I spend weeks and dozens of hours on each of my 'Behind the Score' videos, many of which are monetized and I've been doing this for a few years now, and some of the videos do relatively well. Barely make anything. I stopped caring about TH-cam monetization a while back, and trusting it as a reliable source of any kind of income. All I really care about at this point is if people are liking the videos and finding something useful in them. If I was in it for the money, I would have stopped making videos years ago.
This cup of coffee... THIS CUP OF COFFEEEEE !!! THEEEERE !!!!! RIGHT In the middle of all these computers, keyboards and stuff ... I can't... I have to stop watching this video. I'm too sensitive for this. AND YOUR ARMS!!!! MOVING ALL AROUND !!!! HAAAaaaa... Ok stop.
Well done, well said. Appreciate you correcting your 0’s and yes, wake up and write no mater the outcome, and always file your works and track your numbers. Above all be of good character and Spirit, it will put you above the muck. Thanks Christian.
This was extremely interesting to me partly because I'm at a very similar sub count to you - though I've had my channel for four years it's only recently that I've got my Adsense all organised, which so far has earned roughly £100 a month so far. However another source of income from TH-cam (which has been mentioned below) is Adrev. I upload every track I create to that site, and it detects where the track is used on TH-cam, and places an advert on my behalf. I believe they keep 50 or 40% of the revenue from each ad they place - and currently it's earning slightly more than Adsense is earning me, so it's worth investigating.
Having spoken to a couple of friends of mine who are creators on TH-cam, there are music services that creators have access to, as part of a Multi-Channel Network agreement - these include service such as Epidemic sound, Audio Blocks, etc. to name a few. A struggle I had when I wanted to aspire to be a TH-cam creator myself, is wanting to create and license my own music for my channel - though I had very little time and energy to do so as I was working on a lot of music to picture projects at the time. One thing they've told me many a-time, is that the TH-cam Ad Revenue is not their sole source of income, and that they would do their best to plug merchandise and services that have sponsored them in their videos - I speculate, that every time a sponsorship is provided as an in video ad spot, the creator is paid a flat rate by the sponsor, though i digress. I think there is a viable career option through youtube, though it is increasingly difficult to be noticed when there are so many creators with bigger sub counts and engagement that provide similar content ideas to what you want to do. that's just my take on it :)
Long time lurker, first time commenting. One thing I can add to the conversation is that as we post videos on Sample Library Review, we often get flagged for copyright when showcasing or reviewing a loop or construction kit library. This means that we have a music copyright claim for a song because it uses the same royalty-free sample in our review. I always have succeeded in removing copyright claims so we can control if we would like to monetize that video, but this does shine a light on a glitch in the system where I can see other content creators being flagged and generating income for the creators that happen to be "first to publish" youtube videos with these royalty-free construction kits and loops. It is the wild west indeed! Great video thanks, Christian.
As a long-time follower of Rick Be-at-o, one thing that surprises me is the way that he has been able to predict, in advance, roughly how many subscribers he will have in any month, or rather that it is predicted to grow, and grow at an increasing rate. For such a "niche" area as writing music, you would have thought that there would be a relatively small potential audience for what you, he and all the others in the same sort of space are posting about (you called it music tech tutorials, but I don't think that's quite right). There are about 56 billion adults in the world, and Rick Beato has a little less than 0.5 million subscribers. That's 0.00089% of the total adult population of the entire planet already (and of course the whole adult population of the world doesn't have access to TH-cam yet), which to my mind actually sounds like quite a large percentage for active music creators in the world.
Great channel Chris . If you create more playlists will be great - something like "modular, my studio, another studios...computer tutorials" and so on. btw you have more pencils on the desk that we have in our bookstores :) ...what are you doing with them ? Best regards from Bulgaria.
Earlier this year I was fortunate to have a piece of mine featured in a fairly high-profile trailer. Almost immediately there were dozens of rips of the music off of my Soundcloud popping up on TH-cam, some of which were being monetized. As you pointed out, there's almost no level of money worth involving lawyers, especially when we're talking about the minuscule ad revenues, so we just let them be. I found out yesterday through my publisher that they were just given a big royalty check from TH-cam based off of these plays. I'm still trying to figure out how this happened, given that we hadn't initiated any sort of claim (not that I'm complaining at all!) Has anyone else had this experience? Or can shed any insight into how those "trailer music" conglomeration channels work?
I composed an Avengers and Spider-Man fan-score (at 1.5mil and 3.1mil views respectively) and both of those have been used collectively in an official Marvel video, a talk show, press junket interviews and more, but I just don’t feel it’s worth the struggle of trying to get in touch with someone to say ‘sorry, that’s not the official soundtrack!’ seeing as perhaps I shouldn’t have monetised the videos in the first place when I was using the original themes from the films and putting my own spin on them (no ripped audio or anything though, all sample libraries)
Christian, I just wrote the music for an app developer (Using Spitfire plugins of course)... The app is designed to connect film makers, editors, animators, & composers. If it kicks off as intended, I believe it could provide composers from all over the world opportunities to work on projects they otherwise may have never known about....Kind of like LABS making music production accessible for everyone instead of just a select few.
