RIP Sis

I'm heartbroken by the loss of my sister, Donna French, today. Donna passed away shortly after 3:00 EDT this afternoon due to complications of heart disease. Donna was 68. She had suffered a series of health problems over the past year and a half, culminating in several heart episodes beginning this fall. Each one left her a little weaker, and after the last one on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving she simply wasn't recovering.

Donna made the decision late last week to stop fighting and let nature take its course. She went home under hospice care and rested comfortably until the end. I'm so thankful that I was able to see her last night when she was particularly alert. She acknowledged when I told her I loved her and squeezed my hand.

Because she was much older than I, Donna was in many respects like a second mom when I was very little. After I grew up, she was extremely supportive of my in all my endeavors and forgiving of my mistakes. As she struggled in recent months we grew closer and I feel blessed to have been there for her as she had been there for me. I will miss her terribly.

Happy December 2016!

Another month has come and gone (that fast - yikes!). It was a wonderful month and sales were great coming into the Christmas season. Thanks to everyone who bought, listened, followed me on Twitter, or just stopped by. Some cool things happened last month.

Actually one cool thing happened in October and I just found out about it. Envato, the group that includes AudioJungle where I have about 30 tracks for sale, ran a contest for the best music for drone video. Completely unknown to me, my royalty-free track "Positive Corporate" was nominated by a high-selling artist called Vertigomusic. Thanks to Vertigomusic for honoring me that way.

Speaking of drones (I know, again with the drones!) I now have a collection of drone-style royalty-free tracks I call "Dronescapes" available in a collection on Pond5. You can check it out here.

Last but not least, I'm trying something with my main website. I've signed up for the McAfee SECURE program. It's one of those things were McAfee declares your site "secure" and displays their special logo to the first 500 visitors per month. There's no charge for that, and frankly even with referral spam I have less than 500 visitors a month on average at this point. Since I can't/don't want to spend the money for SSL right now, I thought this would be worth a try. We'll see.

Thanks for reading. If you like to keep up with my doings, I am on Twitter more often than I post here, although most of it is promotional (and "gratitudinal"). Anyway, please follow me @thisbrucesmith on Twitter if you don't already.

At the Risk of "Droning" On

The drone music I submitted earlier in the week has been approved and is now on line. Here's a sample of one of the tracks.

In addition I have two more similar tracks in the curation pipeline, and am working on yet another. For access to my full portfolio at Pond5, just click the Pond5 link above.

Preview: Drone Music in the Pipeline

Last week, Pond5's periodic email update for content creators mentioned that there is apparently some demand for drone music. So, I took 24 hours between Thursday night and Friday night (I did get some sleep in, too), and created four pieces. One is not strictly a drone because it includes a percussive bass line. I can't help it if I like at least some rhythm!

The four tracks are in curation at P5, but here's a quick preview of one, "Ambient Atmospheric Drone," to give you a general idea.

"Uplifting Corporate Motivation" is Live!

In my last post, I previewed a new royalty-free stock music track titled "Uplifting Corporate Motivation." I had submitted the track to AudioJungle, which rejected it. I think the overall sound and production quality is OK, but they may not have cared for the intro and coda. I did tweak the sound a little, slightly reducing the volume on the drum tracks, taking a little more bass out of the mix and pumping up the volume ever so slightly. I also removed the intro and coda, leaving the meat of the track: a buildup to a sort of shout chorus. I submitted the alternate version to Pond5, which just approved it for sale. Here's the final result.

If you like this track and want to use it for your commercial, presentation, or event, you can license it here.

"Uplifting Corporate Motivation" in the Pipeline

This is a new stock music track I submitted to AudioJungle yesterday. I normally don't make stock music tracks available for preview, but I'm fond of this one, so here it is:



AudioJungle's curators are sort of picky and might not approve this for sale. If that's the case, I'll submit it at Pond5. I'll definitely let you know where it winds up. I hope you enjoy it and consider it for your corporate and motivational projects..

Happy November 2016!

Here I am again with best wishes, an update or two, and a reminder that Christmas is almost upon us . . . and you know what that means!

As I mentioned recently, 2016 is already my best year since I began creating and selling stock music. My work has been licensed by buyers on five continents (North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia to be exact!). I feel very grateful to and honored by those of you who chose my work to support your media projects. I hope my work serves you well, and that you'll continue to check out my growing portfolio of over 300 tracks.

Speaking of that growing portfolio, I just released three new royalty-free stock music tracks at Pond5.

Corporate Tech is a bouncy little electronic number.
Ambient Urban Requiem is a sad, dirge-like track with a slightly old school urban beat.
Ominous Science Fiction Cue is . . . well . . . it sort of explains itself.

