Dave Kropf: 0:05

Napoleon Hill calls a mastermind an alliance of two or more minds working in perfect harmony for the attainment of a common definite objective. And I can't think of anything that more encapsulates all we do here at 52 cues than this idea, because truly, we are better together. And if you're feeling stuck with static courses or video curriculum, and you're looking for professional mentoring, weekly accountability, and you're serious about making real progress towards a sustainable career in the production music industry, than the 50 to cues mastermind, is absolutely for you. It's a 12 week program beginning on July 11, where we workshop ideas and network with other like minded composers and producers. We discuss strategies and practices for production music, we take deep dives into industry topics, and we listen to each other's cues and give feedback all in an open yet candid forum. Plus, you get three private one on one sessions with me a $225 value, where we take a hands on look into your composition and production process, mixing and mastering techniques. And together we work towards your goals as a production music composer. So if you're ready to supercharge your career and Production Music, then head over to 52 cues.com/mastermind22. That's 52 cues.com/mastermind22 and sign up today. Registration is July 8, and the seats are limited I sure hope to see you there. It's it's no real secret that as modern composers we usually have a lot of different irons in the fire when it comes to our careers in music from the composing itself to teaching to arranging even outside live gigs, chances are, we're going to find ourselves doing a lot of different things which aren't directly composing music, but still help keep us in the orbit of the music industry. Well, recently I had a chance to sit down and talk with Eric Copeland of make music income, who has made it his own personal mission to help other composers find the many ways that they can support their career in music. He shares his his own journey from the Nashville studio scene to Production Music, and we chat about his multifaceted approach to making a sustainable living with his music. Plus, we're gonna we're gonna take a listen to an orchestral Hip Hop tension cube written by you, a member of the 52 cues community on this week's episode of the 52 cues podcast. What is happening everybody, this is Dave Kropf. And welcome back to another episode of the 52 cues podcast, a weekly podcast dedicated to all things production and library music where we talk about industry topics and take deep dives into the different aspects of being a working production music composer. Plus we feature a que written by a member of the 52 cues community in this week, we'll be taking a listen to past tense and orchestral Hip Hop tension cue written by 52 cues community member, Alan Moore, so you definitely want to stick around for that. But if you want to skip over the topic for today and get right to that cue critique, then you can check out the timestamps in the description below. But before we get started, I have to give a special word of thanks to the family, friends and patrons of 52 cues who helped keep the podcast, the channel and everything we do here going. We are 100% community supported. And so if you like what I do here, don't thank me, thank them and if you want to learn about how you can help support 52 cues and unlock extra perks like live streams, workshops, interactive feedback, and much more. Then check out the links in the description below or stick around because we're going to talk more about that a little bit later in today's episode. So a couple of months ago, I sat down and talked with Eric Copeland who runs the channel make music income chances are you're already subscribed you're already subscribed to to Eric's fantastic channel has a really really good podcast that comes out I think comes out every Monday that he does in conjunction with Steven bet all of the Production Music Academy he Eric has a stellar stellar Discord server; I mean at 52 cues we don't have a Discord server. So if Discord is your jam, then absolutely check out the make music income Discord server, but I really wanted to talk to Eric because he is really deep into the stock music scene and coming from the studio scene in the Nashville studio scene. especially, I was really, really curious about his own journey. So without further ado, here is my recent interview with Eric Copeland. I am so happy to be joined by fellow composer, YouTuber, Central Florida resident Eric Copeland from make music income YouTube channel as well as the podcast. Eric, what is happening? Thank you so much for joining so

Eric Copeland: 5:29

Thanks so much for having me. It's been great talking with you.

