Can you make money selling Stock Music?
If you are a musician hoping to make a living from music right now it’s a pretty tough marketplace.
Digital streaming platforms provide poor revenue from selling music. Landing a record deal is harder than ever. Fan funding is difficult. And finally, the pandemic has put a stop to live music, removing the only decent revenue stream left for some bands.
So, what other ways can you make money from music? One option for musicians and composers is to try writing for stock music libraries.
For the last six months, I’ve explored the subject: Can you make money selling Stock Music? Here are my findings so far.
- What is Stock Music
- Stock Music Libraries
- What makes a good Stock Music Track?
- Is it possible to make any money?
- How to add value to your tracks
- My Results so far
- Want to explore Stock Music Licencing further?
What is Stock Music?
Stock music is written and produced with the aim of selling to content creators. This includes TV, Radio, Youtube, Advertising and Corporate customers. These are customers who are looking to buy an off-the-shelf piece of music. In other words, the music is ready-made rather than being custom-made.
Stock music libraries provide a simple one-stop shop for people to buy music licences to suit their needs and circumvent the issues of trying to licence a piece of commercial music. Trying to licence an Ed Sheeran song to use in your Youtube video would be expensive and complex to say the least!
Stock Music Libraries
There are many online Stock Music Libraries, which anyone can join. Some libraries are more exclusive and are joined by invitation only.
Two of the major music libraries that I have joined are ‘Audiojungle’ and ‘Pond5’.
Anybody can create an account with these libraries and then start uploading music to their profile.
The library must still approve your music submissions. Rejections can happen for a number of reasons. Sometimes the quality of the track is not high enough. Maybe they think your music is not commercial sounding enough.
Rejections usually come with an explanation which can help you which future submissions.
Most libraries will take a cut of your sales. The percentage will depend on whether you are an exclusive author or non-exclusive author.
Audiojungle take around 35% from exclusive authors and 55% from non-exclusive authors.
It might sound better to be an exclusive author but this means you cannot sell your content anywhere else. As a non-exclusive author, you are free to sell on other stock Music Libraries so you must decide what is right for you.
I decided to be a non-exclusive author which should increase my chances to sell music as I upload tracks to more and more libraries.
What makes a good Stock Music Track?
It’s worth keeping in mind that people are usually purchasing stock music for commercial reasons: radio and TV advertising, influencers on Youtube or podcasts, Corporate presentations or conferences. Stock music helps to promote a product or service or to help tell a story. Music can also convey emotions or motivate and inspire an audience. So, your music has to have commercial appeal.
Simply take a listen to Stock Music on Audiojungle or Pond5. This will help you to understand what works and what doesn’t. You can also listen to music in advertisements on Youtube or TV and radio.
Is it possible to make any money?
Can you make money selling Stock Music? It is certainly possible to make money on Stock Music Libraries. Just take a look at some of the best sellers on Audiojungle. What really blew my mind was seeing that one composer had sold over 18,000 copies of a particular track. It didn’t take long to work out that you could make some serious money.
On Audiojungle and Pond5 You can choose how much to charge for the various different licencing options. Some people go as low as $10 per track (for a basic licence) but it’s possible to add value to the music and charge more. Providing different edits of the same track is a good way of adding value (see here for more details).
Don’t expect to get rich overnight. It takes time to build up your portfolio of songs.
Stock Music is basically a numbers game so the more tracks you have, the more chance you have of selling.
Some composers have in excess of 800 tracks on a stock music site. That’s a lot of music and a lot of time spent producing the tracks: composing, recording, mixing and mastering.
You must also spend time preparing and uploading tracks. The libraries don’t make it easy for you either. The upload process on Audiojungle can be especially difficult.
You’ll need to be able to prepare your own water-marked previews (see my article on this subject here) and select keywords and descriptions for your tracks. This can be difficult and time-consuming but it can really help with selling too.
How to add value to your tracks
Having different versions of your tracks can help add value to them. Different lengths of the same track, a remix without certain instruments or elements, stems, or looped versions.
On Pond5 you can upload separate tracks and choose a price for each separate version.
On Audiojungle you can include up to 5 versions of the same track as a single item.
The typical versions I usually upload are: Main / Full Version, Looped version, 60 Seconds, 30 Seconds, 15 Seconds.
On Audiojungle it is also possible to upload Music Kits. These kits contain separate files for each section of the song. For example, an intro, verse, chorus and outro. The end-user can rearrange the order of these to fit their project.
The results so far
So after 6 months of selling on Audiojungle how are my sales looking? And can you really make money selling Stock Music?
I have a portfolio of 18 items – some of these are Single Music tracks, some include multiple versions and some of these are sound effects. You can check out my portfolio here.
I have 8 sales so far, two of these are music tracks and the others from sound effects.
It’s clear that it takes time to build up you portfolio especially if you are doing this alongside a day job like me.
You need to commit a lot of hours to working on stock music and it might be years before you see a decent return.
But don’t let this put you off. We all have to start somewhere and then keep improving over time.
My goal now is to be able to finish tracks in a much shorter time. It’s tempting to work endlessly on your own music when it is an artistic pursuit. However, with stock music you must put aside any aspirations of artistic perfection! Keep focused and don’t spend too long on one track.
I have heard of composers being able to create a track from scratch and have it finished and uploaded to a stock music library the same day!
Want to explore Stock Music Licencing further?
If this article has sparked your interest in Stock Music Libraries, then there are some good resources out there for further research.
You could start by checking out the Stock Music Licencing website run by Daniel Carrizalez.
The Stock Music Licencing site includes a blog, training courses, a free Guide, and links to Daniel’s podcast and Youtube Channel.
I have recently taken Daniel’s Ultimate Stock Music Licence training course and found it extremely useful. If you want to learn more about Stock Music I can highly recommend this course.
I plan to write a follow up to this post in the future to track my progress with Stock Music.
Your comments and feedback are welcome.
****UPDATE 12th OF MAY 2021****
Audiojungle have announced they will be closing their doors to NEW authors on the 24th of May 2021.
If you haven’t yet joined Audiojungle do it before the 24th of May to be able to sell your music online.