You can find these tracks and all my most recent production music releases from Pond5 here.

On the commercial front, after working on some ideas and doing a lot of soul searching, I do not plan to do a full-length release before the end of the year. My next project will not be as diverse as Circadia, instead hewing to the more downtempo chill side. I may still put out an EP of some sort featuring the more ambient and electronic stuff I've developed over the past year, but I haven't made a firm decision on that yet.

Those of you looking for Christmas music for your projects, please have a listen to my royalty-free Christmas background music collection at Pond5. There's a mix of traditional and more modern holiday music arranged for different combinations of instruments. If you find something useful, please let me know.

And with that, I'll wish you a happy month and hope to post more good stuff soon.

A Busy Friday

I woke up this morning to a lot of things going on. First, I had uploaded an edit of a track I'm currently working on to SoundCloud last night. I'm trying to figure out how best to classify this music. Here's the track:


I classified it as "Jazz and Blues" but it could be ambient or downtempo. I would appreciate any constructive feedback regarding other genres that might fit it better. Next . . .

I got an email overnight from Pond5 regarding some stock music tracks I had submitted. The message said all items had been approved, but also included the standard rejection boilerplate. Needless to say, I was confused. I sent a message off to Pond5 and they responded almost immediately saying it was a glitch on their end and all was good. Thanks to them for their prompt response! So I have three new tracks to promote, and I plan to do that today on Twitter, YouTube, and G+. On top of all that, I had two sales yesterday at AudioJungle, which is quite extraordinary for me given the relatively small size of my portfolio there. Life is good; I hope yours is too.

Native Instruments Symphonic Essentials Demos

I've spent parts of the last several days trying to download and evaluate Native Instruments Symphonic Essentials Demos for brass and strings. If you've run across my blog before, you know that I have bought and worked with several NI instrument plug-in products. My favorites are the Strummed Acoustic instrument for Kontakt 5 and the Rounds synth for Reaktor 6. Both of these have come in handy at various points in my stock music work.

Having heard some of the possibilities of the Symphonic Essentials Brass and Strings instruments from NI's promotional videos, I decided to download and evaluate the demo versions. This led me on an adventure that lasted several days. If you're trying to figure out how to get these things installed, read on (it's not an easy process).

I began by submitting my email address for access to the download files. I already have an account on the NI site, so  this is no big deal. The Brass Essentials file comes down as a 5 MB executable that downloads the sound files with an option to then automatically run the setup. The sounds take up close to 4 GB and I had a lot of trouble with their downloader. It failed a couple of times, and when I was able to download the whole thing, it then failed to execute the setup program.

To complicate matters, the files do not come down as a zip file, but as a disc image (.iso). Since Windows 10 killed my DVD drivers (thanks Microsoft!) I had no way to easily burn the image onto a disk to install. The String Essentials download doesn't even include an executable downloader; it just downloads the .iso directly.

With no way to burn the images to disc, I checked the NI support forums. Lo and behold, a lot of people there were experiencing the same problem as I was. NI recommended using a drive mounting utility to map a drive to the image in order to access the files. The one I found and used for Windows 10 was Pismo File Mount from Pismo Technic. It includes a number of utilities for working with disc images, not just file mounting. I found it easy to use, and it worked extremely well. My compliments to Pismo. Now I thought I was good to go, but not so fast!

It's not enough to merely mount the drive, because I couldn't actually run the setup file from the mounted .iso directly. I needed to copy all the files from the disc image into a folder on my C: drive. Then, and only then, could I run the included install utility to install all the file packages. After all that, I found out that the demo times out after 10 minutes.

Part of my problem was that I don't have the fastest or most reliable network connection where I'm currently living. But I suspect there were access problems on the NI end as well. In the final analysis, I conclude it wasn't worth it to spend time on and off from Wednesday night to early Saturday afternoon in order to get 10 minutes hands on with the product demos. If your network is faster and more reliable, and you're comfortable doing all the stuff I described earlier with drive mounting and so on, it might be worth it to you.

Otherwise, I would advise not to bother with the demos at all. Check out the NI videos, and then buy the full versions, or don't. I may eventually buy them, but I'm also leaning toward something like Garritan Instant Orchestra in order to get ideas down quickly where I want to work in orchestral styles.

Best Year Ever (and it's Only October!)

Thanks for an awesome year (even before it's over!)

I hadn't been paying close attention to the numbers recently, so I thought I'd stop and have a look at how sales are doing for my stock music. Lo and behold, sales have already exceeded last year's former best ever with two-and-a-half months to spare. In prior years, I always had to wait until December to find out if the current year would be better than the last. Not this year.