Dave Kropf: 5:33

Yeah, and I'm just gonna go ahead and tell our listeners and our viewers, we are very like minded people. And we like a lot of the same things. And I imagine there will be a beer shared between us in our near future because we live pretty close. But you're a fellow YouTuber, and you came onto my radar from reaching out to me and I had seen, I had seen your your pod, your YouTube channel before, because you know, you know how their algorithm works, you subscribe to a certain number of channels, and then suddenly you start getting recommended channels and it start showing up and make music income showed up. And so when you reached out and email me, I'm like, oh, yeah, I know that guy. And so we just did an interview for your channel. And I absolutely wanted to have you on my channel. Because while the Venn diagram of our audiences isn't a perfect circle, there is a lot of overlap. And one of my core beliefs, of community and of being a composer out in the world is that together, we are better. And I think there's room at the table for everybody. And I'm sure we have viewers and listeners and we share viewers and listeners. But I wanted to hear from you. I wanted to talk about talk about your journey as a Nashville studio cat, which coming from living in I lived 11 years in Memphis, great respect for the Nashville studio scene. But why don't you tell us just a little bit about what you're doing now who you are, tell, tell me a little bit about make music income. And then we will go from there. But welcome to

Eric Copeland: 7:18

thank you so much. Well, I have been a music composer since I was about 13 years old, born in a very musical family, and came up be just as a teenager writing songs. And then, and this is going to be the super fast version of my life story, I promise. And went to University of Kentucky for a few years, two or three years and kind of just milled around there. Because my parents were paid for it. They were both UK alums, and a very musical family. So they didn't care if I did music, but traditional music education just did not interest me at all at 18 years old, or 19 years old, or 20, or 22, or 25 or 35. I didn't I wanted to write songs that I want to write and I learned how to produce in my teens. And I became kind of a producer for people as they would as I would show them my songs, they would go, Oh, that's nice. Can you like one? Can you record me doing my song, and I'll have what they're having type of thing. And so I started recording people about the time I did the band thing and went off to Chicago, and lived there for a few years and came back and met my wife. And we met during a musical performance at a church where she was running sound. And I was playing keyboards and singing in this group, a song I'd written for the group and we got married the following year. And basically I hung out a shingle as a arranger and composer and producer and I pretty much did that in the Central Kentucky area for about the next 15 years or so until it just got to the point and I you know, Nashville is not too far from Lexington where I was from, and so it's about a three hour three and a half hour drive. And I'll come back and forth and from the 90s into the 2000s. And finally, we moved to Nashville in 2005. It just made sense. At the time, independent music was becoming a thing it was it was in the 90s it was still everything was still music business as usual. The CDs were selling like crazy everybody every studio, every record label was reselling every music thing they'd ever recorded on vinyl or tape onto CD. And as the Nashville musicians will end session guys will say it was the days of mana and honey and money was just falling from the sky and triple scalar to hand over for just happening every day. And they were playing on the biggest albums and traveling On the biggest tours, and then the 2000s came, and we had 911, which was a big, a big effect on the industry in a lot of ways, but I was I had just started working in, in the studio as a studio as a full time studio person I had worked corporate in the 90s for a while, and, and even that I was doing multimedia stuff. But around 2001, I bought a company. As a matter of fact, I bought a company from another studio guy who owned and had a lot of clients and had a lot of ad clients for days before September 11. On September 11, I was doing a jingle session. And that was the last jingle I ever did. At least for a long while, I guess. But it but then what happened was 911 changed a lot of people's thinking they were like, I can't wait anymore, especially in my genre, because the genre that worked a lot in was in the Christian contemporary Christian genre, which is you know, very big in Nashville because that's where the that particular Christian Gospel is in Nashville next to country, sometimes in the same building. But anyway, I, I found that artists came out of the woodwork independent artists to start recording their own CDs. And this was not something that happened in the 90s as much because the players in Nashville and LA and everywhere they didn't have time for for loser independence. And there wasn't, if you were an indie, you were some punk band, or something like that, you know, scratching out tapes that you made in your basement or your hip hop artists who made tapes and sold them out of your trunk and stuff like that. But 2000s really represent a time in our music history, where everything exploded for anybody to do music. That was around that time iTunes came about and online music came about and speeds increased so that online music became a thing. And so I was just part of that I was luckily lucky, I was right in the right spot at the right time to be an independent music producer. And to make a living at it. And eventually that led me to Nashville because I was going back and forth there. And I knew that I needed better production sound. And my first session in in Cool Springs there, Franklin at a studio.

