30/09/2024
September 2024 Work Tales
Hello! I ( Dan Graham - Composer & Publisher ) run some production music labels including trailer label Gothic Storm Music. You can hear our music here: https://harmony.sourceaudio.com/labels
Each month I do this blog which gives a snapshot of the production and trailer music worlds, and includes some advice for composers.
Enjoy!
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TRAILER NEWS
We managed to squeeze a few trailer house client meetings into a busy week in LA for the Production Music Conference.
They became super useful. One client shared insights from a poll they’d done of their editors’ sound design preferences—gold dust for our quest to make the best and most useful sounds.
Another gave tips on what we should say to someone important we were meeting the next day, and indeed those tips worked magically, leading to a deal.
These are good examples of why you just need to get out, meet people, and build trust over many years. When we first started going to LA to meet the clients 10 years ago, it was a big financial loss—we spent way more on travel, hotels, and buying lunches than we earned back—and it all had to be funded by my composer royalties because Gothic Storm didn’t make a profit until around 2016.
Not to mention the fact that I had severe social anxiety back then. I had terrible struggles in those early meetings, convinced that my heavy Yorkshire accent, tendency to talk quietly, and trailing off when I lost confidence would make it a difficult experience for everyone. I’m sure it was.
My natural habitat was at home looking at Cubase and signal chains, not trying to sell music to bafflingly successful Americans who knew everything about the industry while I knew almost nothing.
It’s amazing I wasn’t spat out and never invited back, but somehow, my wife Sophia (company co-owner who usually takes all the sales meetings with me) and I have built up a network of sympathisers out there. Tbh, she’s super charismatic and empathetic, so I’m riding on her coattails when it comes to making friends. Teamwork!
Just shows you have to persevere and never let social anxiety get in the way. The more people you meet, the more part of the world you feel, and the anxiety dwindles, replaced by feelings of community and care.
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PMC (PRODUCTION MUSIC CONFERENCE)
In LA, we went to the Production Music Conference, again expertly organised by the incredible Morgan McKnight.
This has gone from strength to strength each year, with a record attendance.
This event has truly taken over from NAB in Las Vegas as the number one annual international gathering of the Production Music industry.
The fact that they have a lively composer membership and attendance is close to my heart.
Publishers and composers share so many common interests; we’re stronger working together building mutual trust. Kept apart, publishers can withdraw into an ivory tower where music is just a product and composers are pestering misfits who cause admin problems.
Kept away from publishers, composers might see publishers as disrespectful, distant suits who take them for granted, who get rich through their hard work, and try to rip them off at every turn.
Everyone’s partially right. There are problems on all sides. But there are incredible composers and possibly even some almost-human publishers!
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INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
At the PMC, we met a lot of our sub-publishers from around the world.
The mood was buoyant. We heard multiple tales of 2024 being their best year ever, PROs getting better deals from streamers and digital platforms, and received lots of praise for our music, telling us that we’re amongst their best and most successful labels. They also gave us specific advice and album concept ideas for their markets.
For example, Japan wants fewer builds—instead, tracks that come in big. Korea wants more builds that start minimal. Can’t please everyone!
We received high praise for our new TENSE MUSIC label, with sub-publishers noting not just the practical usefulness of the albums but the extremely high production quality.
They also praised our project to remix and remaster around 100 of our early Gothic Storm albums, noting how much better they sound.
Even I’ve noticed that our music sounds better than ever. I can’t take credit—our production and quality control is mostly managed by others in our team now (João for most labels, Andrii for trailer albums, Michael & Andy for Future Pop, and Alessandro for Toolworks). It’s as if the less I do, the better we get. 🤔
Despite the flattery though, we know that some other companies are earning more for their composers than us, and there are always things we know we should have done and can do better.
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SWITCHEROO BONUS
One impressive trick for my sub-publisher meetings was to whip out the iPad and show them a graph of our income from their territory over the last 6 years.
(Thanks so much to Andy Proudfoot’s painstaking work creating these graphs!)
Because most showed a nice rising slope, the graphs were extremely popular. Everyone likes to be shown that they’re doing well.
The most stark feature of the graphs was the visible results of our switches of sub-publishers. In Italy, the USA (non-trailer labels only), and South Korea, we switched sub-pubs a few years ago, and the graphs show income in all three places approximately doubling the year after we made the moves.
I didn’t know that the new sub-publishers would do so well, but when sales had started dwindling, it seemed worth trying someone new. Why did they do so well? Who knows. Perhaps the old clients of our former sub-pubs followed us to the new sub-publishers, who then added all their clients to our fanbase, if you can call it that.
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BACK DOOR?
My desire to protect a potential breakthrough outweighs my desire to blab, so being vague, some throwaway comments from a sub-publisher may have opened a back door to a big opportunity, with us partnering with them to do a thing. 🤐
Yet another reminder of the importance of getting out and meeting people, however much of a shy misfit you are to begin with.
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SHOULD YOU GO ALL IN WITH COMPOSING OR START PART-TIME?
Myself, I went all-in, supported entirely by unemployment benefits while living in a cheap apartment in a terrible area, using cheap PC parts that kept going wrong. It was a massive struggle, but I think it accelerated my rise to a great composer income by maybe 5 years sooner than doing it part-time.
Not everyone has the luxury of living in depressing poverty if they have families and social lives, and if it doesn’t work out, it will have been a lot of suffering for nothing. So, it’s not for everyone. It’s a gamble, but it worked well for me.
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AI CORNER
At the PMC, AI is creeping into more conversations about the risk it poses.
It could be false hope, but the prevailing opinion at the PMC was that this will be a manageable threat for the foreseeable future, thanks to industry action around legal protections for the industry via courts, rights societies, major and independent media companies, unions, and governments.
Additionally, the legal grey area of AI copyright currently keeps it off the table for major licensees of music (e.g., TV networks).
We’ll see… Perhaps cows are confident that they’ll never be eaten until they are, which is to say, we won’t get too lulled by the mellifluous moos of our hapless herd.
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SAMPLE SALES TURNAROUND
In last month’s blog, I dismissed our attempt to sell some sound design to composers as a bad decision because we didn’t sell much and the plan lost money.
In early September though, we did a 24h flash sale—a bundle of everything with a 90% discount. Well, that managed to take about $20k, so I’d say that made it half worth doing. 50% goes to the sound designers, so it’s some extra dough for them.
It was a one-off though. I can’t see me nagging everyone we know to buy these sounds again. Pretty sure most people who want them have them now.
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COOL SEPTEMBER DISCOVERIES
• Real people. Getting out and talking to a lot of people helped me rediscover the joys and practical benefits of sharing your enthusiasm with fellow humans, in person. Easy to forget when you’re in your daily agoraphobic rut.
• The Variable Café near Venice, LA. Cheap, humble vegan spot in LA which has amongst the best food I’ve ever tasted. Get the Drunk Cauliflower (battered and deep-fried in a sweet sauce) and wonder how you’ll ever want to eat anything different ever again.
• Harry Potter movies. We’ve gone back and watched them all again. What amazing John Williams music in the early films, and what incredible imagination and storytelling throughout.
Let’s hear your amazing September discoveries!