Part of the growth this year is due to the fact that I established a presence on AudioJungle and I think I've done pretty well there for my first year. But I'm close to record levels at Pond5, too, and we still have the Christmas season coming. I also got an unexpected boost from MotionElements, and am very happy to be in all three marketplaces.

So let me once again thank anyone and everyone who has supported my work, whether by licensing my stock music, downloading or streaming Dream Catcher or tracks from Circadia. or just stopping by to check things out here or at the official site. I'm grateful for all the support.

Work in Progress, October 11, 2016

I currently have a couple tracks awaiting curation on different markets. One is "Ambient Urban Requiem," a slow sad track with lots of piano reverb and thick synth padding over a hip-hoppish beat. That's at AudioJungle, which I usually give first refusal on new tracks because they insist on exclusivity in order to grant a 50/50 split of revenues. If they reject it, I'll submit it to Pond5.

The other track is a science-fiction style cinematic cue that I submitted directly to Pond5. It has a big cinematic pad and some choral things going on and ends in an ominous, unresolved augmented chord.

Also, I have a new track at AudioJungle called "Positive Corporate." It's pretty much self-descriptive. You can hear it below and license it here.

A Couple New Tracks

I've got a couple of new tracks at AudioJungle today. One is an orchestral logo titled simply "Orchestral Logo 1." (Clearly, I'm campaigning to replace Captain Obvious should he become president.) It's short and sweet and has a nice brass call-and-response fanfare. All in five seconds. You can check it out below and license it here.

The second new track is a tech track called "Bright and Optimistic Tech" (yes, it is bright and optimistic). This is a nice choice for industrial videos where you want an upbeat presentation, also sports highlights, and whatever else strikes your fancy. The link to license it is here, and you can check out the video below.

Remember. these and the other tracks in my portfolios at AudioJungle and Pond5 are all available to buy and use royalty-free.

A Few Updates for Sept. 19, 2016

"Action Logo 1" is my featured stock music track this week. It's a quick, hard-hitting orchestral intro that's great for kicking off podcasts, news, documentaries, and similar projects. Please check it out here.

Some interesting news from CD Baby, the outfit that's distributing my single Dream Catcher and album Circadia. Seems they are partnering with Amazon's CD-on-demand program to make all of CD Baby's album catalog available to order on CD from Amazon for $9.99 a copy. According to CD Baby, this will include albums like Circadia that were originally released as download-only. This means if you're into CDs you can get Circadia on CD before the end of the year. I'll provide more details when I have them.

Meanwhile, I'm still working on building my stock music portfolio. I'm now over 300 total tracks, available on four different market platforms.

A Note About Performance Righrs

I was checking out a community forum at Pond5 recently and came across a thread discussing how some video producers are leery of licensing stock music that's registered with a performance rights organization, or PRO. Here's my understanding of what's going on with this, and my policy toward it.

First, I do belong to a PRO, specifically the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) here in the United States. PROs like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, among others, collect fees from broadcasters and others when members' music gets "performed," for example on a media broadcast or in a bar on a jukebox. I don't register all of my work, but I do register certain pieces that I've written that I think have a decent chance to earn royalties from a performance. This includes around 40 of my stock music tracks, as well as all the tracks from Circadia and the single Dream Catcher.

If you're a person who wants to license one of my tracks, but are worried about additional responsibilities because it's registered with a PRO, my understanding is you really only have to worry about it if you intend to use it in a broadcast, like on radio or TV. If that's the case, you need to fill out something called a cue sheet that tells the broadcaster that you're using one of my tracks so that they can pay me what I'm owed, depending on how it's used, etc. If you're using the music just for your own videos, either for yourself or to put on YouTube, Facebook, etc. you don't have to fill out a cue sheet.

My policy on YouTube is that I do not monetize my stock music tracks by registering them through their content ID system. Any stock music of mine that you license through Pond5, AudioJungle, or MotionElements you can use freely on YouTube. I upload YouTube videos of some of my stock music with watermarks so people can audition tracks before licensing. I do participate in content ID for Circadia tracks and Dream Catcher. That happens through CD Baby, with whom I released the album and single, respectively.

So long story short, if you're licensing one of my tracks for personal use or to put behind a video you're going to upload to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, or whatever, there's no need to fill out a cue sheet or worry about copyright challenges on YouTube. I hope this is helpful, and that you won't hesitate to license my work even if it's registered with a PRO. (On the other hand, if you do want to use it in a commercial, then please do fill out a cue sheet - and thanks for your support.) I hope this is helpful.

Featured Track, Week of August 29, 2016

This week's featured royalty-free stock music track is "Autumn Breeze."

