the composer.
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If you have an opinion or wish to support my view, please leave your comment below.
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I totally agree!
In fact, just today i was approached by a company on-line doing a similar thing to what you describe. I had a quick look at the site and they do sell the music for what I would consider a very low price. I have emailed them however and asked for their standard license price.
Every new opportunity that comes in is tempting but I think that as a composer who values my work, its important that it goes for a price that i feel comfortable with. After all, once the 50% has gone to the company and the exchange rate has come into play Id be lucky if I could afford a pint!
Composers write music to make money and I hope that most of us out there also value their music and wont let it go for peanuts!!
I totally agree. In my opinion, there are these companies or individuals that just come up with a site and ask for composers to contribute music or photos. So even if they sell it for $5 or $1, it does not cost them any time or anthing more than if they were to sell it for $100. They have no emotional connection to the piece they sell nor do they care even if it is given away for free (except that they don’t make from that unfortunately). It is really a capitalist behavior. What I don;t understand is that there are those composers out there that agree to sell it for so low. Well its up to them.
I personally like to buy from a library wholly own by one company or person. That way I know for sure my music is really cleared and royalty free (I always ask to comfirm this). Aside from that, I’ll know who to blame if some problem arises. You’ve probably heard of how an artist sues another for copying their composition. I also understand that many composers make music with tools like garageband and etc that make music sound very bland and similar and they may even use elements that are not allowed to make stock music. so bcareful. I think the same music must be circulating around as all these sites do their same recruitment to get music in.
Tell it like it is Lee. These companies, Jupiter media in particular here in the US went stomping around the web last year buying up every site they could get their grubby little hands on then either kicked off the composers who insist upon belonging to a PRO or just deleted the accounts of those who did. Now that Jupiter has been purchased by Getty images it has gotten even worse. $1.00 a tune for perpetual rights in any project. What kind of C** is this.
As composers, we all know how difficult it is to make a living from music…which I do full time…but to have these sites who claim to”care about the artist” devalue our work, delete our accounts which we have spent weeks uploading, tagging, adjusting to fit THEIR format etc., not even try to allow us to collect PRO payments from our work…like it costs them something, is really a slap ion the face and I for one will not have anymore to do with them. in fact if I ever get my hands on a few of these ‘musicians’ who work for these companies convincing other composers to join up….you know who you are….TRAITORS and the 7th level of hell isn’t good enough for you… i will personally kick your a** around the studio and back. Sell-outs, less than talented, and i guess where they belong…selling and not composing music….Hope you are happy.
so true.
I was offered a deal this week giving me a 30% share and they are selling at $1……….
And those who are with Pump Audio will have seen that Istockphoto or something now have their entire library with tunes for stock photo prices. Awful.
And Another Thing ❗
This one site eStock had me re-code my entire collection, titles and file names included, to match their format…which amounted to about 12 hrs of work, then they sold out to Jupiter with no notice within a few weeks…like they didn’t know that they were going to do this… i since declined to participate becuase i wouldn’t agree to sever my ties to ASCAP. They also tried to use an ‘advance’ payment of 25 cents an accepted track which i declined thankfully. I guess that the lesson is to be more wary of these places that are just trying to build the largest collections only to sell out to the bigger boys. Eventually, as Lee says they will fail with a bunch a less than great music.
So composers beware of eStockmusic, Jupiter, Pump, Getty, BBM.net and any other sites that seem less than geared to selling your music at a fair price and without PRO requirements. Maybe if we band together and just refuse because if you think about it you would need to sell about 20x as much by the time you receive your share to equal 1 reputable sale. I also agree that the true professional expects to file cue sheets so the true royalty-free model is really just for music of a lessor god. Thanks for the venting and have courage.
Vince
Hey guys, glad it is not just me that feels this way.
Good to see your comments.
There are a lot of people that think finding royalty free music is a pain as they have to sift through lots of sub standard stuff. The download counts seem low on istock and the pay outs to composer not worthwhile. If these guys priced music reasonably and gave a decent payout this could potentially be good for composers, but, I am sure that is not their motivation.
Fortunately, reputable sellers are still winning clients, because they want quality music. That is what our clients value, the fee is usually a secondary concern (within reason).
None of us are being greedy here but I think composers and royalty free music sellers of the world need to take a firm and united stance! We have a responsibility as composers and sellers.
I would be up for setting up some kind of campaign if anyone wishes to help!? Maybe as a start, get everyone you know to add their opinions to this post.
Lee
hi Lee,
I would be glad to join the movement and help any way I could. i am kind of a lone wolf in the composer dept so I don’t know alot of others but i can set up some groups in my networks for a start. This page is also a good forum to get acquainted. The other beef I have been experiencing lately are these ‘collective’ composer groups where they ‘allow’ you to submit music for a ‘chance’ at a given gig. I imagine a couple of guys that have managed to get leads to more work than they can handle fishing for ideas to copy. I have submitted many times to groups like these and never ‘won’ a gig. Thankfully I must add, because the terms they offer are pretty bad. There has to be a way to reign this all in.