@@TheRealHucasys I haven't been in contact with the developer since the gig. If their funding has gone through I'd imagine they're in the mid/end stages of development. Here's my contribution thus far. th-cam.com/video/rEpUtH27GKg/w-d-xo.html
I don't create TH-cam vids, but the music library I compose for supplies music for TH-cam's royalty free library available to TH-cam creators through TH-cam's creator studio. I don't know, however, how often creators go there for music. People I know that make TH-cam vids tend to go to royalty free music sites. The amount of money I receive from TH-cam royalties is about around $1.00 - $2.00 a month for having music in their library. I think you correct Christian the key is to show TH-cam show producers the value in having music that has been custom created just for their show. Library music is great. It's my main source of income from music. However, themes and underscore written specifically for what's happening on screen always adds that bit of "magic" that wraps things up in a nice tight package.
Subscription music libraries such as Soundstripe are a big issue in my mind and where a lot of content creators just browse through catalogs and pull out tracks they like rather than the ‘hassle’ of finding and working with composers. It’s corner cutting and the composers who aren’t selling their music to these middle men are taking the hit. Even when you do sell your music to them or allow them to license it the people who made the product, the creatives, take peanuts. It’s true of creativity throughout society. Undervalued and monetised by businesses who played no part in the existence of the thing being traded, leaving those who did to pick up the change from the floor.
I had a weird experience with TH-cam. Over 10 years ago me and friend of mine made a very strange, bizarre shortfilm for a very small festival. Our intention was to just show it to 50 people on the festival and we put it on TH-cam just to show it on a larger screen. We forgot about the film for 12 year, but some time ago it went viral and got 46 mill hits and 149.000 subscribers before we found out what was going on. We didn't own the music and was a bit stressed about what could happen. So the moral is, you never know what happens when you put things out on cyber space.
I don’t think it’s possible to just make a living from TH-cam, but you can definitely make it happen with a small (above 10,000) loyal following if you know how to make multiple streams of income and use your TH-cam channel as the main hub. A lot of music-based TH-camrs are generating the majority of their income by selling merchandise, online courses, sample packs/libraries, Paterson, etc. Every music creator should sign up with a content ID platform such as AdRev. At least now when other TH-camrs have your music in their videos, you can earn income through the ad revenue generated from said video(s). I’ve seen multiple trailer music composers offer free songs on their websites as a way of getting people onto their email list (another topic for another day), allowing the person who downloaded the track to use it in their video but not monetise it. In return, they ask that if their track is used in a video that the video creator does not dispute a claim they receive from the composer’s ID platform (e.g. AdRev). If the video creator wishes to monetise said video, they must purchase a license from the composer via email or through their website. I think this is a great opportunity for composers that is not being spoken about enough. Those are my thoughts on the topic.
I'm lucky enough to be an active musician and have a day job in the music industry. I always knew the entrepreneur route wasn't for me and that I always wanted a set amount of income from the start. But I give huge props for those who are on the entrepreneur route. Not to say that I don't have any interest in using social media along the way.
I build guitars and other stuff on my channel and sometimes make music and review gear... but its too inconsistent (as is my life) to be worth enough peoples time, so after a few years work (and 10 years after channel creation) I've just hit 500 subs... so no monetization for me. Still, its a fun hobby and, as you say, its more about the discussions and the people than it is the money!
For me, my content has drastically changed over the years. When I first started my channel, I created software tutorials which earn me the most money. I get hundreds of views weekly on some of them which tells me one thing, that content will never die as new music creators continue to spawn and look to have help on the same type of issues. The only way I can see TH-cam being a viable business model is if your content appeals to the masses and is re-watchable. Very specific content oriented channels, like yours and mine and the other composer savvy channels like Ashton's and Daniel James are always going to be limited to a very specific group of people. It does not help that TH-cam's ad revenue process has changed over the years which has hurt creators more. Most of the bigger names have moved away from using ad sense and have started using Patreon mixed with direct sponsorship whilst using TH-cam's platform for demographics and analytics to help monitor their content. I will say that you are doing things right and very well considering how limited your audience is for this type of content.
I've started looking at music credits on TH-cam videos, mostly so I can get an idea of which libraries are more likely to get my stuff on, say, Vox. Obviously it's usually only the more professional channels that do it but it's nice to see that it's happening. Kevin Macloed (Incompetech) has a huge library of high-quality royalty-free stuff so I see his name a lot! I'd be very interested to know how his business model works... As for the videos I make? I'm a composer - if I need music, I'll make my own!
I don't subscribe to those music services all the vloggers are using (e.g. Epidemic Sound). I feel like everything's starting to look and sound the same on this platform, so I stay away from that. Plus, being a musician myself who makes videos about making music, it would seem strange to not use my own music; so that's what I do! I either compose something for a video or use something I've already recorded (either a demo or an actual release from one of my current or past bands). The releases I've put out on iTunes and Spotify have always been distributed by CDbaby, and when you add a release on their service, you can select an option to track your music on several platforms, claim the content and collect whatever ad revenue that video generates. This happens on my own videos, so whenever I post a play-through or put my own releases as background music in my videos, I'll actually get a copyright claim from CDbaby, ads will start playing on my video and they'll collect the revenue. The cool thing about that is that that revenue goes back to me in the end (minus their small fee). It's kind of a cool hack for someone like me whose channel doesn't yet qualify for monetization. That's hypothetical though as I've been uploading videos weekly since March 2018, have put hundreds of hours in creating that content and have made exactly $0 ad revenue on YT. No surprise there with my 20 subs and approx. 20 views per video. I don't think I'll ever make considerable ad revenue on TH-cam, but I hope to one day build a following and make revenue elsewhere with partnerships, affiliate links, crowd-funding, merch, shows, etc. I've been in bands since my teenage years and have never really made any serious income from my music, so I'm used to this kind of return on the work I put in! But I love doing it, I love the community and I don't think I'm going to stop anytime soon!