This mellow, gentle groove at a relaxed walking tempo is a perfect musical background for changing seasons, nature videos, and similar scenes.

Featured Stock Music Track, Week of August 15, 2016

This week I'm featuring "Action Adventure," a brisk (176 bpm) full orchestra piece in B-flat minor. This is a perfect background for emotionally charged, heroic adventure scenes or motivational presentations.

Sold License for "Motivational String Orchestra"

I'm very grateful to the person who licensed "Motivational String Orchestra" at Pond5 earlier this week. This full string arrangement is a great choice for inspirational and uplifting presentations or other media projects.

Sold License for "Cinematic Action Sequence 1"

Thanks to the buyer who licensed "Cinematic Action Sequence 1" at Pond5 earlier this week. This track hasn't received much attention, but people who sample it buy it at an extremely high rate compared to my other work. "Cinematic Action Sequence 1" has two downloads on only five views.

New Stock Music Track: "Decision Point"

My latest royalty-free stock music track, "Decision Point" is now available to license exclusively at Pond5.

A slow (84 bpm), steady track featuring guitar over piano, strings, and marimba. The music moves around tonally and builds gradually, depicting tension around an impending big decision. A climax near the end is followed by a quiet coda that resolves the tension with a final chord in A major.

Available exclusively at Pond5

In an Ambient Mood

I've been using the word "ambient" in a lot of my stock music titles recently. This week's featured track at my main website is "Ambient Contemplation." I've also recently uploaded "Ambient Efficiency," "Ambient Cosmos," and "Ambient Space." The latter two are specifically designed to have a more space music type of electronic feel for things like science and technology presentations. So I guess I need to lay off the ambient thing for a while.

In the meantime, my next two tracks in the pipeline at AudioJungle are more conventional. "Decision Point" is another in a long line of slowly-building pieces. The idea is to evoke the sense of the mounting tension leading up to a big decision, followed by a quiet coda that symbolizes getting it right. "Action Adventure" is pretty much self-explanatory. We'll see if and where they get approved.

Also, I signed up for an account on Bandcamp. I don't have anything uploaded there yet, because I haven't decided on my next project as yet. I have some new ambient tracks in various stages of completion (there's that "a" word again). But I'm also considering releasing some things I've worked on over the years but haven't put out. I'm thinking about putting them out under the general heading of "lost decades." I have some smooth jazz/new agey stuff from the 80s, as well as some electronica from the 00s. Still mulling that. Stay tuned for updates when and if I figure it all out myself.

July 11, 2016 Updates

I have a new stock music track available to license at AudioJungle. "Ambient Efficiency" sounds like a minimalist electronic track at first, but builds up layers of synths and syncopated rhythms. It includes subtle world rhythm touches, such as a psuedo-gamelan sound in the melody and finger cymbals. You can check it out below and license it here.

Thanks to listeners in Mexico and Italy who have been streaming my track "Astral Tribe" at Spotify. I hope you're enjoying it and will check out other tracks from Circadia, as well as my latest instrumental pop single Dream Catcher.

Trying Some Different Things With the Blog

I'm going to make some changes in the blog over the next day or so. As far as the look and feel go, everything will be almost the same as before. There will be no big changes in logo, styling, or other cosmetics.

One change I have in mind is to more closely align this blog with my music page on Google+. As part of that, following this post I'll be changing this blog to send posts to my stream there instead of my personal G+ stream. Those of you reading this on my personal stream can either just come to the blog or follow my G+ music page. I hope you'll do both. Doing this will allow me to organize my interests a bit better, with music-related things here and the G+ music stream and everything else on my personal stream. That also means I'll be doing some following and unfollowing over the next few days to get my interests lined better, too.

The other change is that I'm going to stop using jump breaks. If you come here to read whatever I'm writing, there should be no need to click on another link to get a full version of a post. Frankly, I don't get enough traffic here to justify that level of pretentiousness anyway, and much of what I do get is referral spam. If you actually come here to read my posts, thank you; I hope this makes things a little more convenient for you. I'm also going to reduce the number of posts that appear on each page.

With that, I'll go on my merry way for now. I have some non-music projects in the works and plan to focus on those over the coming days and weeks, but will continue to promote my new and old music. In the meantime, I hope everyone in the USA who reads this has enjoyed the long Independence Day weekend.

Sunday Update (6/26/16)

I'm sitting with a cup of coffee this Sunday morning, thinking. Thinking usually gets me in trouble, so instead I'll blog.

Busy Monday Morning (6/20/16)

Lots going on this morning.