Hi Lee-
Great post and I agree with what you’re saying completely. I have written on the same subject several times advising composers to steer clear of the super cheap music sites as the composers who post their music there are in real danger of devaluing their catalog. Many composers reason “it’s better to have my music everywhere” which is simply not very logical thinking. I have had some composers upload a track for sale to one of my sites for $49.95 and then upload the same track for $1.00 on audiomicro.
This is *really* bad from the customer point of view to find these varying prices all over the web for the same track.
I now tell our composers that if they sell their music on other sites for $1.00 we will go through and edit their prices to match that on our own sites so that our customers do not complain or get confused about prices on other sites.
All of our composers have now deleted their accounts on those sites as most composers do very well with us and do not want lose that steady income.
On the other hand I think these sites do have a place in the big scheme of things. If composers want to upload to these sites just upload your music loops and short edits. Don’t give them your full length tracks for a whopping $0.50 payout on a sale (even worse for composers in Europe after the exchange rate kicks in).
If you ever want to contact me directly I like discussing the royalty free music industry with other library owners and am pretty open about stuff.
-Mark
Partners In Rhyme
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the comment, nice to be acquainted with you. I like your stance on the $1 tracks; it is not good if customers find our tracks on those sites at such low prices. It would be good to chat with you some time; I too like discussing the royalty free music industry and all its intricacies 🙂
Lee
Maybe price isn’t the key thing. I think quality matters the most and will win in the long run. Most film/tv/media-producers I know of would love an easy accessible and searchable libray that only holds high end stuff, the pricetag are secondary to them as long as it is within reasonable boundaries. Budget stock solutions will probably always be around, but are they really a threat to anyone? I mean to those who runs a serious business? Maybe you don’t want those customers at all, that don’t understand the value of good music in their productions.
Niklas Ahman
After reading my earlier tirade I must apologize to the forum here for losing my temper. Nothing gets my goat more than people making an already difficult job even more so. I agree though that price isn’t the only consideration and quality does matter. Problem is that most of us are willing out of need to try anything to make it work and I have been astounded at the quality of some music I have found on these ‘dollar store’ sites. I know that it isn’t greed on the part of the composer but the necessity to try and make even a few more dollars a quarter to pay the bills. Maybe the answer is along the lines of Mark’s response not to sell your full length tracks there but just short edits and loop versions. I like that idea a lot. I am involved at only one of these type sites and will now delete my full versions. I have to admit that most of my income comes from custom work anyway which unfortunately requires me to give up my publishing rights..I get to keep the writer’s share/credit but the rest is signed away for the fee. 😳
The other thing that composers have found on the cheap-o sites is ‘connections’. For example if you upload a music loop and someone likes the kind of work you are doing they might contact you to score an entire project. I’ve known a couple of composers who have received work like this, not through the site itself but because of exposure on sites like audiojungle.net.
I think there’s a place for everybody but composers need to recognize the value of their catalog and not sell it for less than what it is worth.
Many of the pro composers that we represent say things like “I’d rather not sell it all if it is going to be sold that cheap”. They have a price and a percentage that they feel their music is worth and they don’t budge from that. If their music loops or a less than top quality track falls into a price range that works on a cheap-o site then they go ahead and upload it. But they are very strict about what they think their catalog is worth and I think this type of ethic will help keep the royalty free music industry at a higher level where musicians can actually make a living from their music.
Our approval policy on musicloops.com is pretty strict and even stricter on the Partners In Rhyme site. I like to tell our clients “we wade through the crap so you don’t have to” and from what our customers tell me they really, really appreciate it.
-Mark
I have been considering the comments and wanted to share my thoughts.
Vincent, I enjoyed your tirade 🙂
As a business, I am similar to Mark in the sense that we filter out all of the substandard submissions, making life easier for media professionals. However, if my clients start finding large amounts of our quality music on cheapo sites then Media Music Now has got problems.
I like the solution of matching prices and at the moment we are discussing whether to do this or whether to just remove tracks that are selling elsewhere at a fraction of our price on cheapo sites. At the end of the day, our business has an overhead and we have a margin that we can operate with. Prices starting at $1 is just not viable for us. We would have to make huge amounts of sales just to stay afloat.
Also, I appreciate that it is not really my place to tell composers where they can sell their music, but I feel that I have to consider the possible long term consequences that their distribution decisions may have on my business.
Although I can see the logic in selling loops at a lower price, $1 is still a bit of a stretch for me. Of course, this ultimately means that we would have to sell our loops for less too. Also, finding good loop points can take ages. In my opinion, I think that these loops would have to be really stripped down versions, which would take too much work in itself.