Found that usefull about monetisation. I know two friends who are sessioning for Tom Grennan and I thought I would do a bit of research about who writes the songs because one of them said they have an input as well as Tom does. But after my research I've found that Tom didn't write any songs on Lighting Matches, and my friend didn't either, they were written by other people in the background, and also Rosie Danvers for strings at Air. Many musicians including myself would want to know why this is the case and why they are being left out of the rights. This could be that they don't write good songs so they get people to take over that part of it. I've heard of 360 deals and more that I'm still finding out about. I've had a release on Fierce Panda, but I was told the sales were low and there's not a lot I could do about all the sites worldwide selling it unless I had lots of money to sue.
At around 7:00 min I thought someone is actually chasing you down the hill. With your fast breathing and the spooky scenery, for a moment it actually looked like a viable scenario. I only missed the soundtrack bit:)
Just landed my first composition/HoD job, and trying to climb up and conquer the TH-cam Market, see if there isn't a way to still make it work for us. I'll let Y'all know if I crack it.
I’ve been trying to figure this out for years and have been able to do more non-exclusive licensing deals outside of music bed that pitch to companies that pay more to artists on the back end because of how large the companies are. For example, my music has been featured with Amazon commercials, as well as some Car commercials. My funding has been about 8-10% of the budget of the commercial if they find me and want to work with me individually to non exclusively license a song I’ve already created. If it’s outside of that realm and the company looking for a song reaches within my playlist under the publishing company I’m in, then it depends on how big the company is and what license they are looking to acquire. I’ve also been individually hired to create a song for a commercial that I still own and am able to pitch out as a non-exclusive.
I recall Gary Vaynerchuk talking about some sort of "white space" that's not being utilised these days by songwriters which was background music for TH-camrs, vloggers and so on. Could be something you composers could take advantage of. I think he was interviewing Drake Bell, the songwriter for the TV show Drake & Josh.
I did a song with someone at work not so long ago. I asked him where he got the piano and he said he got it off the internet on a free loops website of some sort about 5-6 or more years ago. My video got copyright strikes and when I looked who had the copyright it was just some other guy who downloaded it and decided to try singing over the top..... I don’t monetise my channel, I don’t want to waste people’s time with adverts.
Hi Christian .... I am a TH-cam creator (a small fish) ..... I play all the music myself that I use on my channel ..... my original compositions have not been lifted (that I am aware of) ...... however, I also perform well known classical pieces without issue EXCEPT...... I was amused when I played 'my own version' of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as background for a HIKING video, "National Hike of 15th September 2018" and a Copyright Claim appeared from somebody in India who 'claims' to own the rights to Beethoven's music.... I have NO Copyright strikes and while the 'owner' claims revenue .... my channel is not monetized and I have not seen any adds show up on that video...... I like your style and am a fan of your channel ..... I have a C+ rank on Social Blade also 🙂 ....... I upload quality content and have quite a loyal fan base (even though they are small in number)
Apparently Alec Guinness took a percentage deal in lieu of salary and his estate still profits from huge royalties including merchandise from the Star Wars franchise.
As far as TH-cam music licensing; I’m aware of some of the bigger TH-camrs openly acknowledging a specific royalty free service which sadly I can’t remember the name of. Peter Mckinnon did a video about them a few years ago, if thats any help. It sticks out because of an unusual model. They only offer composers buyouts of between £300-£1000 I think, and they created a huge library which content creators subscribe to gain access to on a monthly basis, and the content creator can then use any of the tracks at no additional cost and royalty free. It’s like Splice for video editors. Only problem is it breaks UK law I think. So they don’t and won’t work with UK composers, but a lot of the big U.S. TH-camrs are using them, or were a few years back at least.
Sam Shrimpton yep, those guys (Epidemic Sounds/Music) don’t seem to be much help for composers. The ones I’ve seen that intrigue me are Soundstripe, ArtList and AudioJungle. All seem like good forms of micro licensing and you can choose to write exclusively or non-exclusively for most of them.
Tom Hawk Yeah Epidemic Sounds! Thats them! I’ve used AudioJungle before. I’m not a fan of mico-licensing personally, but it’s not a bad way to start out or as practice before submitting to library publishers. Although I know people who have made decent income from hosting on SongTradr and MusicGateways SyncPortal. I don’t use those personally atm, but there definitely better platforms for composers.
Thomas van der Burg Yeah it’s a slippery slope, it devalues us far to much IMO; but from a TH-cam creators point of view it’s cheap, easy to use and headache free; so it’s a real threat long term. I guess it’s up to us to figure out a business model thats better for us and more preferable for the content creators.
I also have a tendency to speak with great authority about subjects I know little about. I don't think general musicians have a hope of an income from TH-cam unless there's a legal case at some point that forces them to change their licensing rules
I almost see an inner dialogue of people who pay pennies for music when they make immoral fortunes from the media they use and how they expect everyone to be an OKAY GUY who's just happy to churn out music for them to get rich from. (Vampires - NPD's). I try to imagine in what place they feel vindicated in their consumption. The inner dialogue? "Thanks sucker - you know where the door is now piss off and make me richer!" But how would they do deal with copyright issues? I don't get how copyright doesn't stop this - yes I'm thick, but I thought copyright was there to protect the artist and their work? So save me showing up with bolt croppers for some producers wedding tackle how do I make sure I don't get shafted, presuming I ever got to a point where suddenly i didn't churn out shit?
Get yourself on adrev.com Christian. Basically, if anyone uses your music on TH-cam, it gives you the option to monetise that video and you get the proceedings or you can have video taken down. Good stuff and definitely worth it if you don’t like people making pennies from your music without permission.