Dave Kropf: 12:39

I was going to ask if it was frankly Yeah, yeah, because I know that so much CCM grant

Eric Copeland: 12:44

would in Franklin are where are where most of the musicians live. Now. Some of them live in the some of them live all around Nashville but but that's where the majority of the students I worked with anywhere from Music Row out to Franklin basically, and in Brentwood as well, and but I My first one was at a studio called the sound kitchen, which was still is a very big studio with like seven different studios all with great big boards and great big tracking rooms. And they have one even called the Big Boy that had its own cook that you got if you booked it for the day, you got your lunch cooked for you and all this kind of stuff your own chef. So it was way bigger studio than you'd ever need for anything unless you're doing orchestra or something. But I started those kinds of things. And I started working in studios with a just happened to meet the right engineer. Everybody has a Nashville person that pulls them in everybody who's in Nashville, there's a few natives, but most people have somebody who said you need to come to Nashville and work and mine was an engineer named Ronnie Brookshire, who is a Grammy winner and just has worked on so many amazing things and he happened to be my champion and and became my engineer for the first five years for five years I was there and introduced me to all the top session players that were there and they just became available for my clients and my clients started coming from everywhere literally in the world to come to Nashville to record their albums not all in the Gospel thing I also do a lot of jazz and I got into recording a lot jazz artists from about 2008 on I started having jazz artists come in as well. And the occasional other things you know other other genres I have a reggae artists that I've worked with for like 20 years I have different different kinds of artists as we all do. You know if we're if you're a producer, you probably and you've done it for a living, you likely have a lots of different kinds of people you've worked with. Because you don't say no much. If you're an independent music producer, you say yes to everything you say yes to every music job. If you want to make a living So so so

Dave Kropf: 15:01

yeah, it sounded like things were we're really cooking, cooking along. I mean, again, living in Memphis, I knew all about the Nashville scene. Visible Music College where I taught was very closely related to Ardent Studios, in fact, of the owner of Ardent Studios was on the board of Visible and so like, I know exactly the scene you're talking about. And so it sounds like things were going really well. How did how did you get from I'm like hot and heavy in the studio scene in Nashville, arguably, if not the biggest, one of the biggest in the country studio scenes to where you are now, which is focusing on production in sync music.

Eric Copeland: 15:45

Well, over the the all of those years from 2005 to 2015, or 2016, those 11 ish years that I lived in Nashville, full time that we lived in a little town outside of Franklin even called Thompson station, but we're literally I could throw a rock and hit another producers house from my house he by I lived in a court with five houses and two of us were producers. He's also a Grammy winner and worked with Israel. Israel was always over if you know who Israel is, he is a Israel, Harry Newton, contemporary gospel artists. But anyway, there was always stuff going on. And we had been going to Disney World for our entire marriage, my wife and I and our kids since 95. And every year we were there, we would say, oh, wouldn't be great to live down here. Wouldn't it be great to live down here. So this was always the plan really, is to move down to this area. Even before we moved to Nashville, it was the plan. If it was up to my wife, we would have moved straight here versus moving to Nashville first. But we did move to Nashville for about 11 years. And that really set up great relationships with players that I still have and still use daily, including sessions and overdubs that they do for me and engineers that do work for me and singers that do work for me. And all those people are part of my days are part of my daily life. Still, I've got songs, emails coming in and out from them, as well as the people I work with now in sync. But in 2015, we moved here and right after I moved here, I had to go back and forth to Nashville a lot to do to kind of keep the business going. For the first few years. And on those trips, I would listen to podcasts. And on one podcast, I heard a lady talking. It was I think it was a CD Baby podcast, you know, they have their podcasts. And I think they were talking this lady from LA about the world of sync licensing, and about television, and about film and about advertising and how much those paid upfront, but also in the back end. And to me, I guess I had always known about that kind of music. I've had some connections to LA when I was early as a songwriter in the 90s but as more of a pop songwriter, but I always figured that world only existed in LA that you had to be there and live there to work in it similarly to a lot of ways a lot of people think that you have to live in Nashville to be a country artist, you can't you couldn't possibly live outside of Nashville and still be a country artists, they don't realize you can just go there and do the work and then leave, you know,

Dave Kropf: 18:36

right. It's not quite like being a film composer. I mean, I feel like film composers really need to live in Hollywood, or at least spend some some quality time.

