Thinking About Producing Royalty Free Music? Now is the Time to Start!

Royalty Free Music – Producing royalty-free music has a stigma attached to it for professional musicians. There’s a sense that it’s low-quality music, used in low-budget projects. There’s also the myth that it’s not a viable income source for professional musicians. Over the last several years that has changed, for both musicians and music-buyers. More and more frequently big brands are using royalty-free music in their advertisements, or at least subtly-customized versions of royalty-free music. Professional musicians are coming on board too, with the most successful of them sometimes earning many thousands of dollars per year

Producing Royalty Free Music

The path to a healthy income for most professional musicians these days includes a variety of revenue streams. Music education as either a teacher or tutor, live gigs, studio recordings, and more. This model isn’t just a good way to ensure income security, it’s also a way to keep things interesting; a way to keep you on your toes as a musician. Over the last decade, a new revenue stream for musicians has emerged. Royalty-free music, or “stock music.” If you haven’t considered it until now, it might be time to add it to your repertoire. Talented musicians and artists these days are making very good money on sites like Audiojungle.net, and even using it as a jumping-off point to produce custom-music for very high-end advertisers. Let’s dig a bit deeper.

Why now?

Royalty Free Music-We’re in a new golden age of TV, film, and video. The cost of professional camera and editing equipment has plummeted over the last decade. Whether it’s short films, social media ads, indie features, YouTube videos, or documentaries, creating video content is vastly more accessible than it ever was before. With this new barrage of video content comes an insatiable demand for accompanying music. Big brands that can afford it will always use rights-managed music, but everybody is turning to something drastically more affordable: royalty-free music. Hence the explosion of sites like Audiojungle.

What it is, and what it isn’t

Royalty-free music means that the purchaser can buy the track, then use it as much as they like without penalty or additional fees. This is in comparison to “rights managed” music, where the purchaser will pay a royalty each time the music is used, and it’s only allowed to be used for a limited time.

Why should you consider it?

For brevity, let’s focus on artists that use Audiojungle. Tim McMorris is an absolute juggernaut on that platform, selling nearly 70,000 units since 2009. That’s worth well over $1,000,000. If you look at his profile and website, he also does studio recording, releases his own songs and albums, and does custom music for a variety of very notable brands. If you consider that his music on Audiojungle contribute only a portion of his income, he’s clearly doing very well. Of course, musicians like Tim McMorris are rare. However, musicians that can make $2,000-3,000 per month producing royalty-free music are common. While you may need to wade through alot of ho-hum songs, you’d be surprised at the level of quality you can find these days. Some sites like Premiumbeat.com even stake their reputation on it; high-quality music at an affordable price.

The new video content boom isn’t going away anytime soon. That makes it the perfect time to try adding some royalty-free music projects to your schedule. You’ll be glad you did!

[For further reading, have a look at this excellent post on Audiojungle’s blog, featuring artistYoo Soo Kim: https://envato.com/blog/man-behind-sunchannelmusic-earned-foothold-audiojungle/ the post describes his background playing piano and viola in the orchestra, and his eventual introduction to producing royalty-free music as a portio of his income. Says Soo Kim, “I was able to more successfully make a living as a musician.”]