How Many Tracks Does a Library Composer Need to Generate Royalties?

A Library Owner’s View

This is an interesting subject for me. Initially I was a composer who setup a library to sell my music. However, I also started to add music from other interested composers and this became a full time job meaning I had no time to create my own music.

Ten years on I’m 10 months into my own journey of becoming a composer again and this is a question I’ve asked myself.

It is difficult when you have been away from creating for so long. Software, samples and computing power has changed massively and just getting to grips with this stuff again is taking its time. It can be frustrating at times, has cost more money than expected to get the setup I need and is taking longer than I expected too.

While I still have the creativity, I don’t have a good enough routine or grasp of the tools (yet) which often means I lose the spark while trying to find the right sound or setting. I am still enjoying many aspects of it and have numerous productions in development and I know it will get better.

If creativity has been part of your life from a young age, leaving it behind feels like a loss to me, and I would go as far as saying locking it away may be detrimental to the quality of my life. Being creative makes me feel good, so on that point alone I should do it.

The competition is huge

I know the competition is massive but there is also many more ways to get your music out there than there used to be. So, more competition also means more outlets and more possibilities. Some may think that because there are thousands and thousands of tracks already out there you would have to also create thousands of tracks just to compete.

However, this is not necessarily the case. From my experience of running a music library for over a decade it tells me an interesting story. The number of tracks you have is not always the factor that earns you money.

Please don’t misunderstand me, having bulk is clearly good. Our top earners have thousands of tracks, many of which sell repeatedly.

However, there are several anomalies too; people who have a small number of tracks that consistently earn. Our 20th place earner has less than 10 tracks but 2-3 of them sell like crazy.

To add to the madness there are people with hundreds, even thousands of tracks that don’t make many sales relatively speaking.

It is not an exact science. Some pieces just have that something that people go for. Clearly, creating 10 tracks that sell is better than creating 1000 tracks that don’t sell well, in terms of your hourly return. What is it? What is the magic sauce? If only I knew.

Despite not knowing the answer and not having a long history of selling my own music, I’m aiming to be an anomaly and sell many licenses of a smaller number of tracks. I know it’s possible, I just don’t know the formula yet. Wish me luck!

Please feel free to comment and share your views.