Eric Copeland: 18:46

You gotta lay on the ground at some point to have meetings and do all those kinds of things. And I just assumed that all that kind of music that was being done for TV and stuff was only done there. And this podcasts proved otherwise anybody anywhere could be working with these libraries and be creating music and I am a big fan of creating music and putting it I had always my my, my life turned into becoming a music producer for other people. And another reason why I shifted into sync licensing is that my composing had taken a real big hit from being a music producer. When I first moved to Nashville, I was doing what I did in Kentucky, which was write everything, arrange everything, play all the instruments. And then when I got to Nashville, I slowly started giving all that up the the programming the drums, and of course real players were way better than anything I could do with MIDI. And and then eventually artists wanted what they wanted. They wanted their own stuff done so I became less of a composer. And that is that became a problem for me. Because I think of myself first as a composer and a songwriter. But mainly as a composer. So I made a change around 2017 2018 A lot of tumultuous things in my life happened then my mother passed away. And I just I plan to go forward. In Nashville, I went and finished my bachelor's at MTSU. And I plan to go forward in music history at when I moved down here at UCF. And I started that direction. But at the same time, I had decided to put all my chips into sync licensing, I thought, I thought that is the future of where I see music going. I've even seen Production Music and production clients and artists losing interest in being music artists, just because there's no more CD to sell. Of course, during COVID, there's no place to go play. But even before that, for a lot of the artists I work with, they were having trouble and most artists just aren't. They're not, they don't have the the hutzpah to get out there and find the bookings and do the bookings, that's just that takes a certain kind of person, only about 5% of artists will actually do that the rest is want to make a product and put it on Facebook and put it on Spotify.

Dave Kropf: 21:11

And you have and you have to do that long enough in order to get the attention of someone who will do it for you.

Eric Copeland: 21:17

So it just became an obvious answer that finding, knowing that I wanted to compose more, knowing that I had great songs from year touring for 20 years, that were great songs that I could do something with, and then finding this outlet of sync of licensing the songs to television and film. And then that became the kind of focus. And at first it was just a focus of making the music and starting to change my clients and my my players in Nashville and stuff into the thinking of licensing and they're still having trouble grasping that, because they're holding on with their fingernails, you know, as tightly as possible to the old world of sessions. And, and, and making money on a daily basis versus money that you can get later, spec work has always been a dirty word in Nashville, you know, and doing something to maybe get paid later. I never done that. I've never, I've never done spec work as a producer. I've never like said,"Oh, I'll produce your album. And then if you make it big, you could pay me back." That's no way to stay in business as a producer or any kind of business.

Dave Kropf: 22:30

Yeah, I mean, that doesn't...that seems like a very, feels like you as a producer are taking all the risk. Yeah, well, and that's because you still owe you still have rent. And you can still have bills to pay. So,

Eric Copeland: 22:44

so tight, just I just I we we came down here and eventually I just stopped going to Nashville, I stopped that whole chasing that. And I did what I've been wanting to do for 10 years. And that is I put all the production jobs in the engineers lapse, because all of them wanted to be producers at this point, and start making that producing massive fine, you work with the clients full time, I will be the big picture guy. From my label standpoint, I have a label called creative soul records. And it's been where our 25th year as a label since the mid 90s. And but it's a label that is more of like a a service company that does all the label type stuff for them. So videos and all that stuff. But

Dave Kropf: 23:28

so what are what are some of the what are some of the direct, like connections you've made between the work you did in a studio and as it applies, because I know, you know, as production music composers, we live so much of our world in the box MIDI virtual instruments. But what what I'm really interested in is what are some of the takeaways that you use from your experience and knowledge of studio into your production music?

Eric Copeland: 23:58

Well, it's the same really anything that you create, especially for CBS, or for a television show or a film or advertising. It has to be incredibly high quality. And I don't think most people who are getting into licensing these days realize this even even stock licensing, which we'll talk about here in a little while but the world of TV and film and advertising is highly competitive. You've got to come in with super highly polished work. It can't be just something you made on your keyboard with some sounds. I mean, I do know some people who are super talented and I know you are a person who does a lot of of yourself and so do I but we're we're better together and I'm better when I have a Nashville session guitarist, session drummer and session bass player on my arrangements. And that is all the production I look at all those production years as for a while I was Look at them as wasted, like I wasted all that time when I could have been staying in sync and working in that world. But really, the answer is I was preparing myself for to be ready for that, that career turn. And then when I went to get my masters, I mastered it, I decided to major in, are getting my master's in composition instead. And I talked to the school and we changed it. And that plus really just working with all the Nashville people using all that I had learned through all those Nashville years of how to create a quality production with those great engineers and great studios. And it's really more about the players and the engineers as the studios, as we've all learned, because now everybody works in their home.

