Happy New Year 2018

I'd like to wish my readers a happy new year as we enter 2018. 2017 was the best year for my music since I began seriously working on it back in 2012-13, and I have high hopes that the coming year will be even better. I'll be back in January with some new production music and perhaps a few surprises as well.

While I'm writing, I want to thank everyone who provided support to me in 2017, especially the folks at Pond5 who are by far my biggest boosters on Twitter. Thanks also to those who used my work during the year, like Rochelle Krause, who used my stock music item "Mystery Suspense Theme" in her animated web series "A Universe of Trouble," and YouTuber 'Always The Artist,' who used my track "Smooth Jazz Muted Trumpet" in his photo video of Rocky River Reservation MetroPark in Cleveland, Ohio.

Finally, thanks to anyone who has used my work in their podcasts or other productions, or who have checked out my instrumental tracks on Spotify or elsewhere, or who simply stop by to read my blog here from time to time. I am very grateful to all of you, and wish you a happy and tuneful new year.

Announcement About My Pond5 Works Registered With ASCAP

Effective immediately, I have registered all the music in my Pond5 portfolio, except for certain arrangements of public-domain Christmas music, with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). I had previously registered selected works from the portfolio with ASCAP, but this week extended that to most of my catalog.

For those who aren't familiar with ASCAP, it's a performance rights organization, or "PRO." PROs like ASCAP and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) in the United States, or their counterparts in other countries, collect royalties when music written by their members (for example, composers like me) is "performed" in public. Performances can be live or recorded, and include film and television, radio, night clubs and the web.

What this means for you

If you're licensing my work for your personal, private use (say, for a family video), none of what I'm writing about here applies to you. You don't even need to read beyond this point. (But thanks for sticking with me this far!)

However, if you license my work for use in a film, television, radio, a website or other public setting, you need to fill out a cue sheet. This is a document that tells about your project and what specific music you're using for it. If you've never done this before, a good resource to help you get started figuring things out is this page from Pond5 on PRO tracks and cue sheets.

What it means for me

This is very important to me, because it gives me a better opportunity to share in the profits from public performances of my work. Except under certain circumstances, as a media producer there is no extra cost for you to fill out the cue sheet. For example, in film and television the broadcaster, not the producer, is responsible for paying the actual royalties. I suggest you do some research, starting with the link I provided, to determine the requirements for your specific situation.

I hope you will understand and support this decision. I feel strongly that my future viability as a musical artist depends on being able to collect as much of the available royalties for my work as possible. Again, if you're interested in licensing any of my stock music for personal, private use, this change has no impact on you.

As always, I thank you for supporting me and my work, either through licensing stock music, downloading or streaming my commercially available work, or just stopping by to read.

Merry Christmas 2017

Just dropping a quick line to wish everyone a Merry Christmas in 2017. Here north of Dayton, Ohio it's almost dark as I write this, and the snow should begin falling soon. The last I heard, we had a good chance for a White Christmas by tomorrow. Time will tell.

May your holiday be safe, warm and blessed.

What's Happening: The Rest of 2017

This will be my last regular update for 2017. Far from going into hibernation for the remainder of the year, I have several projects that I'll be working on in preparation for the new year.

I'll be spending some time updating my ASCAP catalog with titles from my stock music portfolios. I had not bothered to register many of the titles for works I had created prior to joining ASCAP, but since I hope to do more promotion in 2018, I don't want to miss out on potential royalties from broadcasting.

I also want to update my catalog of commercial recordings on SoundExchange, as a recent search seems to show that the data I had submitted to them previously did not get to their database.

Another item on my list of to-dos is creating a page on my site especially for podcast music. If I'm feeling very ambitious I may even try doing a little programming to allow people to look for intros or loops depending on the genre they want or the kind of podcast they're doing. However, that will probably be a project for later in the year.

Also, I'll be continuing to work on tracks toward an ambient/chillout/sleep project for sometime in the spring. This would be a full-length project (since ambient music fans and reviewers still seem to prefer album-length projects), and I would hope to release it sometime in later winter/early spring.