From what I've seen, the "new age" label game is "micro-sync" library services. This goes for youtube channels equally as much as facebook and instagram ads. Just search out Artlist.io or Soundstripe. There are TONS more but these are the most prominent two that come to mind at the moment. Check out www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/podcast/ #36: Sync Licensing: The Gateway To Passive Income For Audio Entrepreneurs - With Travis Terrell Was a pretty interesting discussion on this "micro-sync" game.
Copyright material on social media is a bitch. So much material used by youtubers and private persons that photographers and other copyright owners never see any revenue from.
47 Million views. That's the view count of one my tracks (PRO) used as the soundtrack on a Viral TH-cam video for a big electronics manufacturer. Anyone want to guess what that earns? After that, they ripped off my track with a soundalike for their next video, which was a bit of a shitty thing to do!
Monetization is extremely underwhelming in terms of returns. Most creators make revenue from affiliate links, selling their own products or have sponsorship deals / get paid to promote a product due to their audience reach. As for licensing alot get their music from royalty free websites or get it directly from youtube creators who upload free music to their channel as a means to get followers and grow their profile. Im not entirely sure on this one , but most channels (that use official artist tracks) usually only play a very, very short snippet. I think this negates any issues for copywrite strikes. however I dont think you can monetize such videos.
Haha! We all learn at our own pace ;-) (His analyses of Thomas Newman, Bernard Herrmann, James Newton Howard, etc, writing styles are pretty great, btw!)
Bust a groove, heh heh! My daughter started 1st grade this week, and has Japanese name... which is usually over anglicized, to comedic effect. (PS: Pumped for whatever your next "film composer tribute/study" vid is--those RULE!! All the best, Rick!)
Music writers needs a way to connect to video creators. For as long as music writers retain the ownership of their creations they might be able to get micro shares of content pie. Nevertheless the issue of TH-cam is the same as all streaming services: none generate enough money to sustain the system. Everyone discounted everything to death in the name of competition and now only the service owners and the top 20% of creators earn wages. As a result you see these aberrant “bastardizations” of being a musician who lives off t-shirt sales or being a VJ.
Hey Christian, in your opinion, what's a decent breakpoint for making “decent” money on youtube. I only ask because your examples for this is to my opinion pretty high. Sure, the span is very wide on the estimates making it very difficult to see any exact numbers, due to the revenue algorithms youtube use (time, genre, amount of views and so on...). Apologize my stupid question here but I'm just curious and nosy...
corner liston well I think my point is it’s really really difficult to get to 10,000 subs I have done it with a leg up from Spitfire I will earn 130 quid a month from this as CHANNEL OWNER not as someone who holds rights on content within (ie some music) so what I’m saying is it’s really difficult as a channel owner to earn money the vast majority of TH-cam creators have less than 10k subs so as a rights holder it’s even grimmer?
It sure looks a lot more difficult than maybe some (like me) thinks. But I'm happy you dig deeper into things like this. Compared to Spotify though... seems easier to make a living out of youtube views.
Rick Beato is actually an interesting example you bring up in the video. I've had this question about copyright on youtube when it comes to music and it seems as theres a very interesting thing about if we take the Ed Sheeran example. Many musicians think that chords and lyrics can't be copyrighted. Might be true. To me the copyright lays in the result of those chords and not just a chord sequence. Many musicians including Rick Beato thinks it's a clear case that the Ed Sheeran song is by no means a copyright infringement. To me it's very clear the song is almost identical apart from the lyrics and vocal melody. Anyway, to be short, Rick seems to be a super nice guy and I wish him to earn a lot from his youtube channel-however it's interesting hearing him moan about his series of What makes this song good being demonetized because of copyrights.
Check out Jaron Lanier’s 2 minute video where he talks about micro payments flowing across the internet to creators, as originally envisioned by Ted Nelson. th-cam.com/video/p1G3DHTLy3s/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/users/TheTedNelson
I may be dense, but you lost me at 8:13 ... Paraphrasing: "... and they're gonna be getting 76K (GBP) monthly... And that's when you can probably begin to run a SMALL kind of business, on these earnings..." ... Ehhh, a 97.000 USD monthly revenue is the bare minimum to run a SMALL business?? 🤷♂️ What am I missing or misunderstanding here? 'Cause it doesn't make sense to me.
Let's cut the corners here buddy. Sex sells, you know it. Hire hot chick, put her in thumbnail and watch the views skyrocketing - this is what most folks here are doing. :)
I spend weeks and dozens of hours on each of my 'Behind the Score' videos, many of which are monetized and I've been doing this for a few years now, and some of the videos do relatively well. Barely make anything. I stopped caring about TH-cam monetization a while back, and trusting it as a reliable source of any kind of income. All I really care about at this point is if people are liking the videos and finding something useful in them. If I was in it for the money, I would have stopped making videos years ago.
I highly rate and value your content Ashton - and hope to highlight it to as many as possible (see my comment above) - really appreciate what you do.
Scott Glasgow Lets see where the wind blows! :)
This cup of coffee... THIS CUP OF COFFEEEEE !!! THEEEERE !!!!! RIGHT In the middle of all these computers, keyboards and stuff ... I can't... I have to stop watching this video. I'm too sensitive for this. AND YOUR ARMS!!!! MOVING ALL AROUND !!!! HAAAaaaa... Ok stop.