Dave Kropf: 25:45

Yeah, it's not the room, it's the it's the it's the talent, with the tools, that's what really, really drives all of these productions, whether you're you're using a suite of plugins or whether you have a an analog signal,

Eric Copeland: 25:57

to be honest, the room is for the for the client is it's for the experience, it's not unless you need a specific drum sound, or you're recording orchestra, and you just need to be at Ocean Way. And recording in that room. Because that room has magic, you know, or big boy at, at at. That's a sound kitchen. And they actually had a big boy. It's factual size. But, you know, sometimes you do need that particular room space. But for the most part, you don't need that to record music. And but the players you do, you cannot replace or simulate 30 year veterans of the music business who have been on tour with some of the biggest names ever, and who have been every single day, working with other excellent musicians and sharpening iron versus iron on Iron every single day. There's no excuse, there's no replacement for that in the outside of the Nashville bubble. Now, Nashville is a bubble. And everyone who lives in it lives in that bubble that says, Oh, I live in Nashville. And so you know, it's why can't you just over there in Orlando just do this and that? Well. You can't and musicians aren't the same and people aren't the same experiences aren't the same studios? Yeah,

Dave Kropf: 27:24

we noticed that coming coming from Memphis you know, teaching at a at a music college, you were lousy with excellent musicians, like just everywhere. I mean, you had your your pick up excellent guitarists who knew like their pedal or who was skilled and, and especially with students who are like really hip on whatever was the latest trends. And then we come out here, and it's like, oh, I don't have like a bench three and four players deep, that I can call on to have like on my worship team, or on my session or whatever. Speaking of session. So do you still incorporate some of these Nashville, Nashville guys, either as players or as engineers? And if so, how do you compensate them? Do you write them into the royalties? Or do you just cut them a check and take like a loss on the upfront? How do you how do you what do you do to get those very talented people on your library?

Eric Copeland: 28:21

The answer is absolutely. I just downloaded some clips today from one of my guitarists to finish out a song and I'm working on a country album for one of my libraries right now. And we did a session in December right before Christmas, we did a session and recorded about six of the of the 10 songs there. Two of them have already been recorded. And both of those were recorded in Nashville as well. So yes, I do that the way I pay those musicians is either it's like a combination, sometimes we pay them and they just work for hire. They work under what Nashville calls the limited release it's a union thing but basically they work at the cheapest rate possible with a an understanding that there is not going to be more than 10,000 copies may now that's rather old language these days. That meant 10,000 singles or 10,000 albums. You know, nowadays, we think about that as 10,000 singles sold on on iTunes or I think about actually sent to singles Work nine cents, I think of it as $10,000. If more than $10,000 is made on stuff that these players played on you they should get extra payments, but many of them also work on work for hire contracts and singers do this all the time. We will pay them a little extra and they sign a work for hire. And then they are they're out of the loop after what they got paid no matter what happens with it no matter if it gets on a you know$250,000 Toyota commercial or something like that, you know, it doesn't matter. So up. But I also have partners, a lot of times who are clients who either want to do the singing, or they just want to be involved in a song that gets in the Music Library, and they become a part of 50% partner with me, and I will produce it. And they will pay the expenses a lot of times. And so that's a that's a good way for people to have a possible back in in their future. Because as an independent artists, there's not much back end in your future, especially with no radio, or no, Spotify is not going to bring a very long tail. So yes, I pay them. Now lately, some of them who are really into licensing and are starting to understand the the BMI ramifications of over the PR o ramifications of being involved in licensing those people who have been doing it for three or four years now. And every BMI day is starting to show be a lot bigger for them because they're getting stuff. There's a few musicians in Nashville that that I worked with that have started their own company that's tied with Sony BMG, and they have been in this for years, and these guys are killing it. And a lot of my players and a lot of my engineers work with them. And for them and singers too. And they work on, they're just piling stuff, hey, I think they have 10,000 things in their catalogue. I mean, it's huge. And they've been at this for a while. So the Nashville world is starting to warm up to the idea that yes, we need to be involved in licensing. And maybe we do need to be involved in the, in the writer side of of these arrangements. And or I can also write them into the sink side as well, you know, so yes, all of the above, basically,

