If you are an experienced music creator (songwriter, composer, producer, etc.) with a successful music licensing sales history from other music library services, this article will explain why and how you can increase your music licensing sales revenues and future income profits.
Experienced music creators may use tools like PublMe - License (powered by LicenseQuote) to increase their existing licensing sales which they’re already earning from other music library services such as those listed on the Music Library Report. As well as young musicians may join and connect their tracks to the catalogue.
Some well recognized and popular music libraries include: Magnatune, Shockwave Sound, Muziko, MusicLoops, MusicSupervisor, Indigi Music, AudioSparx, YookaMusic, Crucial Music and many more. Most of these services are typically non-exclusive and pay out anywhere from 35% to 50% royalty fees of their licensing revenues to their content providers for their songs (compositions) and master recordings. If you currently have any tracks (songs/recordings) with one or more of these libraries, or any of the other 400+ libraries listed on the Music Library Report, you are likely to already have at least some licensing sales history success by now.
Of course your level of success depends on which library you’re in, how many tracks you have uploaded there, how long you’ve been with the library, their rate card pricing and what percentage they’re offering to share with you. For example, currently PumpAudio pays out 35%, AudioSparx pays 40% and others like Magnatune and Crucial Music pay 50%. But the trend in the last 2 – 3 years has been for many libraries, which have previously paid out 50%, to have reduced this down to about 35% or 40%.
If they’re doing well for you, it might be wise to continue since it’s good to build your placement credits along with the licensing sales revenues and potential performance royalties (income) which you can collect from your local performance rights society (e.g. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SOCAN) or others depending on the country you’ve registered your music in.
If you didn’t sign all your songs/tracks with an exclusive sub-publishing or library deal, and/or you continue creating new music content (compositions & recordings), you have the option to set up and manage your own music licensing store. There are many advantages and benefits in doing this which we’ll point out and list below.
1. Over time you’ll be increasing your current and future total sales revenue and profits potential from licensing music from your own licensing store.
2. You’ll start building your own list of licensing buyers/clients coming directly to you to inquire about licensing and things like custom music creation, usage and pricing negotiations.
3. Though experienced buyers will often place bids based on their budgets or request custom license quotes, you can also offer the standard (default) license pricing for all single-license auto-calculated pricing scenarios. This is often used as a starting for negotiations which you can adjust to your own pricing or enable/disable any existing License Type or create your own custom license types. This gives you and your clients better control and flexiblity with pricing and negotiations compared to depending on a third-party library to manage this for you, as they could potentially be under or over-priced which eventually reflects in the loss of your royalty income and profits.
4. After you set up your licensing store, you can send out invitations to your list of potential music supervisor and licensing buyer contacts including previous or current client contacts. In addition, LicenseQuote already has a large growing pool of pre-registered music supervisors and licensing buyers, including film, advertising and media production professionals who are ready to find deals on the kind of music you have, or which they may have licensed before from other library services.
5. One of the key advantages in owning and operating your own music licensing store is having control over the pricing and flexibility with the negotiation of various licensing inquiries. As library owner, you’ll be able to reply more quickly and decisively to custom inquries and negotiations. You’ll also have more room to negotiate since you’ll be collecting 100% of the sales revenues instead of only 50% or less. This means you can offer your clients a competitive deal while still being able to earn more than from other libraries and outside services.
6. In the future, you never know which library may go out of business or have to decrease (lower) their payout to increase their own profits. By starting your own music licensing store, you are therefore better insured against the risks of future liabilities and losses. You will be insuring yourself with the opportunity of building your current and future music publishing and licensing business success. This is what many of our music creator (publishing) clients are already doing as you can see in our Gallery and previous blog articles.
7. As you grow your roster of licensing buyers, you can eventually add more tracks written by other songwriters and composers. This is a viable way to grow your catalog and store offering to help generate more licensing sales revenue opportunities. If you look on the Find Music page, you’ll find a number of licensing stores which are representing a growing variety of artist and composer brands.
Original post by LicenseQuote