• I had three tracks licensed over the weekend at Pond5 and have been promoting them on Twitter:
• Business Presentation 1
• Mystery Suspense Theme
• Motivational String Orchestra
• My latest stock music track, "Smooth Jazz Event," is now online and available at AudioJungle.

As always, I'm very grateful to everyone who supports my work by licensing my stock music, streaming or downloading my commercial work like Dream Catcher, or just stopping by. Thank you.

Instead of asking "why me?" today I'm asking "why NOT me?"

Dream Catcher Single Now at iTunes

You can now buy and download my new instrumental pop single "Dream Catcher" at iTunes. Just search for "Thisbrucesmith" in your iTunes app, or head to the Dream Catcher iTunes page and go from there.

For a list of popular platforms where you can download or stream Dream Catcher, go to my Dream Catcher page at thisbrucesmith.com.

In case you haven't heard Dream Catcher yet . . .

"Dream Catcher" Update (6/12/16)

"Dream Catcher" is now out, of course, and I spent a lot of time getting the word out on Friday. It's now available at CD Baby (naturally), and Google Play, and you can stream it at Spotify, Tidal, and iHeartRadio. Still waiting on Groove, Amazon, and iTunes. To see when "Dream Catcher" becomes available on your platform, check the Dream Catcher page. If you're in Russia, you can get it at Yandex, and in the U. K. at 7digital. I hope you'll check it out!

"Dream Catcher" is Here!

My new instrumental pop single "Dream Catcher" is now available at CD Baby.

It's also now available at Google Play Music and Yandex Music.

Ciracdia Price Reduction

To celebrate the release of "Dream Catcher" tomorrow (June 10, 2016), I've reduced the price for my full album Circadia at CD Baby. Check the Circadia link in the menu for details.

"Dream Catcher" Almost Here!

I just gave final approval for distribution of "Dream Catcher." The single will drop first at CDBaby Friday (6/10 in the US), and will roll out after that to other outlets including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and more. Make sure to check the Dream Catcher page for more updates.

Resolving the Single Versus Album Dilemma

I'm sitting here on Friday, June 3. I did some promo this morning on Twitter and G+. Larry Carlton's "Smiles and Smiles to Go" just finished playing. And I'm thinking about "stragedy" (as Bugs Bunny famously called it).

A Busy Monday Morning (5/30/16)

Happy Monday to the world, and Happy Memorial Day to all here in the USA. I've been busy this morning. Here are some highlights:

• I uploaded a teaser video for the upcoming single, "Dream Catcher." You can check it out online now on the Dream Catcher page.
• I just received approval for a new dramatic stock music track called "The Chase." You can preview and license "The Chase" at AudioJungle.
• My featured stock music track for this week is "Bright Motivation." You can preview it at Pond5.

I hope you all enjoy the day and week. I'm looking forward to telling you more about the new "Dream Catcher" instrumental pop single, due out a week from Friday.

New Single "Dream Catcher" Coming June 10. 2016

I'm releasing a new single, titled "Dream Catcher" on June 10. Unlike the tracks on my album  Circadia, "Dream Catcher" hues much more closely to instrumental pop. It does feature a crisp beat, bubbly rhythms, and ambient pads. I'll be posting more details as I have them.

Is it Just Me?

I feel a bit bemused today. Sales of my stock music have been going well recently, especially at Pond5, but I looked at what's been selling and found it a bit disquieting.

Monday Update: May 9, 2016

As I mentioned in my last post over the weekend, some nice things have happened over the past few days.

Two Dilemmas and an Update

Once again I'm sitting here taking time to contemplate the near future and my next nefarious plans. (Do I sound like Tom Hiddleston in that new Jaguar commercial?) Anyway, I find myself confronted by two dilemmas, which I want to take a few minutes to document here.

Featured Royalty-free Track, Week of May 2, 2016

Ambient Sadness

A plaintive, minimalist piece featuring piano with subtle backing from violins and pads. You can use this for heartbreak, mourning, the aftermath of tragedy, and similar scenes. Centered around B-flat.

Secured Access Now Available

I wanted to drop a note to let you know that I have enabled secured access to the blog. According to Blogger it should be secured in any event soon. However, I wanted to secure it now so I can roll out a gadget to let you subscribe to my feed. Look for that soon in the sidebar. To get the secured version, visit:

https://thisbrucesmith.blogspot.com

Now Available at AudioJungle: "Powerful"

Powerful

This track, featuring dramatic brass, booming double basses, and insistent, pounding drums, makes an excellent choice for a dramatic documentary opener or book trailer. 

