Music for TV, film, games, websites, toys or whatever products that need music these days is a market that has exploded in the past several years. There are literally 100′s of websites that cater to producers and production companies who are finding that they need an increasingly large volume of music for TV productions, whether it be sports music, music beds, TV ad music or royalty free production music.

There are now more TV channels and shows than ever being produced worldwide and they all need music, it may be the title tune or just some incidental music for a 20 second segment. This music needs to come from somewhere and the demand for quality inexpensive music is higher than ever, while the budgets are seemingly smaller than ever.

We are not talking about the latest Spielberg here of course where the music budget is enough to employ a big time composer like James Horner or Danny Elfman. These huge gigs are rare and the big boys pretty much have them all sewn up, what we are talking about is the other 95% of productions that do not have a big budget but still need high quality original music, but at an affordable price.

The online companies that provide much of this music for TV have become huge, their libraries seem to have an unlimited choice for any producer to go online and search for what they want. This sounds idyllic but there are some problems associated with these vast library sites, producers get lost and waste hours listening to music trying to find the right piece, and for most productions time is a luxury that they do not have.

This supposed embarrassment of riches has been pivotal in the emergence of a number of smaller boutique style music websites, while these smaller sites do not have the humungous catalogs of the bigger corporate sites, what they do have is a more personal touch which is something that producers in increasing numbers are finding far easier and a whole lot quicker to use.

Musicfortv.org is one such boutique production music website, the music a producer needs is much easier to find because there are only a few specialist disks available for each genre. If you wanted action sports style music for instance then the site has only one collection to choose from, albeit a high quality one. The music on each disk is composed and produced to the highest industry standards, it has to be, and will enhance any production no matter how grand.

This saves the one thing that no budget can buy, time! The producer can go online and audition the tracks on the disk and make their choice, and they do not have to wade through 100′s of other untalented, so-called composer’s tracks before finding something that works.

The music can then be downloaded as fast as the buyer’s connection will allow and be ready for use within a few minutes. The production can stay on schedule and in the meantime the same high quality 24-bit tracks that were just downloaded can be mailed to the buyer so they also get a nice looking full color backup DVD for their library.

So, why would any company want a disk full of the same type of music?

In our 30 + years of experience we have found that many companies specialize in the same sort of work or they are doing a series of one type of show, so the additional music on the disk will be used at some point in time for another project. The company now has the luxury of owning the disk and the rights to use any of the tracks on whatever productions that they want to, forever, at no extra cost!

If you add the fact that the disks we produce for instance, are so reasonably priced that most times they are cheaper to buy than just a single track from many other sites. Also, when you buy music from these other sites very often you can only use the track on one project and then have to pay for another license if you want to use the music again on something else. With our disks there are no such restrictions.

Our DVD’s always come in full color Eco friendly recycled packaging, we chose this carefully because including huge amounts of unwanted paper is just wasteful and not needed. The covers and full color disks are great looking and are easy to pull out of your library, when you look at one of our covers or DVD’s you know what genre of music is on it because they have been designed that way. Any extra essential information is included on the disk itself in a pdf file or on our website for free download, so you still get your license and everything else that you may need with your purchase, but without the waste.

Another great bonus we give you that a lot of libraries do not is that the disks not only contain the full tracks but also most times there are several shorter edits and stingers included for free, another huge time and cost saver for the end user who can just pull in the smaller edits when they are needed instead of having to edit the tracks down themselves.

Boutique sites like musicfortv.org are the way of the future for production music libraries, some are genre specific and are experts in one or only a few styles of music, others have a wider range of music but only a few titles in each genre. This attention to detail and mom and pop style operation keeps the quality control high, and the experience for the busy production company quick and painless. These sites have to provide excellent service because every sale is important for their survival, so you are not just another customer, you may well be the only customer that day!

The old way of the huge bloated production music sites that literally suck hours from the production day are fading, the new smaller high quality sites are gradually spreading and becoming better known, and at the end of the day who does not like the personal touch when they buy something?

This fact becomes apparent when you have questions and your email is answered by the person who runs the site, this is very often the composer or producer of the music, rather than an intern who knows nothing about the music, the site or indeed the production music business. Many of the site owner/composers are even prepared to edit or mix down a different version of a track you need for an extra charge, try asking for that on a corporate site, they do not even know the people who supply the tracks they sell!

