f e at u r e

Production music is rarely glamorous,

but it can be very lucrative. In the first
of a major new series, we explain how
to get your foot in the door.

104 May 2017 / w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m


Dan Graham
M
y name is Dan Graham,
possibly best known to SOS
readers as the co‑owner of the
Kontakt‑based software company Gothic
Instruments, who make the Dronar series.
However, I’m also the writer of over 20
library music albums for major companies,
and have founded six library music labels
with offices in the UK and in LA. I have 13
years’ experience in the industry, and in this
series of in‑depth articles, I’m going to spill
the beans on how it all works, explaining
how you can make a good, stable, full‑ or
part‑time living out of it. I hope that existing
library composers will also find much of
interest, to help expand their knowledge
and inspire them to try new avenues. In
this first instalment, I’ll explain what library
music is and offer some advice on how to
get started.
What Is Library Music?
Library music, also known as ‘production
music’, is created mainly for video
professionals working on TV shows, movie
trailers, advertising and more. It’s not
written for specific visuals but, instead, to
(hopefully inspiring) album concepts, and
distributed around the world where it can
end up being be used in random ways. For
example, for many years my highest‑earning
Dan Graham is a successful composer and
publisher of library music.
track was a five‑second boom sound buried
in a French Polynesian news theme, while
my artistic opuses made peanuts.
Library music has a long and proud
history that stretches all the way back to
1927, when the British company De Wolfe
began making 78rpm albums for radio
use. It was dominated by major labels
until about the year 2000, but thanks to
cheaper recording gear and the explosion
of video content production, it has become
more democratic, and there are now more
composers, publishers and end users than
ever — not to mention more high‑quality
w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m / May 2017
music. Most of this is now accessed through
online platforms used by millions of
video‑makers.
What’s In It For Me?
Composing library music is unlikely to make
you famous, but it might make you rich. If
you were to spend six to eight years writing
50 or more high‑quality tracks per year for
good‑quality labels, you could build up
a royalty income of more than £100,000
per year, which would keep going long
after you stopped writing. Even if you only
compose library music as a sideline, it can
also be a great way to add a stable new
income stream, or be a stepping stone to
becoming a full‑time composer.
Compared with many music‑industry
roles, library music is easier to get into and
provides a more stable way to make a living.
There is also usually more musical freedom
than you would have writing film or TV
scores for directors with vivid imaginations
but terrible communication skills, and
arguably more still than being in a band
where managers, record labels, band
members and fans will conspire to pollute
your genius with baffling demands for hits.
Downsides include the difficulty of
finding work and choosing the right
companies to write for, the requirement to
produce a large amount of excellent music,
and an epic three‑year delay while you wait
for your money, which can invite pessimism
and doubt from yourself and others. But
that’s what this series is all about: how to
overcome these obstacles.
My Library Music Story
Today, I run six UK‑based library music
labels, making music for Hollywood movie
trailers, TV and advertising around the
world. Recent credits include a Star Wars:
Rogue One trailer. It wasn’t always like that.
Back in 2004 I was on the dole in
a terrible low‑rent flat. Our band had
been dropped by our label, and I was
wondering if I’d have to get a real job.
Despite my benefits adviser wanting me to
be more realistic, as one last roll of the dice
I Googled “How do you make money out of
music?” and sent off literally thousands of
emails with an album’s worth of solo piano
music to every library publisher I could find.
Thanks to good demos and scattershot
statistics I was offered three placements:
one for a large UK library, one for
a royalty‑free library and one for a Czech
library. This landed me in a couple of
pickles. One was having to create another
two albums to keep them all happy (I wrote
105
 f e at u r e
L i b r a r y M u s i c Pa r t 1 • G e t t i n g S ta r t e d
All major library music publishers will have web
sites of their own, which are perfect both for
checking out what they already have, and for
finding contact details.
24 new tracks that week). The other was
that without exactly lying, I used Steinberg’s
The Grand while somewhat implying that
it was a real grand piano, and nearly came
unstuck when the major UK publisher asked
me to fix “a loose bit of metal” that they
could hear. Thankfully, a software update
removed that pesky twang!