Well done, well said. Appreciate you correcting your 0’s and yes, wake up and write no mater the outcome, and always file your works and track your numbers. Above all be of good character and Spirit, it will put you above the muck. Thanks Christian.
This was extremely interesting to me partly because I'm at a very similar sub count to you - though I've had my channel for four years it's only recently that I've got my Adsense all organised, which so far has earned roughly £100 a month so far.
However another source of income from TH-cam (which has been mentioned below) is Adrev. I upload every track I create to that site, and it detects where the track is used on TH-cam, and places an advert on my behalf. I believe they keep 50 or 40% of the revenue from each ad they place - and currently it's earning slightly more than Adsense is earning me, so it's worth investigating.
Love the way you pronounced Rick's last name. Rick is a legend though, great guy.
Having spoken to a couple of friends of mine who are creators on TH-cam, there are music services that creators have access to, as part of a Multi-Channel Network agreement - these include service such as Epidemic sound, Audio Blocks, etc. to name a few.
A struggle I had when I wanted to aspire to be a TH-cam creator myself, is wanting to create and license my own music for my channel - though I had very little time and energy to do so as I was working on a lot of music to picture projects at the time.
One thing they've told me many a-time, is that the TH-cam Ad Revenue is not their sole source of income, and that they would do their best to plug merchandise and services that have sponsored them in their videos - I speculate, that every time a sponsorship is provided as an in video ad spot, the creator is paid a flat rate by the sponsor, though i digress.
I think there is a viable career option through youtube, though it is increasingly difficult to be noticed when there are so many creators with bigger sub counts and engagement that provide similar content ideas to what you want to do.
that's just my take on it :)
Long time lurker, first time commenting. One thing I can add to the conversation is that as we post videos on Sample Library Review, we often get flagged for copyright when showcasing or reviewing a loop or construction kit library.
This means that we have a music copyright claim for a song because it uses the same royalty-free sample in our review. I always have succeeded in removing copyright claims so we can control if we would like to monetize that video, but this does shine a light on a glitch in the system where I can see other content creators being flagged and generating income for the creators that happen to be "first to publish" youtube videos with these royalty-free construction kits and loops.
It is the wild west indeed! Great video thanks, Christian.
As a long-time follower of Rick Be-at-o, one thing that surprises me is the way that he has been able to predict, in advance, roughly how many subscribers he will have in any month, or rather that it is predicted to grow, and grow at an increasing rate. For such a "niche" area as writing music, you would have thought that there would be a relatively small potential audience for what you, he and all the others in the same sort of space are posting about (you called it music tech tutorials, but I don't think that's quite right). There are about 56 billion adults in the world, and Rick Beato has a little less than 0.5 million subscribers. That's 0.00089% of the total adult population of the entire planet already (and of course the whole adult population of the world doesn't have access to TH-cam yet), which to my mind actually sounds like quite a large percentage for active music creators in the world.
Oscar rules!
Great channel Chris .
If you create more playlists will be great - something like "modular, my studio, another studios...computer tutorials" and so on.
btw you have more pencils on the desk that we have in our bookstores :) ...what are you doing with them ?
Best regards from Bulgaria.
Earlier this year I was fortunate to have a piece of mine featured in a fairly high-profile trailer. Almost immediately there were dozens of rips of the music off of my Soundcloud popping up on TH-cam, some of which were being monetized. As you pointed out, there's almost no level of money worth involving lawyers, especially when we're talking about the minuscule ad revenues, so we just let them be. I found out yesterday through my publisher that they were just given a big royalty check from TH-cam based off of these plays. I'm still trying to figure out how this happened, given that we hadn't initiated any sort of claim (not that I'm complaining at all!) Has anyone else had this experience? Or can shed any insight into how those "trailer music" conglomeration channels work?
Great video man! Rick sent me here, to answer your question I mostly produce my own music for my videos as a way of becoming a better writer/producer.
I composed an Avengers and Spider-Man fan-score (at 1.5mil and 3.1mil views respectively) and both of those have been used collectively in an official Marvel video, a talk show, press junket interviews and more, but I just don’t feel it’s worth the struggle of trying to get in touch with someone to say ‘sorry, that’s not the official soundtrack!’ seeing as perhaps I shouldn’t have monetised the videos in the first place when I was using the original themes from the films and putting my own spin on them (no ripped audio or anything though, all sample libraries)
Christian, I just wrote the music for an app developer (Using Spitfire plugins of course)... The app is designed to connect film makers, editors, animators, & composers. If it kicks off as intended, I believe it could provide composers from all over the world opportunities to work on projects they otherwise may have never known about....Kind of like LABS making music production accessible for everyone instead of just a select few.
Sounds nice, is it out?
@@TheRealHucasys I haven't been in contact with the developer since the gig. If their funding has gone through I'd imagine they're in the mid/end stages of development. Here's my contribution thus far. th-cam.com/video/rEpUtH27GKg/w-d-xo.html
very insightful.
I don't create TH-cam vids, but the music library I compose for supplies music for TH-cam's royalty free library available to TH-cam creators through TH-cam's creator studio. I don't know, however, how often creators go there for music. People I know that make TH-cam vids tend to go to royalty free music sites. The amount of money I receive from TH-cam royalties is about around $1.00 - $2.00 a month for having music in their library. I think you correct Christian the key is to show TH-cam show producers the value in having music that has been custom created just for their show. Library music is great. It's my main source of income from music. However, themes and underscore written specifically for what's happening on screen always adds that bit of "magic" that wraps things up in a nice tight package.