 

Just Sold at AudioJungle (4/27/16)

Ambient Sadness

Just Sold at AudioJungle (4/26/16)

Dramatic Orchestra

Featured Royalty-free Track, Week of April 24, 2016

Dramatic Orchestra

Consider this track for your dramatic news piece, documentary, or trailer. Churning strings, insistent brass, and explosive percussion combine to drive the composition to an epic climax. Features a sixteen bar section, a repeat of the section with variations, and an intense coda.

Just Sold at Pond5 (April 22, 2016)

Tropical Paradise

My Stock Music in a National Geographic Video

This YouTube video from National Geographic makes prominent use of my track "Ambient Shifting" to support their presentation on using 3-D printing for rapid design and testing of drones.

Now Available: "Ambient Sadness"

License exclusively at AudioJungle.

Sold Last Weekend (April 16th-17th, 2016)

Audio buyers and/or their clients seem to be in a salty mood, judging by the titles from my catalog that sold over the last weekend. Not that I'm complaining, of course!  B~)

At Pond5:

Sense of Foreboding



Ambient Exotic



Ambient Shifting



At AudioJungle:

Dark Tragedy

If you happen to be the person who bought these tracks, or have bought others in the past, thanks from the bottom of my heart for choosing to use my work in your projects.

Featured Stock Music Track, Week of April 18, 2016

"Optimistic Tech" is this week's featured stock music track at thisbrucesmith.com. Create a positive and empowering mood in your business and science presentations with this high-tech musical background. Tempo: 115 bpm. Key of C sharp (D flat).

Now Available at AudioJungle: "Dramatic Orchestra"

Choose "Dramatic Orchestra" as an epic backdrop for your major news item, documentary, or trailer.

Just Sold at AudioJungle (4/12/16)

Ambient Lifestyle

Update: 12:30 PM EDT - This track now has two sales in the past 24 hours. Could be trending!

Featured Stock Music, Week of April 11, 2016

"Positive Ambient" is this week's featured royalty-free stock music track at the website. You can use this track for multiple applications, such as corporate and sport highlight presentations. The key of D major conveys an upbeat, optimistic mood, and the strong beat and churning synth bass line gets the spirit and body moving. Check it out and license today.

Just Sold at Pond5 (4/10/16)

Ominous Lurking Doom (Soundscape)

Another Best Ever

I just wanted to give a quick shout out to acknowledge that this past March was my best March ever for tracks licensed. Also, I had sales in three marketplaces (Pond5, AudioJungle, and MotionElements), which is the first time that has happened in a month since I started. The sales on MotionElements were very gratifying since they contributed to ME's first million clips sold, which the site celebrated last month. I'm so grateful to everyone who has licensed my music on any of the marketplaces, or who has simply stopped by to check things out.

Don't forget that I feature a different stock music track each week at my main web site, and you can check out all my new stock music tracks on my YouTube channel as soon as they're available to license. I still have tracks coming down the pipeline (most recently of the dramatic or cinematic variety), so please check back often.

Featured Stock Music Track, Week of April 4, 2016

"Dark Tragedy" is this week's featured royalty-free stock music track at the website. This ambient and melancholy track in B minor sets a sad mood under your cinematic, science fiction, or documentary projects. The symphonic synths and textures provide an ethereal and otherworldly feeling, conveying a sense of tragic aftermath.

License at AudioJungle

Optimistic Tech

Set a positive and empowering mood in your business or science presentation. 115 bpm. Key of C sharp/D flat.

License at:

Luckstock

MotionElements  

Featured Stock Music Track, Week of March 28, 2016

This week's featured stock music track is "Corporate Motivation." Inspire your team to achieve with this churning track. Variations within the repeating chord changes urge your audience to press forward toward the shared goal of achievement. The music conveys a positive, optimistic feeling for your presentation or video.

License Royalty-free at AudioJungle

Dark Tragedy: Cinematic Royalty-free Stock Music

This ambient electronic piece has a post-apocalyptic vibe, great for science fiction, tragedy scenes, documentaries, and so on.







License this track at AudioJungle

A Whirlwind Week

The last seven days have been crazy. I helped out a friend working security for the big Saint Patrick's festival here in Dayton. He was short-handed this year, so I told him to use me as much as possible. That was foolish of me. Between 6 PM last Wednesday and 2 AM the following Friday, I worked  27 of the 32 hours. It's not something I plan to repeat; I simply don't have the stamina anymore. I awoke mid-morning Friday to a slew of family medical problems, which I won't elaborate on here. Suffice it to say I was going back and forth like a pinball until last night, although I did manage some rest over the weekend.