From there, one job led to another
and I happily scraped a small living from
advances until a magical thing began to
appear: royalties. I was in my mid‑’30s, had
always been a poor songwriter writing for
106 May 2017 / w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m
the love of music, and was now earning, as
I saw it, 10 grand a year for nothing. I was
pretty pleased with my lot. By 2008 the
royalties grew, and I managed to afford
a holiday. In 2010, with over 20 albums
released, I earned over £100,000 and felt
like a confused peasant who’d won the
lottery with no idea what to do with it all.
At that point I had six years’ experience
of the world library music system, so
took a chance at funding some albums
with live strings and choir and started
my own movie trailer music company,
named after my most successful track,
‘Gothic Storm’. With some detective
work, I then put together a first‑class
worldwide agent network, and reinvested
rising earnings into new niche labels until
here we are today with six labels, 130
albums, sales offices in the UK and LA, and
a great team trying to keep pace with the
rapid expansion.
Why Am I Telling You This?
The point of the story is to demonstrate that
if you’re a good composer and producer,
and you are patient and hard‑working, you
can make a great living from library music,
with a lot of artistic freedom. If you’ve hit
a career dead‑end or you’re just looking for
a stable long‑term income stream to offset
uncertainty in your other work, this could be
the solution to your problems.
In these articles I will give you a guide
 f e at u r e
L i b r a r y M u s i c Pa r t 1 • G e t t i n g S ta r t e d
Networking is invaluable, so get out there to industry
events and meet other composers and publishers.
that I believe anyone who is good can
follow to find success, so read on to learn
more about a thriving music industry
backwater that may well forever save you
from your anti‑music nemesis: a real job.
Finding Good Work
I know from first‑hand experience that
library music can eventually earn you
royalties of £100k+ per year. However,
to achieve this, you need to find quality
companies to write for. The worst
companies are black holes that will take
your music and give nothing back. Even the
majority will only make you a small living,
so you need to go on a treasure hunt for
the golden geese — not because you are
greedy, but because you might as well
earn more than less for the same piece
of music. A good place to start is this list
of MCPS‑registered UK libraries: www.
prsformusic.com/users/productionmusic/
libraries/pages/default.aspx.
From there, follow these tips to help you
find the best labels:
• S
 tart with large companies. They are
hard to get work from, but can earn
well, so are well worth trying. They
include EMI Production Music (whose
group includes KPM, Music House,
Juce and Ded Good), Universal, Sony/
Extreme, Sony/ATV, Bruton, West One
Music Group, Warner/Chappell, Audio
Network and BMG Zomba. However,
be aware that some apparently large
companies don’t do as well as others,
108 May 2017 / w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m
while many smaller companies like mine
also have good per‑album sales.
• L
 ook at their international networks.
You’ll usually find information about
overseas agents and offices on label
web sites. If the labels have their own
worldwide offices, they’re big. If they
have good international agents (also
known as ‘sub‑publishers’) representing
them, they are probably doing well —
major labels such as Universal, Sony,
EMI, Warner/Chappell and BMG all
represent smaller labels in various
territories. Successful independent
agents include APM in the US, Upright
Music in Scandinavia, Nichion Inc in
Japan, Media Cube in South Korea, and
Beatbox Music and Big Bang & Fuzz,
both in Australia. In turn, the web sites
of those agents are gold mines for
further research, so make sure you also
investigate the worldwide labels that
they represent, the agents of those
labels, the labels of those agents and so
on, until you have a thorough knowledge
of the world’s best labels and a large
contact list.
• A
 sk successful library composers. Some
are cagey but many will be happy to
help if they can see you are serious. Find
composers on forums such as the Sound
On Sound forum, in Facebook groups
and at events hosted by organisations
like BASCA and PRS. After a few free
drinks, composers will blab about the
saints and sinners. Ignore failures, who
will tell you it’s all luck or a swindle, or
even successful but paranoid composers
who will try to put you off to discourage
the competition. It happens —
composers are nuts, as you know.