Subscription music libraries such as Soundstripe are a big issue in my mind and where a lot of content creators just browse through catalogs and pull out tracks they like rather than the ‘hassle’ of finding and working with composers. It’s corner cutting and the composers who aren’t selling their music to these middle men are taking the hit. Even when you do sell your music to them or allow them to license it the people who made the product, the creatives, take peanuts. It’s true of creativity throughout society. Undervalued and monetised by businesses who played no part in the existence of the thing being traded, leaving those who did to pick up the change from the floor.
New subscriber, sent by Rick Beato. He said your channel was fantastic with a lot of great content.
I had a weird experience with TH-cam. Over 10 years ago me and friend of mine made a very strange, bizarre shortfilm for a very small festival. Our intention was to just show it to 50 people on the festival and we put it on TH-cam just to show it on a larger screen. We forgot about the film for 12 year, but some time ago it went viral and got 46 mill hits and 149.000 subscribers before we found out what was going on. We didn't own the music and was a bit stressed about what could happen. So the moral is, you never know what happens when you put things out on cyber space.
The metaphor of your dog digging a hole .- brilliant. More dog please!
I don’t think it’s possible to just make a living from TH-cam, but you can definitely make it happen with a small (above 10,000) loyal following if you know how to make multiple streams of income and use your TH-cam channel as the main hub. A lot of music-based TH-camrs are generating the majority of their income by selling merchandise, online courses, sample packs/libraries, Paterson, etc.
Every music creator should sign up with a content ID platform such as AdRev. At least now when other TH-camrs have your music in their videos, you can earn income through the ad revenue generated from said video(s). I’ve seen multiple trailer music composers offer free songs on their websites as a way of getting people onto their email list (another topic for another day), allowing the person who downloaded the track to use it in their video but not monetise it. In return, they ask that if their track is used in a video that the video creator does not dispute a claim they receive from the composer’s ID platform (e.g. AdRev). If the video creator wishes to monetise said video, they must purchase a license from the composer via email or through their website. I think this is a great opportunity for composers that is not being spoken about enough.
Those are my thoughts on the topic.
I'm lucky enough to be an active musician and have a day job in the music industry. I always knew the entrepreneur route wasn't for me and that I always wanted a set amount of income from the start. But I give huge props for those who are on the entrepreneur route. Not to say that I don't have any interest in using social media along the way.
I build guitars and other stuff on my channel and sometimes make music and review gear... but its too inconsistent (as is my life) to be worth enough peoples time, so after a few years work (and 10 years after channel creation) I've just hit 500 subs... so no monetization for me. Still, its a fun hobby and, as you say, its more about the discussions and the people than it is the money!
Brilliant videos!
For me, my content has drastically changed over the years. When I first started my channel, I created software tutorials which earn me the most money. I get hundreds of views weekly on some of them which tells me one thing, that content will never die as new music creators continue to spawn and look to have help on the same type of issues. The only way I can see TH-cam being a viable business model is if your content appeals to the masses and is re-watchable. Very specific content oriented channels, like yours and mine and the other composer savvy channels like Ashton's and Daniel James are always going to be limited to a very specific group of people. It does not help that TH-cam's ad revenue process has changed over the years which has hurt creators more. Most of the bigger names have moved away from using ad sense and have started using Patreon mixed with direct sponsorship whilst using TH-cam's platform for demographics and analytics to help monitor their content.
I will say that you are doing things right and very well considering how limited your audience is for this type of content.
Fantastic video
I've started looking at music credits on TH-cam videos, mostly so I can get an idea of which libraries are more likely to get my stuff on, say, Vox. Obviously it's usually only the more professional channels that do it but it's nice to see that it's happening. Kevin Macloed (Incompetech) has a huge library of high-quality royalty-free stuff so I see his name a lot! I'd be very interested to know how his business model works...
As for the videos I make? I'm a composer - if I need music, I'll make my own!
I don't subscribe to those music services all the vloggers are using (e.g. Epidemic Sound). I feel like everything's starting to look and sound the same on this platform, so I stay away from that. Plus, being a musician myself who makes videos about making music, it would seem strange to not use my own music; so that's what I do! I either compose something for a video or use something I've already recorded (either a demo or an actual release from one of my current or past bands). The releases I've put out on iTunes and Spotify have always been distributed by CDbaby, and when you add a release on their service, you can select an option to track your music on several platforms, claim the content and collect whatever ad revenue that video generates. This happens on my own videos, so whenever I post a play-through or put my own releases as background music in my videos, I'll actually get a copyright claim from CDbaby, ads will start playing on my video and they'll collect the revenue. The cool thing about that is that that revenue goes back to me in the end (minus their small fee). It's kind of a cool hack for someone like me whose channel doesn't yet qualify for monetization.
That's hypothetical though as I've been uploading videos weekly since March 2018, have put hundreds of hours in creating that content and have made exactly $0 ad revenue on YT. No surprise there with my 20 subs and approx. 20 views per video. I don't think I'll ever make considerable ad revenue on TH-cam, but I hope to one day build a following and make revenue elsewhere with partnerships, affiliate links, crowd-funding, merch, shows, etc. I've been in bands since my teenage years and have never really made any serious income from my music, so I'm used to this kind of return on the work I put in! But I love doing it, I love the community and I don't think I'm going to stop anytime soon!
Great,great love this content
Found that usefull about monetisation. I know two friends who are sessioning for Tom Grennan and I thought I would do a bit of research about who writes the songs because one of them said they have an input as well as Tom does. But after my research I've found that Tom didn't write any songs on Lighting Matches, and my friend didn't either, they were written by other people in the background, and also Rosie Danvers for strings at Air. Many musicians including myself would want to know why this is the case and why they are being left out of the rights. This could be that they don't write good songs so they get people to take over that part of it. I've heard of 360 deals and more that I'm still finding out about.