Unknown: 31:42

I want to change gears just a little bit, and talk about your channel, which is make music income. And one of the things I like about your channel is it's very different from my channel, which is very lecture-y, kind of educational. I'm a teacher and you know, we're all kind of talking about this, like long form subject, I, I liken it more to like an episode of like a TED talk kind of kind of thing, or like a news article or news program, or PBS, you know, all things considered. It's kind of more like that, you know, right? Yeah. What I do, yeah. versus yours, which is, so it's focused on income, specifically and focusing primarily on sync music in sync. How do you define sync? And where are the edges of that? Because I know that we've talked about I think there's letters that really differ, I think there's a line and there has to be, there's two kinds of licensing music that I talked about on my channel. And they generally generally fall into two different areas, the world of television and film and lice and advertising and gaming. And I mean, by gaming in this side, I mean, big time gaming, EA Sports or things like that, you know, the big time PlayStation games and stuff like that. There's other things that would be in that area. But these are things that generate very large licenses, payouts of four figure payouts to six figure payouts to seven figure payouts, you know, type of things, they pay, they pay a sync license up front, and or they pay a PR o payment in the back. To me that's what sync licensing is. That's what you do. You're really only involved in so far in my terminology sync licensing or Production Music Library. But see, that starts to blur when you talk about some of the other kinds of libraries there are, which on the other side of this is the world I call stock music licensing. And a lot of people online call it stock music licensing. And this is music that could possibly be used in film or advertising or things like possibly, and probably is more than we would know. You know, I bet there are TV people and movie people and stuff, finding stock stuff and using it more than then we want to know. But generally, That's music to go behind your YouTube channel, my YouTube channel, anybody who's a YouTuber who doesn't do music, and they just need music playing while they're talking and telling you know and doing their videos, or it's someone's doing a nature video and they need music go behind that someone's doing a corporate presentation, they need music to go behind that. I call that stock music licensing. And I see those. And I've had to really divide between the two and say, Okay, this work I'm doing today is for my sync libraries. And that's really where I'm probably more focused, especially this year. Last year, I did the whole experiment with Bach music and I got an income up to 300, 400, 500 dollars a month, which is nice. It's car payment plus, you know, and it's by putting a bunch of non exclusive songs in a bunch of libraries for. And you could put all the same songs in all the libraries, because they're all non exclusive. So versus the sync side of things, which is often exclusive, like I are all your library deals that you have. Exclusive,

Dave Kropf: 35:25

all but all but one are

Eric Copeland: 35:28

exclusive. So, you know, I, I'm all my sync libraries are exclusive as of now, and I do have some non exclusive library deals. And then I have all these stock libraries. So I see those as very as very helpful. And, and however, it has taken a big hit in the past two months, because one of the larger ones that we work with a library called motion array, changed their payout structure in January. And so that has, has taken a hit and the downloads that people are getting, it's a subscription library. So people pay night pay 20 bucks, or 30 bucks a month, and they can download as much as they want music, video, stock photos, all that kind of stuff. And a lot of libraries are going to this model now. But that means there's a kidney that gets divided up between all the composers. And that has been drastically decreased. This started in January.

Dave Kropf: 36:26

Any reason why that they were

Eric Copeland: 36:27

bought by a company last year, and a similar company, except a different kind of non exclusive library company called Art list. And I can only assume that I mean, it's none of our business, their business, they can do whatever they want. And I can only assume it was just a correction of from how they were paying artists that they had to make for their business. I don't know. So but this happens all the time. It's a very volatile market. And I mean, really all licensing is volatile. I mean, CBS could call tomorrow and say guess what? We're done. We're retiring. I

Unknown: 37:04

mean, I've had I've had royalty sta tements that which were 41 cents, I've had a royalty statement, which is five figures. So and everything in between volatile...?