• L
 ook at publishers’ web sites and listen
to the amount and quality of the music,
and the standard of the sleeve art. If the
sites are well designed with lots of great
music and impressive recent placements
that’s reassuring, although tips from
experienced writers are better.
• C
 onsider their business model. Often,
large libraries are ‘exclusive’, meaning
they will want exclusive rights to your
tracks; often, they will do better for you
than non‑exclusive, royalty‑free libraries,
but this definitely isn’t always the case,
so again, seek tips from other writers.
A later article in this series will go into
detail about the rival business models
out there and how they affect you.
How To Approach Publishers
Having read this far, let’s assume you now
you have a list of the best companies and
some excellent music to play them. Now
it’s time to make your all‑important first
approaches. Most composers approach
companies badly, so get a head‑start by
following these dos and don’ts:
Do: Use Google and publishers’ web
sites to find a personal email address,
 Library Music
Get‑Rich‑Slow Plan
• Compile 10‑12 excellent previous tracks
or new submissions on a streaming
service such as SoundCloud.
• Research great companies and
send them links with well‑written,
personalised emails.
• Write four albums of approximately 12
tracks each per year.
• After three years, watch the cash start
to trickle in.
• After 10 years, bitch about the pressures
of wealth and start to feel angry about tax.

and address your emails by name. Show

that you’ve done research by referring to
their releases, sub‑labels or writers. Briefly
name‑drop your most impressive clients
or achievements to establish credibility.
Be polite, complimentary, brief and
professional. Include a streaming link to
10‑12 tracks that sound fantastic (as good
and as professionally mastered as anything
out there) and which would fit on their
catalogues. If the tracks aren’t available
Getting your foot in the door is not just about
having brilliant music to offer, but putting in the
hard work to contact as many publishers as possible.
for them, explain that they are previous
examples and you would like to write new
material for them.
Don’t: Write rambling emails explaining
how great you are, or take a superior
tone. Don’t write a bitter reply if you’re
rejected. Don’t tell them if the music
you’re sending was rejected by someone
else — no one wants rejects. Don’t try
to be funny — it usually sounds weird.
Above all, never send crap music. If it’s

w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m / May 2017 109

 f e at u r e
L i b r a r y M u s i c Pa r t 1 • G e t t i n g S ta r t e d
Words Of Encouragement
Photo: Dmitri von Klein
Ehren Ebbage Marie‑Anne Fischer
Jamie Salisbury Oliver Sadie
“Writing library music allows me to work
from home and watch my daughter grow,
which is something many music professionals
sacrifice. I can live wherever I choose. After so
much time spent pursuing other music career
paths, I feel like I’ve found a dream situation.”
Ehren Ebbage (Vanacore, Warner/Chappell,
Marmoset Music)
“Every new brief brings with it an extension
of new skills. Even after writing many tracks
I still feel the excitement when I receive the live
string parts back from the recording studio.”
Marie‑Anne Fischer (Library Of The Human
Soul, Gothic Storm, Synctracks)
“I find with production music I have greater
creative freedom to write exactly the kind
of music which inspires me. The royalties
that come through do eventually become
a sustainable income.” Clive Lukover (Sony/
ATV, Intervox, No Sheet Music)
“Doing library music early in your career
is a fantastic way to commit to output a lot of
music, which is the best way to hone your skills.”
Mike Rubino (X-Ray Dog)
badly played, written, recorded, mixed or
mastered, with disembodied guitar solos
and cheesy, fake‑sounding samples, they’ll
never forget.
If you get no response, send a polite
reminder every two weeks until they reply.
Many will at least say ‘no thanks’. If they
do this, courteously ask why, learn from it
and send them something new a couple
of months later. Politely persist where
others quit.
