How Many Tracks Do You Need To Start Pitching Your Music?

Published: Mon, 07/18/16

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Today’s blog is the second in a three-part series written by Gary Gray, HowToLicenseYourMusic.com’s Los Angeles based resident producer/engineer. This new blog series was inspired by a recent string of publishing and licensing deals -- not only for Gary, but for several of his students and clients.

For the last 14 months, Gary has been beta-testing a new curriculum for teaching the basics of Music Production for Licensing, and the results have been even bigger than expected.
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In this blog, Gary lays out an important, yet elusive truth about producing music for licensing, uncovering the lie on top of it that stops many people from achieving lucrative returns on their music.

Over to you Gary. . .

Thanks Aaron!  In the last blog, I covered a technical area of mixing, and dismantled the lie, “Pay extremely close attention and keep your eyes on individual meters and fader levels and ‘headroom’ while mixing or quality will suffer,” and stressed LISTENING to your mix instead of watching your mix so much.

I also pointed out the importance of improving one’s knowledge of music theory as a vital tool in order to create recordings that can compete and win in the marketplace. In case any readers didn’t see part 1, I also included three brilliant resources for improving one’s knowledge of music theory, especially for anyone wanting to crack the lucrative end of music licensing.

Here are those links again for anyone who wants to immediately start improving the quality of their productions:


Today’s blog covers a simple but very important question: What’s more important when it comes to producing music tracks for licensing – Quantity or Quality?

This subject as well as other key components to producing music for licensing are taken up in great detail in the upcoming course Music Production FundaMENTALs, which will be released on the 22nd of July.

This blog is actually an excerpt from that 8-part course, with 10 videos, lots of photos, screenshots, pdf’s, and sample recordings – including mixes, masters and stems for you to mix per the instructions on the course, and reference mixes, masters and stem files of tracks that are license-ready – so that you’ll never again need to ask “What does ‘radio-ready’ quality mean?” Or “what should I listen for when I’m mixing?” Or “How do I get my tracks to sound like they should sound to get licensed?”

The course also includes the basics of how to put together a proper home studio from which you can crank out quality productions that increase your chances for landing licensing deals.

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Check out the trailer for our new course on my blog.

 
  Coming Soon! Music Production FundaMENTALs
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Alright, let’s get right into it. So, the question is: “What’s more important when it comes to producing music tracks for licensing – Quantity or Quality?”

Many times I hear this answer to that question, stated in so many ways:
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Throw enough music against the wall and something will stick. In other words, the answer here is quantity. 

Actually, that answer is not wrong.

It’s the QUESTION that’s wrong.

The question is the lie.

Like so many areas of life, if you ask the right question, the correct answer will usually tumble right out at your feet.

The fact is, and the correct answer is that both quantity AND quality are both very important in music licensing.

A recent real-life example of asking the right question happened when I met face-to-face with Joe Rangel of Hitcher Music in Los Angeles.  

Founded in 2012 by Joe, a film & TV executive, and by music publishing and management powerhouse Pulse, Hitcher is an LA based boutique music services firm specializing in licensing, supervision, marketing and original music production. Beyond handling sync for Pulse’s roster of Grammy Award Winning songwriters, producers and artists, Hitcher represents major as well as independent artists, labels, publishers and management companies around the world. 

Joe’s background reads like the American Dream for any aspiring music industry executive. For 5 years starting in 1994 Joe worked in the mail room of Virgin Records.  From there he was promoted, and from 1999 to 2001, he worked as the Director, Music Supervision & Licensing for Mirimax Films/Dimension Films. In 2004 Joe became the Creative Director for EMI Film & TV. In 2006 he was promoted to Senior Creative Director. In 2008 Joe was promoted to Creative VP. In 2011 he was promoted to Creative VP of both EMI Music Publishing and EMI-Capitol Records.

To say I was excited about having a face-to-face with Joe is an understatement...
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