Ableton Forum

Hey guys

Im really trying my hardest to start selling music and sound design audio samples to companies for jingles, radio idents, gaming, motion picture, web based stuff etc. I'm really in the dark regarding licensing, pricing and approaching companies. Should I upload music to online servers that sells licensed music to companies? What are the catches with this if I did? If I do, do I need to license my music before uploading it to these sites? Iv already been in touch with a few media companies that may want music for different advertisments they are producing for companies. How does it work after that point in if they don't pay and use the music anyway.

Im at a total loss, I'v even been messaging established producers in my area that may know but they don't seem to want to give me answers.

This is a site I found based in the UK with an online course that could help me but its a little pricey.
http://www.musicfortvmasterclass.com

As for the sound design audio samples I could sell to companies like game app developers, how much would that audio samples be? is licensing involved with this too?

Another question I have, if I do online tutorials for pieces production software that customers can buy and download from my website, are there rules and regulations in using the software to make money. For example, if I did a tutorial on the FM8 and put it on my site to sell, would I have to inform Native Instruments I'm selling tutorials on their software?

I hope this makes sense and maybe Im just over thinking, but any help would be very much appreciated

you can basically make your own rules. You own the copyright so you can enforce it... or pay a company to do that for you.

Look around at what others are offering and at what prices.

I sell samples and music/services to film students for small projects and have options for commercial use but haven't cracked the big markets.

I work based around a donation system where small film companies can donate for the samples they want. I do on-location SFX recordings too and sometimes will offer to assist on a project with free or donation based recordings and samples in exchange for being able to offer the recordings to others. This is a great way to build up a library and get into some areas on film sets you may not be able to access on your own.

My new site is in production at the moment so I have no offerings or examples at the moment but basically my model is I offer much of the content as a FREE to use for personal use MP3 download. This covers small projects and non-commercial applications. For high quality WAV files I have a requirement for people to sign up and ask for a donation for the content they want. Typically for film stuff you want a good 48Khz WAV, not MP3 but the MP3 versions allow testing easily and that draws in the requests for the WAVs. Commercial use is a simple case of an agreement for a "donation" amount based on the project. Since I don't deal with thousands of people this model works well. I certainly don't make a living from it but I do get to share content round for all kinds of projects.

I looked around at the "proper" way to do things, legal avenues etc and in the end I simply thought "I make this stuff, it's mine, I will decide how it gets used and who I charge and pay".

If you want to make serious money and do it "right" then I would probably recommend an expert in the field.