I'm fine. My problem is that I'm a creature of habit. I like my daily routine, and the last week just blew that up. I wouldn't have changed anything, but I do like sitting here typing as I sip my coffee, working my way slowly into the day. My normal production routine got shot too, so I now have a gaping hole in my pipeline. I plan to work on some music this morning, getting back into some normalcy. Here's hoping nothing else comes up, but if it does . . . that's life.

Corporate Motivation: Royalty-free Stock Music

  License at AudioJungle

Featured Track, Week of March 21, 2016

This week's featured royalty-free stock music track at the website is "Dark Ambient Cinematic." This ponderous, hybrid orchestral-electronic track would make a good introduction or trailer for your dark dramatic production. You could also use it as a musical backdrop for post-apocalyptic scenes.

License Exclusively at AudioJungle

Featured Stock Music Track: Week of 3/14/16

This week's featured track is "Corporate Kinetics." The strong (120 bpm) beat contrasts with ambient guitar to convey forward motion in your presentations and videos.

License Exclusively at AudioJungle

Corporate Kinetics: Royalty Free Stock Music

Remembering Keith Emerson

I saw the reports earlier today that Keith Emerson passed away at the age of 71. While Emerson's music may not have influenced me as much as some other artists, I had great respect for his abilities and a keen appreciation for his innovations on keyboards. My first exposure to his work when I was a teenager left a distinct impression.
The first time I heard Keith Emerson, it was with his signature group Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. I was at my brother's house and he let me check out some of his records with headphones while he and some friends of his were playing cards. The first album I checked out was ELP's Tarkus. The opening of the title track, a side-long anti-war epic, begins with synthesizer tones that stack on top of each other, gradually building and phasing around the speakers (and with headphones, inside your head). The next 20 minutes were a tour de force of complex harmonies and odd meters, mixed with more conventional rock elements. It was an eye, and ear, opening experience.
Eventually I collected and digested all of ELP's early albums, including their self-titled debut, plus Trilogy, the live Pictures at an Exhibition, and their classic Brain Salad Surgery. As a drummer back in those days, I was much more tuned in to Carl Palmer's drumming. In the fullness of time, though, I have developed an appreciation for Emerson's blending of jazz, rock, and classical (including avant garde) musical elements. His career included composing art music and film scores as well as ELP and his earlier band, The Nice. Progressive rock would not be the same without his influence, both musically and as a flamboyant performer. RIP.

Circadia Streaming on Spotify

Circadia is available to stream at Spotify. Please check it out, and if you like it, add it to your favorite ambient, new age, or electronic playlist.

Update

I haven't updated the blog recently, so I thought I'd take a moment to do that now. I've been busy working on non-music projects recently, and promoting my music a bit more on Twitter. I currently have several tracks in the curation pipeline at AudioJungle and hope to hear about the fate of one of those any time now.
Speaking of Twitter, you can follow me there to be the first to hear new stock music tracks that I upload to YouTube. I hope you will and look forward to hearing from you there.

A Different Kind of March Madness

During the month of March, 2016 you can license my royalty-free stock music track "Hopeful Inspiring Rock" for 40% off the regular price. This offer is available only at Luckstock.com and only with the link below. If you need a midtempo, uplifting instrumental pop-rock anthem for your project or presentation, this is a great choice. But don't delay. Once March is gone, this offer is gone too.

License "Hopeful Inspiring Rock" at 40% off during March 2016.

Grateful For a Fantastic February 2016

I just want to take a moment to express my gratitude to everyone who supported my work in February 2016, making it by far my best February ever. Thanks and blessings to all the buyers at Pond5 and also to my new friends supporting my growing portfolio at AudioJungle. I'm ready to help make your projects successful in March and beyond.

Reach!

Inspire your audience to meet their goals and strive for their dreams with this brisk-paced (128 bpm) track in G major.

License this track royalty free today!

Corporate Inspiration: Motivational Stock Music

Just Another Ironic Monday

I was checking out my Twitter feed earlier today, when I ran across a tweet from one of my local television news outlets teasing a story they plan to feature later today on the Zika virus. Apparently, a number of people are concerned about traveling to areas where Zika is most prevalent.

Now, Zika is no laughing matter. Medical researchers have linked the virus to heart-breaking birth defects, and it's very important to understand the risks and take appropriate precautions. The tease, though, featured an image with "Destination: FEAR" in big bold letters. It really underscored for me the extent to which our media now rely on fear to get viewers to watch. To be fair to them, it works, and a calmer, more thoughtful approach would probably not. I suppose then it's our own fault for falling for it over and over.

Then, I turned to my business, which was to tweet this week's featured stock music track at http://thisbrucesmith.com. That track is "Dark Portents," (see earlier post below) which I realized would probably be an awesome soundtrack for fear-mongering reportage. Hey, it's a dirty thankless job but somebody's gotta do it. I promise next week's featured track will be more upbeat.