The new wave of boutique sites are here to stay, save your production time and money by utilizing the quality and personal service they provide, go to musicfortv.org for more details and some high quality free music for TV.

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Download Background Songs or Instrumentals for your project and away you go, putting music on a project these days is so easy, but what are the ramifications of this fast, digital throwaway world, and where should you download background songs from to guarantee top quality anyway?

Although this is the way that many companies are procuring music for their TV shows, Films or corporate videos, there is an overload of this easy to get music and a producer may have trouble sorting the wheat from the chaff because the quality gets buried under a mountain of trash.
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Steinberg Cubase 6 has been released and I thought I would do a quick review for anyone thinking of buying this top of the line DAW, or for anyone thinking of upgrading their current version.

Investing what amounts to a fairly large sum of money in Steinberg Cubase 6 is something that the majority of Musicians out there cannot take lightly. Whatever program you decide to use to make your music on, it usually means a long term commitment to the various upgrades and versions over the years of your career. I have used every version of Cubase since the first one on an Atari back in the dark ages, so Steinberg have seen plenty of my hard earned cash over the years.

I come from Europe, so while Pro-Tools, Logic and Sonar and all the rest are very popular, for many of us Cubase was always the number one choice, and as I said, it is a long term commitment, you get used to the way a program works and you tend to grow and develop with it, so why change and start again?
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Music Business jobs are harder to come by now more than ever, and for students graduating and coming into the market prospects are not good. Many will find that they can only get unpaid part time work, unfortunately this may well be their only chance of breaking into the music business and getting that elusive “real” job and moving up the ladder.

Most new graduates think that Los Angeles is the place to head for, and while there is still a lot going on over on the West Coast, Nashville is probably a better bet to start your music business career, although even there the competition is fierce and the decline in music sales has driven the opportunities down. Getting a job with a record label is almost impossible, the best way to break in is probably through publishing or management, but even these companies are looking within to fill any jobs that become available.

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Download Background Music for your TV show or movie production and you can try it and fit it straight into whatever you are doing, without waiting for a DVD or drive to arrive. While this is fast becoming the way for most companies to get their music, Music For TV Dot Org will also let you download background music, but in addition we like to provide much of our music on DVD as well, and we only charge the postage cost to get it.

So while you get your music almost instantaneously, you also get a nice DVD for your library, we can usually do this because we group our music into similar categories and release much of the music in sets.

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James Bond Songs and James Bond music are something most of us have heard and they always seem to conjure up just the right feel for the movies, the music really is written for the most part by master composers.

It is therefore unfortunate that I have to report the death of the man responsible for the best of the James Bond Soundtrack music, John Barry.

John Barry won 5 Oscars in almost 50 years of work, and writing the scores for many of the James Bond songs and soundtrack music is probably what he will be most remembered for, but he did so much more than that (as if that was not enough!).

Apart from James Bond Songs and Themes, John Barry also composed many other famous themes and music scores including Dances With Wolves, Out of Africa and Zulu to name but a few.

John Barry had talent by the bucket load and his music will be around for a long time to come, Music For TV thanks John for all the fantastic scores and themes he gave us.

Check out my Best of James Bond Review I posted a few weeks ago, it contains all the best James Bond Songs and is well worth buying for your collection.

Careers in Music are something many people aspire to, but most do not achieve. Who did not dream of being a Rockstar when they were young, and all that comes with it? There are thousands of talented musicians out there who just did not “make it” or get the breaks, so what happens to them all?

Most people who failed to get their careers in music going probably got married or got a regular job and gave up, they may still play in a bar band or write songs and music at home as a hobby, so how can they still make money without disrupting their new life?

One way is to write music for TV or movies.

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Music license fees have often been thought of as almost immune to the worldwide drop in music and CD sales. While this has sometimes been the case, spending on ads has dropped and so have the music license fees paid to the artists. The music supervisors have taken advantage of this, aquiring music from young hopefuls for very low rates, taping into the desperation many young acts have to try and get any sort of recognition.

