As the music world continues to evolve with digital music dominating delivery systems like iPods and mobile phones, music libraries are also tailoring delivery methods to suit clients’ high-tech desires. Libraries around the country are implementing online services to deliver music to the masses in the production world.
With 18 libraries in its collection, and approximately 30,000 titles, Groove Addicts, Los Angeles, has had the shop’s offerings available online for the past two years. Users can download music over the Web and tailor searches by criteria like keywords or genre. The site allows them to immediately hear the music just by dragging their mouse over an icon. If the client wants the music, they can download it from the site; however, clients often request hard drives with delivery capabilities.
The Groove Addicts library site, www.grooveaddicts.com/prodmusic/, also allows users to save cues in job folders to share with other people involved in a production. The formats available on the site, and from a hard drive, are AIF, WAV, MP3, and B-WAV. Users have the option to also get metadata with the files, which includes information about the music, like the composer and publisher. “It’s amazing how many terabits of storage we’ve had to purchase to handle all of these different formats,” relates Dain Blair, creative director at Groove Addicts, adding that the music company is constantly investing in its online presence and he looks forward to the day when CDs are obsolete.
NON STOP Meanwhile, one of the latest offerings in online music libraries is CUEgle from Non Stop Music, Salt Lake City. Partner Randy Thornton explains that this online application of the company’s music library is unique in its presentation. “It is very graphic-oriented, so as you’re looking at the product, it looks like you’re looking at a CD,” he says, “which is the way people are used to working, so you can look at the artwork, you click on the artwork and open an audition and download page.”
From the Web site CUEgle.com, users can download broadcast quality MP3s, or, with a hard drive the company will provide, a client can download other formats like AIF or WAV. The hard drive is preloaded with 35,000 files in the AIF format.
Like the Groove Addicts online library, CUEgle allows clients to set up project folders with music that interests them and share that with other people like editors, music supervisors or producers. At this point, CUEgle has 35,000 cues.
Thornton acknowledges that there are other search engine download systems in the marketplace. For him there are three important criteria for such a service. First, “It has to be not only visually appealing, but visually accessible, and the graphic interface has to be such that a creative person can easily understand it and make it work without having a computer science degree,” he says. Secondly, it must be fast. And then, it must be able to deliver in multiple formats and allow the shop to update it immediately when new work is available.
Clicking on an icon next to a cue in CUEgle will identify information such as the composer and the library it came from. “One of the big frustrations for video editors is they use all of this music and then they can’t remember what it was and they have to fill out cue sheets,” Thornton said. “All of this information is embedded in the cues so they can always find it and go back to it, which is very useful.”
Non Stop Music, which also maintains offices in New York, Los Angeles, and London, has 11 libraries and 1,100 CDs; clients include Disney, 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks as well as the Today show on NBC. Recent work includes music in trailers for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Another resource is Tonic Song Library (an offering from Tonic, New York), which is a twist on the music library idea because it only includes songs–music with lyrics. Launched in June of last year, the offerings are now up to 1,200 titles. Search criteria on the site can range from female or male vocals to a certain beat per minute or simple keywords.
On TonicSongLibrary.com, clients can immediately hear the music with MP3 streaming and then download them in MP3 or AIFF file formats from the site.
ATTRACTING ARTISTS Music companies today are being inundated with up-and-coming artists who want to find a showcase for their work. This was not always the case. As Thornton explains, there was a time when music libraries were viewed as a somewhat illegitimate stepson of the record business. Now, however, “people see that this as an ongoing professional application of their talent and a way to make a very good living and it’s not subject to whether the twelve-year-old girl down the block thinks she can dance to it or not. It’s a business-to-business application. It’s good working hours. It pays well. It’s a great way to make a living.”
Though Tonic Sound Library primarily includes music from artists that are unfamiliar to most, composer/principal Peter Fish notes, “I’m sure that more than one artist will break from being involved with the Tonic Song Library.” That library’s offerings include music from multiple genres such as hip hop, country, adult contemporary and jazz. Fish says he is seeing more and more artists who want to make their work available in the library. “Ninety seven percent of [our collection] are songs and bands you’ve never heard,” relates Fish, “but the reason for that is there is so much great music out there and so many great bands and so little record company distribution these days that there’s a whole big pipeline of amazing music in this country backed up.” A recent company project was music it contributed to All My Children from the band Sugar Rush. To date, the music has been used 15 times as a theme for repeating characters on the show.
Ten Music, Venice, Calif., is soon to be online. The shop’s library has a combination of work from independent record labels and a catalog from Ten Music’s writers. The online component is expected to launch in the spring. Sarah Gavigan, managing director/head of sales at the company, points out that to her, diversity along with quality are the most important features of a successful music library. She agrees that with the music industry changing so drastically, contributing music to a library is a great revenue stream for artists. The shop, which represents artists from independent record labels, has recently contributed music to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) VERB campaign spot “Sunshine” through Saatchi & Saatchi, New York. The track title is “Step into the Sun” from artist Solid State Revival through record label Sunday Best Recordings.
On what makes a music library successful, there seems to be a consensus that the key is quality offerings. For Thornton, the second important criterion is a functional delivery system other than CDs. The key to a successful library, Blair jokingly says, is perseverance. He quickly adds, “For our clientele it’s two things I think. It’s a quality product and a lot of it. It just seems like there is an insatiable appetite and some clients seem to burn through stuff very rapidly so you have to be constantly issuing new updates and staying abreast of the latest trends in music.”