I would be happy selling short sound effects and buttons on these sites at low prices as I think they are quicker / easier to create, but that would be it for me.
Personally, I think they key to increasing sales of music is analysis. So many composers write a lot of music they enjoy, even though they are not selling many of them. I believe it is worth monitoring what you have that is selling and writing more that is similar in production and style. Putting the same 30 tracks everywhere because they are not selling is not always the answer but maybe writing 10 more of the one or two tracks you sell repeatedly can help. This is not aimed at anyone in particular, it is just my opinions / observations over many years of doing this wrong and learning how to do it better lol
Exposure is an interesting point… I think exposure is also related to your personal brand. For me, letting people sell any of my music for $1 is bad for my personal brand and not a path I would take.
Anyway, I would rather let people use my music for free via a CC (Creative Commons license) for the exposure aspect. This would let all the hobbyist YouTubers, film and media students (Customers of the future) and non profit organisations use my music in return for a clearly defined credit whilst leaving commercial licensing and commissioned work a strong possibility from the increased exposure. I have no issues with composer’s CC’ing music as they are letting it go free for non commercial and personal use only but not commercial use.
Giving music for free may seem an odd thing to mention considering this post is about keeping music value high, but it is different and is a much bigger topic… I will probably cover it on my other blog at some point in more detail http://www.newmusicadvice.com
Just some of my Monday ramblings 🙂
Lee
Hi Lee,
I agree with that. I have only 1 site at the moment selling at this ridiculous rate and I felt from the beginning that it was a bad move….did it anyway but with regret. I am going to get out of there. When I made loop versions of my music, I did it just post mix and from the mutitrack. This made it a whole lot easier to make looping sections without the usual fly in the ointment part mucking up the works. I also have recntly audited what sells for me and what doesn’t and agree that one should concentrate on that genre as an approach.
From the composer point of view, exposure is key and that was the motivating factor in my joining that site to begin with. It is a difficult thing and I certainly don’t want to alienate any of the good sites by belonging to a ‘discount’ one. Please keep me informed as to what MMN is going to do in response to these developments and I will act accordingly. I certainly would rather belong to MMN than a discount site.
I also just joined some composer groups on Linked-in and plan on engaging them to get get their thoughts etc on this subject.
BTW – If you catch me at the right time, I can really go off….Chicago is full of ‘gangsters’ and I guess some has rubbed off on me without me being aware. Try being nice in a Chicago reggae or blues club at 3am when the management is shorting you after four sets. 😀
Hi Lee
I’m relatively new to this royalty free world and I must say that I agree on a lot being said in this thread. With that said, does the term “I like the solution of matching prices” only work one way or are you going to raise prices cause my music is sold higher elsewhere? At this point MMN have the lowest pricetag on my tracks and what if another company thinks that I should remove my tracks at your site because they’re sold to cheap? As a composer, the charm of non-exklusive deals is that you have a great opportunity to experiment with your tracks with different publishing models and distribution solutions. If all companies should start to complain about my stuff being sold cheap elsewhere, I mean what would this lead to? The end to non-exklusivity and the start of a negative spiral trend that might end in an almost exclusive deal with just one company…. ?
Niklas Ahman
Hi Niklas-
On our site and most sites we’re talking about the composer sets their own price. So, in most cases, it is up to the composer to set the value for his/her catalog. If he/she thinks their tracks should be sold for a dollar and are ok with a $0.50 return on the sale of a track then they should go for it but in my view they should set the same prices for the catalog on all sites that the tracks are available on. It is the customer that gets confused as to the worth of a song, who has the right to license it, the quality etc when they see the same tracks available for $1.00 on one site and $50.00 on another.
And much to the opposite of your prediction that all of the normally priced royalty free music sites are going to spiral into exclusive agreements in reality it’s the cheap-o sites that are the ones with strictest agreements.
Audiojungle only gives you 25% of a sale for non-exclusive tracks and only 40% for exclusive!
istockphoto/audio is 20% of a non-exclusive sale and 40% for exclusive.
These are really small percentages of really low prices on sites that want you all to themselves. If you got involved with these sites you would no longer be able to experiment with different prices, publishing models, and distribution like you can on the normally priced sites.
-Mark
Hi Niklas,
Our average price tag is about £24.95 (36.77 USD today exchange rate). If we did price match I would have no problem in raising some prices if a composer wished this to happen. I am still reluctant to do this price matching, as Mark says, it gets confusing for the customer.
As the copyright owner you have the right to not submit your music to sites that you feel sell you music too cheaply.
I am not complaining about prices being different elsewhere, that is always going to happen, I am complaining about prices being drastically different elsewhere, I mean $1 to $50, it is a big difference for the same product.