Of course, I'm also looking forward to spending time with family and friends, and enjoying what I hope will be a relatively quiet Christmas and New Year. I'll be returning to regular posting, and hope to have some interesting things to talk about, in 2018.

Happy holidays to all!

What's Happening: Week of December 11, 2017

Last week I wrote about what I think has and has not worked in 2017. This week I want to talk a bit about 2018.

One thing I've noticed is that podcast music, which accounted for my growth this year, has attracted attention from at least one music library. I see that a new music service has launched aimed directly at podcasters. It's subscription-based and will probably do well among mid-sized operations. The smaller ones probably won't want to pay a subscription, and the biggest (like NPR) basically have their own in-house music already. Their libraries are geared toward background tracks, not intros. So I think there's still an opportunity for me to continue expanding in this area for a while.

I think I'll also be reorganizing my collections in 2018. Some of the things I'm thinking about include:

• Splitting my podcast intro collection into smaller segments, including corporate, news/weather/sports, society and culture, and so on
• De-emphasizing collections like "cimematic and dramatic" in favor of focusing on specific emotions: happy, sad, etc.

I also plan to focus less on holiday music in my social media efforts, and more on corporate and podcasting.

I'm also working on some really ambient, drone-ish music that I may end up releasing commercially early in the new year. These are minimalist pieces that I'm creating on the fly, almost improvised. It's almost like I'm painting with tones for these. Stay tuned for more info.

For the week ahead, I'm featuring Snow Globe on my Twitter feed as my stock music item of the week. If you aren't interested in licensing it but would like download or stream it for personal use, you can find links for major online outlets elsewhere on my blog. This is the last week I'll be featuring Christmas or holiday music on my Twitter feed. Starting next week I'll be featuring items from my romantic collection, with the Christmas season almost over and  St. Valentines's Day just a couple months away.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a good week, and if you need music for your creative projects, please check out my Pond5 and AudioJungle portfolios.

What's Happening: Week of December 4, 2017

And so, December is upon us.

In addition to being a time to celebrate the holidays with family and friends, it's also a time to look back. Specifically, I'm looking back this month to figure out what has worked for my music business, what hasn't worked and what I want to do in 2018.

What has worked in 2017 is my music for podcasting. Over the course of the past several months I produced close to 150 different tracks and variations of intro and looped music covering styles as diverse as rock, country, light classical, pop, urban and more. Some of my "corporate" work has been among my best-selling items this year, and music in my podcast collection now accounts for anywhere from half to two-thirds of my total sales. All of my sales growth this year is the result of podcast intros and loops.

What has not worked, in my opinion, is my social media promotion. It's very difficult, without taking a lot of time to line up data from multiple sources, to figure out if your social media efforts are translating into interest, and then into sales. I can see that some of my posts promoting various stock music items get link clicks on Twitter. But I can't say what happens from that point. What I do know is that unit sales of my holiday music were twice as good in November 2014, when I wan't tweeting, than they were in November, 2017 when I was promoting my holiday music like crazy on Twitter and Google+.

The conclusion that I cannot escape here is that social media is not making a dent in my holiday sales. That begs the question: what should I be doing with social media? Before you ask, I don't use Facebook. I've always felt that Twitter hashtags make it easier to connect with people who are more likely to be interested in my work. But that assumption may be in need of re-examination.

What does it all mean for me in 2018? I've giving thought to that, and may talk about some possible changes in strategy in a later post before the end of the year. (Unless something wonderful or awful comes up.)

Meanwhile, you may have noticed the image at the top of this post, and maybe it looks familiar to you. If it does, it may be because this is the image I used, with some cropping and other work, in the cover for my single "Snow Globe." The picture was actually taken in February 2008 by my wonderful wife Danita. She's a terrific photographer and has worked on subjects as diverse as real estate, architecture and nature. With her permission I cropped this photo to focus on the gazebo, then sharpened it and cropped it into a circular shape to become my "snow globe."

Don't be surprised if Danita's work shows up in my covers and other work again soon.

And so, December rolls on. I hope yours is lovely and that you'll stop by to read again soon.