Life for the wanna be rock star is tougher than ever, and the competition is fierce, a song in a big movie could mean the difference between a music career at some level or total obscurity trying to get noticed on iTunes or the Internet like everyone else. Even worse, many music acts resort to the X-Factor style shows to try and make a career, this type of manufactured plastic music that has any and all originality stripped from it to make it totally bland and mainstream so that Mr. Cowell can sell to the masses.

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James Bond soundtrack “Best Of Bond… James Bond 007 was a nice surprise for me over the holidays. Composing music for TV and Film means that I listen to a lot of music from movies and shows to try to keep an eye on what is current and what directors are looking for, as well as appreciating the past.

I am unashamedly a really big James Bond fan, and buying a good James Bond Soundtrack CD was in the back of my mind, but something I kept forgetting to do. I have older versions of this collection but I needed a newer updated version with the Pierce Brosnan and later James Bond music.

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License music and make money with your talent, sound like something you would like to do?

This website is very much involved in selling production music for TV, Films, games, websites or wherever there is a need for it. The license music for these outlets is in high demand these days, and while we concentrate on selling the music to production companies we also get a lot of interest from musicians who want to know how they can get into the business and make a career out of their musical talent.

We have been in the business for nearly 30 years and beginning a career is not something we feel we can give the best advice on, it is not our field of expertise.

Fortunately we have a colleague who is an expert on getting musicians into the music licensing business, after all he is living proof himself that he knows how to do it and is very successful at it, and so are many of his students.

I would like to introduce you to Aaron Davison from How To License Your Music.

Aaron is a thoroughly nice guy and is very helpful, you are not just another customer to him. Some of our composers have used his services and completed his course and have made, and continue to make money with their license music.

To give you an idea of what he does I have published one of his articles here. Check out his site, it is well worth it for anyone looking to get into the business or even people who have been in it a while but are not making money yet!

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Score Music is the thing that really helps convey the emotion of a movie and really creates the feeling the director wants for the viewer. Getting the score music right is obviously very important and also not as easy as you might think, it sometimes takes a lot of trial and error by the director, even when they have the luxury of a dedicated composer.

The music can come from many sources, not just a dedicated composer, many great themes and film music has come from music libraries and independent artists in the past, even on big films, but at the end of the day it is more often than not a mixture of all of these sources.

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Royalty music, production license music and copyright free music is used for theme or in the background in movies and TV shows. The market, whilst being huge, is largely dominated by the old guard of music companies that have been around for years, the only difference being is that they sell this type of music under a different name. The big boys of the royalty music market include Sony, EMI, Universal and Imagem under various different guises, so you may think you are dealing with an independent but a closer look will reveal the truth.

There are also many fairly big independents out there as well, but many of those have swollen to massive proportions and are becoming almost majors of the minors, if you see what I mean?

The advantages of being in the royalty music licensing market for these huge companies are many, but one of the main reasons is the fact that they usually own 100% of the copyright, so they can do what they want with the music without requiring permission from the writer or composer. The composers and musicians are usually bought out for a flat fee, so they never see a royalty, this is good for the companies selling the music, but also good for the production companies buying it because they can get the music cheaply and not have to pay huge royalties.

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Vienna Instruments, Garritan, Kirk Hunter Studios are a few of the many names that manufacture computer based sample libraries for creating realistic sounding music scores. The score and music cues these days are very often the combination of an orchestra and computer based electronic music, computers and sampling technology in general have made it possible for even very low budget films to have a great sounding score. Orchestral scores can easily be made up using Vienna Instruments or East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra for instance, and your low budget film will sound like you had a full on orchestra playing the score for you.

Are sample orchestras as good as the real thing?

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Movie background music is not at the forefront of most people’s minds when they think about their favorite blockbuster movies or even TV shows. The fact of the matter is that many movies would not be half as captivating without great engaging movie background music, even if it is sometimes only very subtle. Just a few seconds in the right place can bring a scene to life dramatically, but picking the right music and staying within budget is an important but time consuming job in any sized production.

Being a music supervisor having to license music for films is not always as glamorous as it may seem, it gets even tougher at the lower end when you add a small music budget into the mix. These days most big budget films are a mixture of a score written specifically by a composer for the film and pre-existing songs, take a look at the end credits of most films and you will see a list of songs, their composers and who performed the version in the film.

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