Personally, I think if companies and composers don’t complain about this kind of treatment to their music, then I think the only spiral will be that everyone earns 50 times less than they should.
Personally, I would like to see royalty free music fees higher around the sites, as I think the music is worth more, however, a market place only pays what they feel it is worth. This seems to be about $25-$50 per track at the moment. I just don’t want clients to start expecting to pay $1 for royalty free music.
Lee
Hey Guys,
I’ve come to the conclusion that these 1 dollar sites are not really going to be a much of a threat to composers who don’t allow their music to get devalued. The major selling point to the composer that these sites use is volume…and as i said before they will need to sell alot more to give you the same return as a normally priced site. I don’t believe that this will occur for any one composer but only for the site so don’t be fooled by the model. Sure the discount site might overall sell a greater volume of tracks but the chances that they are going to be your tracks are no greater, in fact i would think it would be the opposite because you are now competing against many more choices and the chance that yours will get picked goes way down when for example a client is looking for an electronic track and has 5000 to choose from instead of 100.
The other thing that comes to mind is that no composer with good useful material would agree to give up their right to collect performance royalties because this is where the real money is in the long run. I had an interesting conversation yesterday with the owner of another site about this and we both agreed that the main motivation of these sites not accepting PRO backed music is not the fact that it requires their customers to file cue sheets but the fact that the collective bargaining power of ASCAP or BMI, PRS, etc. can force these sites to pay a percentage to the PRO for allowing them to carry their catalogue. I thought that this was a very astute observation and one I hadn’t thought of. This actually did happen in regard to royalty-free photography which gives us a clear model to follow.
I guess that what i am trying to say is let these bargain sites become the wholesellers of lower grade music…keep control of your music, and if you have material that you really value, don’t join.
Vince
Hi Guys,
Thanks for your response earlier Mark & Lee, and I share your thoughts on the cheapo $1 sites, although I’m not familiar with the ones you’ve (Mark) mentioned. A deal less than 50/50 on the composers behalf seem very unfair. But I just can’t get into my thick head that 25-50$ is an acceptable amount :-). Back here in Sweden, when customers contact me directly, prices between $150 – $200 seem to work fine for entry level usage, you know local tv, small corporate, etc. It’s confusing, customers don’t take my work seriously if I underprice it back home, on the other hand I’ll have to rely on your experience in this field, … Headache!
Niklas Ahman
Hi everybody, I just want to say that I found nice presentation about “Licensing and using music for Podcasting”.
It is made by Greek composer Antonis Plessas. I like what Benny says: “Composers write music to make money and I hope that most of us out there also value their music and wont let it go for peanuts!! Anyway, how can we change it?
maybe to solve the problem, all sites should accept exclusive submissions so composers must choose which side they are on – like a union. If they want to sell $30 per track then so be it. If it is $1 then that’s their choice but they cannot sell same product for same price. They would have to sell 30 times to make $30 so that will be their choice (I don’t think it would be that easy). If you see how stock images sell, most images don’t make it past 10-30 downloads (I assume music will be much less) so if they think that their one track produced is worth that much – so be it. Well if they sell on respected sites, they will make more than that and also on PRO fees. So essentially they should choose sides.
hi, I own a popular production site (top 10 rankings) and I see what is happening around and i must say things are not good. For those wanting to get into the business, it is a hard long and difficult road with little $.
Some may think the money is big here but if you have all noticed there are a bunch of micro payment sites sprouting. I don’t really think you are going to make to much from charging a buck and taking 50% off that buck. So if you can make 1000 tracks that all sound great and willing to let it slave a gazillion times, then i guess you can make some spare change (noted that even stock images don’t sell a gazillion times so you can imagine music). Some composers think that their music may get picked up by a record lable or they may get a good gig or get signed, let me tell you, that almost rarely happens (remember I mentioned I own a popular site). I;ve seen this probably only twice in the 9 years I’ve runned the site(s).
Having said all that, if you don’t sell to micro sites, then maybe you can make some money with royalties from ascap, bmi etc. That is where the real moo is. I of course welcome as many music submissions (mind you only good music as they is way lot of crap out there and I get submission requests as many times as I blink a day) as that is how I grow my library to sell new music to others.
Another thing, some may feel that they can create a couple of tracks and let it sell for years, that is not the case. Some music do get outdated and most customers or libraries list by newest so older stuff (which returning customers have heard) get dunk down the line. So you really have to keep producing to make money. On an average, a composer under my list gets about 5 tracks sold a month. I have several other network sites too but some don’t even sell 10 tracks a month so it is a numbers game. I believe many sites are owned by a few players in this field (you know who you r – wink 😉 ) as getting ranked is tough. Just my rants…
Hey Watcha, where’s your site?