C'mon it can't be that controversial to suggest that sync libraries is a big waste of time, how many of you make a living from that income?
Who said anything about making a living? OP has some music lying around that he wants to leverage to make some money. Doesn't sound like a vocational aspiration. But if you want to go down the path of earning a living from music, please read on...
Yes, IF (1) you make music in a quality on par with what's on streaming from the best labels, IF (2) your music is sync'able & IF (3) you have found the right publisher (of which there are quite few, and most of them have already been named in this thread), you might get in the lineups. That's a lot of if's - sync is a 1% game where you'll have to beat 99% of the competition, and it's getting harder day by day.
That's why the most honest general advice is, chasing sync is a big waste of time. Those opportunities are overhyped, oversold, oversaturated and for most, out of reach. Most end up spending decades chasing pennies, wasting their time.
All professional music is competitive. There's no easy path to the pot of gold for anyone.
60,000 new songs are uploaded to Spotify every day - that's nearly 2 million new songs every month that are added to the pool! Talk about oversaturated. As an independent artist, it's almost impossible to get your music to stand out and gain traction amid the constant flood of new music.
By comparison, the bigger libraries I write for publish maybe 1500-2000 new tracks a month, at most. And with the highly specialized libraries, it's significantly less. Not only that, the music directors at the bigger libraries actively curate, promote, and recommend new music to their clients, so your music has a good chance of gaining even more visibility.
In terms of earnings, Spotify pays an average .003 - .005 play. So even at the top end, a song needs 10,000 streams to earn $50. Just one sync placement on most TV shows will earn at least that much, plus royalties on the back end. And if a track is good, it'll likely get placed multiple times on multiple shows. Considering 80% of Spotify artists get fewer than 50 plays a month... the math speaks for itself.
Sure some of you 1%'ers are commenting here, good on you, but you should know you're not the average player.
I'm nothing special. There are far more talented and successful composers and producers out there than me. But with library music, the barrier to entry is actually not that high, as some might have you believe. Yes, your music needs to meet a certain standard, but after that, the key to building a successful music library career is all about being prolific, consistent, and quick.
I think it's much more challenging and speculative to be an independent artist, trying to make music you hope will catch fire with a significant number of random people. By comparison, having success with library music is far more predictable and reliable.
And if you really are so good that you can fulfill those criteria above, and you put the same work into artist shaped music, it is by far more likely that you will make more money building a fanbase by releasing your music to streaming. You can still get sync'd as supervisors will chase you down when they hear something they need, and then you have all your rights ready to go for one-stops.
I've already mentioned how difficult it is to earn meaningful income from streaming, but beyond that, do you realize how much effort it takes to build a meaningful fanbase as an independent artist? You can't just put your tracks on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, etc. and expect overnight success and piles of cash flowing in.
The time and energy you need to put in to promote your music and build an audience can be the equivalent of a full time job, and the worst part is, all those tasks have nothing to do with actually making music. But with library music, all you ever focus on is making more music - that's your only job.
My wife has been a professional singer/producer/bandleader for most of her life. She's toured internationally, released 13 CDs, has even landed some cuts on TV and movies, built a significant following, and is currently profiled in an hour-long interview on NPR. But what does she spend 80% of her time doing? She spends most of her days promoting her music on social media, trying to book gigs, and performing other non-musical tasks to nurture her career. And yet, with all that going for her, she still doesn't earn a consistent living from her music. She needs to teach and occasionally takes part-time jobs, plus she has me to help support our family.
It doesn't sound like OP wants to sign up for all that. He just has some old tracks he wants to pitch to libraries, so providing some guidance on getting in the library music game is hardly irresponsible or illogical.
At this point, I've been writing library music for 3 years. When I publish an album or submit tracks for a brief, that's the end of my involvement, I simply continue making more music, which is all I care about. And in these last 3 years, I've earned more money from sync placements and royalties than my wife has from streaming revenue and CD sales, and the more music I produce, the more my earnings increase. The only area where my wife earns more than me is performing live shows, but even that's not always true, because there are significant costs associated with playing gigs and/or touring.
I'm not even going to mention my futile attempts at earning meaningful income as an independent artist. Library music has been the saving grace that's enabling me to earn back all the money I lost releasing 2 CDs and promoting and fronting an actively gigging band.
Yes, there are independent artists who can earn a handsome living with their music, but all the data indicates they are most certainly the real 1%-ers, and you can bet they spend a significant part of their lives supporting their careers with tasks that don't actually involve making music.
Library music is not for everyone, but neither is a full-time career as an independent artist. Both paths are frought with pitfalls and challenges, and offer no guarantees. "...spending decades chasing pennies" as you put it, can apply to either. But at least with library music, if you align with the right libraries and consistently produce music, you can cultivate a reasonably stable revenue stream doing nothing but making music, which sounds pretty good to me.