Dark Portents: Ambient Royalty Free Stock Music

Ambient Lifestyle: Royalty Free Stock Music

Use this track to add a cool ambiance in support of contemporary lifestyle or corporate content.


License exclusively at AudioJungle

Quiet Electronic: Royalty Free Stock Music

Create a serene mood behind videos and presentations using this electronic track with piano.

License exclusively at: http://audiojungle.net/item/quiet-electronic/14619951

New DDLY Dynamic Delay from iZotope

iZotope has just released a new delay plugin. It's an interesting piece of software with a lot potential, especially for folks like me who like to do atmospheric types of things with our music. It's available to download for free from iZotope's website (registration required) until March 10, 2016. After that, you have to pony up $49. I downloaded it, installed it, and slapped together this video demo showcasing just one of DDLY's capabilities. Hope you find it useful. (By the way, the track playing here is one of the candidates for my next album project.)

Retro City Atmosphere: Royalty Free Stock Music

Announcement About My SoundCloud Presence

On or about Monday, February 8, 2016, I'll be making some changes to my content on SoundCloud. First, I'll be taking down most of my stock music content there. Second, I'll be uploading tracks from Circadia and creating a playlist for the album. Going forward, my plan is to use SoundCloud mainly to promote Circadia and future non-stock releases, while hosting my stock music previews on YouTube.

Two factors motivated this decision. First, I'm simply not attracting a lot of interest in my stock music on SoundCloud. I've gotten as many listens to certain tracks hosted on YouTube as I have to some of my SoundCloud stock music posts in months. Second, while I see no evidence now that YouTube is likely to impose limits on uploading, this is not the case with SoundCloud. I could get more space on SoundCloud, but only by paying for a premium membership. But why should I do that when I get analytics capabilities on YouTube without paying a premium?

In any event, in my opinion SoundCloud is likely moving in the direction of becoming a promotional outlet for commercial music. So I think it makes sense for me to use SoundCloud to promote my commercial work. I will keep a few stock music tracks and at least one playlist on SoundCloud. Changes in policy by SoundCloud or Alphabet (YouTube) down the line may cause me to re-evaluate my situation, but for now I think this is the way for me to go. So if you land on a page on my blog with a link to a SoundCloud track that no longer works, this is the reason. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience.

Happy Dance: Royalty Free Stock Music

It's February, Already

January 2016 is gone already, and it was a good month, my highest revenue January ever doing stock music. I am so grateful to everyone who has supported my work by buying, licensing, listening, or just offering moral support. You are all awesome! I hope I can continue to improve the quality of my work for you. Stay tuned as the year progresses.

25 Percent Off "Hopeful Inspiring Rock" This Week

You can license my royalty free stock production music track "Hopeful Inspiring Rock" this week at Luckstock at a 25 percent discount off the regular fee. Add emotional heft to your next video with this uplifting instrumental rock anthem featuring dreamy electric guitar and lush strings. This discount is only available for seven days beginning today (Jan, 18, 2016), and only at Luckstock, so don't delay.

Take advantage of this limited-time offer now!

 

My First Track at AudioJungle

One of my goals for 2016 has been to explore new stock music marketplaces. The biggest one by far seems to be AudioJungle. So, I've begun submitting content and am glad to announce my first track has been accepted. "Tension Builder" is a 60-second track with two loop variations and a logo. You can check it out in the video below.

License exclusively at AudioJungle.

Updates: YouTube Project Underway, Circadia Page?

I'm currently working on gradually uploading my stock music content to YouTube in album-cover style videos, featuring watermarks thanks to the amazing Jake Sommers. My plan is to upload my more recent content first, with links in the description to license the material where available (mainly at Pond5 or Luckstock). If I can get it rolling, I hope to do at least one per day on weekdays.

Meanwhile, I'm also contemplating creating a page on the website devoted to Circadia, with links to buy or stream content at various outlets.

Gearing Up for the New Year 2016

I sort of wound down at the end of the year. Wonderful things happened. I was there to help my son Alex celebrate his marriage to Leah. It was awesome. There was also time to rest the spirit and enjoy quiet contemplation.

Now, it's a new year and time to get rolling. This year, I hope to begin making some of my new stock music available exclusively on AudioJungle. Also, I'm already working on developing new music for a followup to Circadia, with a working title of Exstasis. Stay tuned as the year progresses.

Happy New Year 2016

I just want to take a quick moment to wish you all a happy 2016. I also want to again express my gratitude to everyone who has supported my work by licensing stock music or buying all or part of my Circadia project. May you have a peaceful and prosperous year.