The ‘Finished Album’ Trick
The ideal thing to send to prospective
publishers is a complete album of
12 brilliant finished tracks united by
a genre or concept that would fit in their
110 May 2017 / w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m
Clive Lukover Mike Rubino
Gabriel Brosteanu
“Learning to immerse yourself in a brief
or a concept for an album is hugely helpful
for creativity.” Kyle Kniceley (Gothic Storm,
Position Music, Dos Brains, Theta Sound
Music, Cypher TM)
“As well as a stream of regular income
and a series of fresh, interesting and
challenging briefs, library music has given
me the opportunity to work with some
fantastic people — to collaborate on writing
and production, provide employment for
session‑musician friends, and even record
several times a year with 40‑50 piece
orchestras across Europe. Being nominated
for a Production Music Award this year was an
unexpected bonus, and that led to me making
many new friends and commissions for several
companies I hadn’t worked for before.” Jamie
Salisbury (EMI/Cavendish, KPM, Library Of
The Human Soul)
“I didn’t believe I could earn a credible
income from library music until my first
four‑figure PRS statement. More inspired than
ever to continue my pace of writing 40‑50 tracks
catalogue, ready to be signed over:
Emotional Atmospheres, perhaps, or the
can’t‑fail Happy Plinky Plonky Whistling
Banjos. This move (the finished album,
not the banjos) worked for me, and
has been successful for many writers
submitting to my labels, because you
are saving publishers the time and risk
of developing an album concept of their
own, and removing any doubt about
whether you will do a good job or waste
their time with endless rewrite requests.
Submitting a fantastic, ready‑to‑go
album, therefore, takes you straight to
the front of the queue ahead of their
favourite writers.
If several companies accept your
album, choose one and apologise to the
Kyle Kniceley
AudioAndroid
a year.” Oliver Sadie (Library Of The Human
Soul, Gothic Storm)
“Library is hard work and can take years to
get rolling, but in the long play it’s a great way
for a composer to build a solid foundation of
copyrighted works. If well written and signed to
the right publisher/library, these tracks should
go on to earn you an income over their life of
copyright, which should be a minimum of 20
years. Whilst your work is out there earning for
you, you are free to focus on other things... Like,
for instance, taking over the world with your
new robot army!” AudioAndroid (various major
publishers)
“Just have patience, lots and lots of
patience. I think it’s the most important thing,
and it also helps you to not give up too early!
Otherwise, writing library music is really great,
diverse and also offers some creative musical
freedom!  It can also help switch a career
pathway entirely, as it did in my case going
from playing in bands to making a living from
writing music.” Gabriel Brosteanu (Library Of
The Human Soul)
others, explaining that it is now taken but
you’d love to develop a similar album to
offer them.
How Does Library Music
Make Money?
The production music business can seem
a bit opaque, so if you’re curious about
how much money can be made, when it will
arrive and where from, here’s a guide.
As to how much you can expect to earn,
there are so many variables in play that you
could be forgiven for falling for the myth
that it’s a lottery — as some unsuccessful
composers will have you believe. Just a few
of the factors affecting income include:
how clear the album concept is; how good
the track titles are; what reputation the
company has; how good their sales and
marketing are; how good their international
agent (sub‑publishing) network is; how
good the metadata is (the keywords and
track descriptions created by the publisher
to help with search engines); the position
of the track in the track list (early tracks
earn more); how well the world economy is
doing; whether the genre of the album is
in demand; luck (maybe your track will end
up as a hit TV show theme tune); the state
of the library music industry; the business
model of the company and the terms of the
deal you have. At times you might wonder
whether the quality of your music even has
an influence, but trust me, it does: good
music earns more, and if you make bad
music, your opportunities will soon dry up.
However, while all of these things have
a huge and unpredictable
influence on the success of any
given track, the more tracks
you make, the more consistent
the overall picture will be. Do
enough great tracks for great
companies, and you’ll see the
uncertainty evaporate and clear
earnings‑per‑album statistics
emerge. In fact, you should
expect an average of £5000 per
year per album in combined
broadcast (PRS) and sync/mech
income. And for each album,
you should expect this to hit its
stride in three years and dwindle
after 10 years. So that’s £50,000 in total
per album. Write 20 of those beauties and
you’ve made your future self a million quid.