I've had a release on Fierce Panda, but I was told the sales were low and there's not a lot I could do about all the sites worldwide selling it unless I had lots of money to sue.
At around 7:00 min I thought someone is actually chasing you down the hill. With your fast breathing and the spooky scenery, for a moment it actually looked like a viable scenario. I only missed the soundtrack bit:)
Just landed my first composition/HoD job, and trying to climb up and conquer the TH-cam Market, see if there isn't a way to still make it work for us. I'll let Y'all know if I crack it.
I’ve been trying to figure this out for years and have been able to do more non-exclusive licensing deals outside of music bed that pitch to companies that pay more to artists on the back end because of how large the companies are. For example, my music has been featured with Amazon commercials, as well as some Car commercials. My funding has been about 8-10% of the budget of the commercial if they find me and want to work with me individually to non exclusively license a song I’ve already created. If it’s outside of that realm and the company looking for a song reaches within my playlist under the publishing company I’m in, then it depends on how big the company is and what license they are looking to acquire. I’ve also been individually hired to create a song for a commercial that I still own and am able to pitch out as a non-exclusive.
Awesome video Chris!
I recall Gary Vaynerchuk talking about some sort of "white space" that's not being utilised these days by songwriters which was background music for TH-camrs, vloggers and so on. Could be something you composers could take advantage of. I think he was interviewing Drake Bell, the songwriter for the TV show Drake & Josh.
I did a song with someone at work not so long ago. I asked him where he got the piano and he said he got it off the internet on a free loops website of some sort about 5-6 or more years ago. My video got copyright strikes and when I looked who had the copyright it was just some other guy who downloaded it and decided to try singing over the top..... I don’t monetise my channel, I don’t want to waste people’s time with adverts.
I've written little 'bits' themes short tags and prefer not to use other music however sometimes it's in the background as I listen to it
Hey Christian, try talking to Glen Fricker from Spector sound studios...he plays a lot of music durring his shows...
I'll put up a link to his channel
Heres a link
th-cam.com/video/f6-hlDic6aQ/w-d-xo.html
Hi Christian .... I am a TH-cam creator (a small fish) ..... I play all the music myself that I use on my channel ..... my original compositions have not been lifted (that I am aware of) ...... however, I also perform well known classical pieces without issue EXCEPT...... I was amused when I played 'my own version' of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as background for a HIKING video, "National Hike of 15th September 2018" and a Copyright Claim appeared from somebody in India who 'claims' to own the rights to Beethoven's music.... I have NO Copyright strikes and while the 'owner' claims revenue .... my channel is not monetized and I have not seen any adds show up on that video...... I like your style and am a fan of your channel ..... I have a C+ rank on Social Blade also 🙂 ....... I upload quality content and have quite a loyal fan base (even though they are small in number)
Apparently Alec Guinness took a percentage deal in lieu of salary and his estate still profits from huge royalties including merchandise from the Star Wars franchise.
I write all my own music for my videos - perks of being a music TH-camr I guess haha.
As far as TH-cam music licensing; I’m aware of some of the bigger TH-camrs openly acknowledging a specific royalty free service which sadly I can’t remember the name of. Peter Mckinnon did a video about them a few years ago, if thats any help. It sticks out because of an unusual model. They only offer composers buyouts of between £300-£1000 I think, and they created a huge library which content creators subscribe to gain access to on a monthly basis, and the content creator can then use any of the tracks at no additional cost and royalty free. It’s like Splice for video editors. Only problem is it breaks UK law I think. So they don’t and won’t work with UK composers, but a lot of the big U.S. TH-camrs are using them, or were a few years back at least.
Sam Shrimpton yep, those guys (Epidemic Sounds/Music) don’t seem to be much help for composers. The ones I’ve seen that intrigue me are Soundstripe, ArtList and AudioJungle. All seem like good forms of micro licensing and you can choose to write exclusively or non-exclusively for most of them.
Tom Hawk the downside with artlist is that buyers of your track get all stems and can freely change and ruin your tracks...and its very very cheap...
Tom Hawk Yeah Epidemic Sounds! Thats them! I’ve used AudioJungle before. I’m not a fan of mico-licensing personally, but it’s not a bad way to start out or as practice before submitting to library publishers. Although I know people who have made decent income from hosting on SongTradr and MusicGateways SyncPortal. I don’t use those personally atm, but there definitely better platforms for composers.
Thomas van der Burg Yeah it’s a slippery slope, it devalues us far to much IMO; but from a TH-cam creators point of view it’s cheap, easy to use and headache free; so it’s a real threat long term. I guess it’s up to us to figure out a business model thats better for us and more preferable for the content creators.
I think a lot of video creators use artlist.io , musicbed or epidemic sound.
I also have a tendency to speak with great authority about subjects I know little about. I don't think general musicians have a hope of an income from TH-cam unless there's a legal case at some point that forces them to change their licensing rules
I almost see an inner dialogue of people who pay pennies for music when they make immoral fortunes from the media they use and how they expect everyone to be an OKAY GUY who's just happy to churn out music for them to get rich from. (Vampires - NPD's). I try to imagine in what place they feel vindicated in their consumption. The inner dialogue? "Thanks sucker - you know where the door is now piss off and make me richer!" But how would they do deal with copyright issues? I don't get how copyright doesn't stop this - yes I'm thick, but I thought copyright was there to protect the artist and their work? So save me showing up with bolt croppers for some producers wedding tackle how do I make sure I don't get shafted, presuming I ever got to a point where suddenly i didn't churn out shit?
