The music industry is in a strange place, the monetary value of music is almost disappearing in the era of streaming, and the pandemic and our Governments’ response to artists, hasn’t helped.
One useful way of making the most out of your creativity in sync is to re-envision your tracks as fluid entities with multiple versions and lives. You can take existing music you’ve written and recorded and make something new from them, useful ideas include; alternative mixes, instrumentals, remixes, alternate lyric versions, alternate genre rerecords, loops for videogames, shorter versions for ads (15, 30, 60 second cuts recommended) or a combination of these things!
Depending on how you work, you can retitle and reregister these individually with a PRO (thats a Performing Rights Organisation, and we highly recomend you register all publically released with them). This may be done by your label, which may also complicate things if they own rights to your work, so be aware of this when repurposing your tracks.
Alternatively these repurposed tracks are often sold in an exclusive ‘buyout‘ with a client, where the rights to these versions can traded for a lump sum, before often being retitled and registered with a PRO. Do not do this if you want to keep your copyrights.
So while your fans will still love the original versions you put out, this exercise in creativity will increase your chances of getting synced, whether thats through a cue with a better suited tempo or a cut which has lyrics perfect for a TV soundtrack. Just from altering the stems you’ve created more songs, for more uses and more pitches!