‘Cheers, old self,’ you’ll say, gloating in your
2027 driverless swimming pool.
When Will I Get Paid?
Gratification for the library music composer
tends to be very delayed indeed. A ‘three
year rule’ means you typically need to wait
this long for income to filter through the
international royalty system. Delays include:
your publisher sitting on your music before
release, their sub‑publishers sitting on it,
everyone being slow to register tracks with
performing rights organisations, clients
being slow to audition it and warm to it,
clients being slow to fill out cue sheets,
a delay between the music being used
and the show being broadcast, foreign
sub‑publishers sitting on the money for
months before paying your publisher, your
publisher sitting on it before paying you,
foreign performing rights societies sitting
on the money before paying PRS and them
sitting on it before paying you. So, it’s
a three‑year chain between you finishing
your mixes and being paid, linked by a lot
of money‑sitting and slow‑pokes.
The upsides of this lengthy delay include
earnings filtering through for a long time
after you finish each album, and impatient
rival composers giving up and doing other
things while you smartly keep on writing
new music in the meantime. The graph
shows how your earnings should build over
15 years assuming typical income, four
excellent albums of 12 tracks per year for
good labels, and a three‑year income delay.
Where Does The Money
Come From?
As with commercial music, there are two
main sources of income: synchronisation/
mechanical income on one side and
If all goes according to plan, you can expect your
career earnings to follow this sort of trajectory.
performance (broadcast) income on the
other. A full explanation is outside the
scope of this article, but a simplified version
is that synch/mech money is made when
a video producer pays to license your
music for a project, whereas performance
(broadcast) income is paid when your track
is aired on TV and paid by the TV network
to the performing rights organisation (PRS
in the UK). Your publisher usually pays you
your share of sync/mech income twice
yearly, in March and September, and PRS
pays you four times a year: usually larger
amounts in April and October and smaller
amounts in July and December.
The relative amounts of the two
income streams depend on many things,
including the type of music — for example,
Hollywood trailer music earns more sync
and less broadcast than more TV‑friendly
music — and your publishing deal; if you’re
on a 50-percent split of sync/mech income,
you’ll get twice as much as if you were on
a 25-percent split. From my experience
w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m / May 2017
as a writer and publisher, a good rule of
thumb is that performance (PRS) income will
be roughly equal to synch/mech income if
you’re on a 50-percent split.
Other sources of income include
advances and fees: a publisher may offer
you an advance on your future mech/sync
income, though this is much less common
now than it used to be. In the US, it’s more
common to get a ‘buyout’ fee in return for
giving up your share of sync/mech income.
A later article will go into more depth
about the types of deals on offer, but an
important takeaway for now is that working
for a company who gives you a small or zero
share of sync/mech income (not uncommon)
is only a good idea if they make up for it by
providing great performance income — the
bigger and more successful companies will
do this, so definitely don’t rule
those deals out.
What Could Possibly
Go Wrong?
In this article, I’ve deliberately
emphasised the positives. You’ve
heard that great money can be
made and that library music
can be a flexible and artistically
fulfilling area to work in.
However, it isn’t for everyone.
Your music has to be excellent
to persuade experienced
publishers to keep giving you
work. Even successful writers
get a lot of rejections and have their emails
ignored when they write to new publishers.
You need to find the time to create an
enormous amount of quality music for years
before you start to make a decent living. To
sustain that, you need alternative sources of
income or a willingness to work in poverty,
and a very optimistic attitude in the face
of naysayers who will exacerbate your own
doubts about your chances of getting to
the point where you have hundreds of great
tracks placed with great publishers, at which
point income becomes high and stable.
All of these obstacles are regularly
overcome by thousands of library music
writers — so rather than be put off, you
should be encouraged that it’s not for
everyone, because that means that the
industry isn’t swamped with brilliant
competitors, and there are still plenty of
new opportunities for talented composers.
Next month, I’ll explain all about business
models, deals and the international scene.
Until then, time to get to it — and don’t
stop until you’ve sent out thousands of
emails with amazing music links!  
111
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