Get yourself on adrev.com Christian. Basically, if anyone uses your music on TH-cam, it gives you the option to monetise that video and you get the proceedings or you can have video taken down. Good stuff and definitely worth it if you don’t like people making pennies from your music without permission.
From what I've seen, the "new age" label game is "micro-sync" library services. This goes for youtube channels equally as much as facebook and instagram ads. Just search out Artlist.io or Soundstripe. There are TONS more but these are the most prominent two that come to mind at the moment.
Check out www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/podcast/
#36: Sync Licensing: The Gateway To Passive Income For Audio Entrepreneurs - With Travis Terrell
Was a pretty interesting discussion on this "micro-sync" game.
Copyright material on social media is a bitch. So much material used by youtubers and private persons that photographers and other copyright owners never see any revenue from.
47 Million views.
That's the view count of one my tracks (PRO) used as the soundtrack on a Viral TH-cam video for a big electronics manufacturer.
Anyone want to guess what that earns?
After that, they ripped off my track with a soundalike for their next video, which was a bit of a shitty thing to do!
At least if we funetise our lives we can increase our gross national happiness!
Monetization is extremely underwhelming in terms of returns. Most creators make revenue from affiliate links, selling their own products or have sponsorship deals / get paid to promote a product due to their audience reach.
As for licensing alot get their music from royalty free websites or get it directly from youtube creators who upload free music to their channel as a means to get followers and grow their profile.
Im not entirely sure on this one , but most channels (that use official artist tracks) usually only play a very, very short snippet. I think this negates any issues for copywrite strikes. however I dont think you can monetize such videos.
Bee At Oh
daleturner shit... that’s embarrassing
Haha! We all learn at our own pace ;-) (His analyses of Thomas Newman, Bernard Herrmann, James Newton Howard, etc, writing styles are pretty great, btw!)
My 5 year old came home today and told me one of her teachers pronounced it Beet-oh and I told her get used to it :) Haha!
Bust a groove, heh heh! My daughter started 1st grade this week, and has Japanese name... which is usually over anglicized, to comedic effect. (PS: Pumped for whatever your next "film composer tribute/study" vid is--those RULE!! All the best, Rick!)
@@RickBeato Haha, nice one Rick!
Music writers needs a way to connect to video creators.
For as long as music writers retain the ownership of their creations they might be able to get micro shares of content pie.
Nevertheless the issue of TH-cam is the same as all streaming services: none generate enough money to sustain the system. Everyone discounted everything to death in the name of competition and now only the service owners and the top 20% of creators earn wages.
As a result you see these aberrant “bastardizations” of being a musician who lives off t-shirt sales or being a VJ.
I live and breathe music, I think your channel is the best on youtube.
Is that Dorico in the background? What're your thoughts on it compared to your former notation program?
Hey Christian, in your opinion, what's a decent breakpoint for making “decent” money on youtube. I only ask because your examples for this is to my opinion pretty high. Sure, the span is very wide on the estimates making it very difficult to see any exact numbers, due to the revenue algorithms youtube use (time, genre, amount of views and so on...). Apologize my stupid question here but I'm just curious and nosy...
corner liston well I think my point is it’s really really difficult to get to 10,000 subs I have done it with a leg up from Spitfire I will earn 130 quid a month from this as CHANNEL OWNER not as someone who holds rights on content within (ie some music) so what I’m saying is it’s really difficult as a channel owner to earn money the vast majority of TH-cam creators have less than 10k subs so as a rights holder it’s even grimmer?
It sure looks a lot more difficult than maybe some (like me) thinks. But I'm happy you dig deeper into things like this.
Compared to Spotify though... seems easier to make a living out of youtube views.
Rick Beato is actually an interesting example you bring up in the video.
I've had this question about copyright on youtube when it comes to music and it seems as theres a very interesting thing about if we take the Ed Sheeran example. Many musicians think that chords and lyrics can't be copyrighted. Might be true. To me the copyright lays in the result of those chords and not just a chord sequence. Many musicians including Rick Beato thinks it's a clear case that the Ed Sheeran song is by no means a copyright infringement. To me it's very clear the song is almost identical apart from the lyrics and vocal melody.
Anyway, to be short, Rick seems to be a super nice guy and I wish him to earn a lot from his youtube channel-however it's interesting hearing him moan about his series of What makes this song good being demonetized because of copyrights.
I was making £100 a month on average. The in august they decided I no longer met their standards. “Duplication”. That made NO SENSE WHATSOEVER
Oh and wasn’t on copyright as I was either sharing revenue or not eligible.
Check out Jaron Lanier’s 2 minute video where he talks about micro payments flowing across the internet to creators, as originally envisioned by Ted Nelson.
th-cam.com/video/p1G3DHTLy3s/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/users/TheTedNelson
I may be dense, but you lost me at 8:13 ... Paraphrasing: "... and they're gonna be getting 76K (GBP) monthly... And that's when you can probably begin to run a SMALL kind of business, on these earnings..."
... Ehhh, a 97.000 USD monthly revenue is the bare minimum to run a SMALL business?? 🤷♂️ What am I missing or misunderstanding here? 'Cause it doesn't make sense to me.
Junkie XL on youtube is pretty big
Let's cut the corners here buddy. Sex sells, you know it. Hire hot chick, put her in thumbnail and watch the views skyrocketing - this is what most folks here are doing. :)