Eric Copeland: 37:15

Well, it's the same in this except worse, because these are companies that just decide on a dime to change their structure to close their doors to new authors to change their whole system around how you have to do it, and how much time it takes you to put stuff up there. And unlike libraries where say, they say, Okay, here's what we need, we need stems with the Master, we need instrumental, blah, blah, blah, and they tell you what they need you deliver it, these places can change that, what they decide from month to month, or from year to year. And so I think what's going to have to happen, and I'm just jumping right into stock here, if that's okay. But what's going to have to happen for stock music, composers and producers, if you're a person watching this is you still have to do all the libraries as much as you can, you have to find the ones that work for your music, everyone is different. We're all different composers. Just because your library likes your stuff doesn't mean they like my stuff. And it's the same in in the stock world. Just because one library likes what I do. It doesn't mean they're going to accept songs from other people. And or those songs aren't going to do good on that library. So what we have to do is, one thing that is has been going around in our Discord is is the people who are joining up with companies that collect Content ID money, which is YouTube monetization. And so basically, if you don't know what this is, it's just like a software AI that goes out and searches through YouTube songs and finds out who the music belongs to and make sure that author is paid for that music.

Dave Kropf: 38:56

You talked about this on your episode 11. I think of your podcast you cover and well, we'll have

Eric Copeland: 39:01

we just talked about this in this way. Oh, you're talking about the podcast. Yeah. And you were granted, we're really just going to start experiment. I've stayed out of content ID for a lot of reasons. Those reasons were I didn't want to lose the money that I was making on stock from this one library. And now that's been cut more than half. So I've got to monetize in a different place. It's like saying, I have stuff in TV and film, but I'm not with a PR Oh, you know, I better get with a PRO to get that collection. Because

Dave Kropf: 39:35

yeah, otherwise the money's just gonna sit there and eventually gets reabsorbed back into what entities all right

Eric Copeland: 39:40

because for the most part stock is way different than sync because stock only is upfront. You only get paid for what you sell that month. There is no back end which is

Dave Kropf: 39:48

what Yeah, which is why I had a hard time well I don't recommend it to my students, you know at Full Sail. I don't...I don't...I show them stock. But you know, one of the things that I'm looking to teach them how to create a sustainable living. And I've dabbled in stock, I am a pond five artist I was, you know, back when I tried and I put some things up there, but very little, very little bites. And the way I like to think of it is like you are a needle in a stack of needles in a lot of those needles have been there, a lot of those other needles have been there a long time, and they just dominate the marketplace. I've heard stories of successful composers,

Eric Copeland: 40:28

well, it's changed. That was a that was a five or three or four or five years ago thing, those stories. I think now, with the subscription libraries, I pay Envato elements, which is the subscription library, because I do videos all the time for my clients. And for myself, and I need stock video, I need stock photos. And I can download as much as I want for 24.99. And I pay that every month and I get as much as I want. I could also get stock music by the way off those channels as much as I want. But I usually just use my own. But that that is an attractive thing for a creator, why would you want to pay $40 for a song, when you could pay 24.99 and have as many songs you want, if you're creating a lot of things. And I think the model has shifted so much plus, the big problem with pond five or audio jungle, which are the two biggies in in stock licensing is that they're so huge, right? Like you said, there's 2 million files in their house, someone's going to file, find yours, I have 200 songs in pond five and still barely make a sale a month or so well,

Dave Kropf: 41:35

and even more importantly, there's nobody at pond five, taking your music and trying to find homes for it, it's a marketplace. Whereas with when you're with a library, a good library knows their music, and will actively work with you to help find homes for your music because they're your equal partner in this. And

Eric Copeland: 41:57

yeah, it's it's basically putting it up there and hoping somebody finds it by a search. It's not much different than hoping someone find your website by by searching for find your YouTube channel by searching for it. If you're a new YouTuber, and you're just putting stuff up for the first time, you're hoping someone is searching for the video that you're making. Same thing with the music that you're putting up to the stock libraries. The difference with subscription ones is that since people can download as much as they want the odds that they're going to download your music and find your music are better. And some of the libraries do do staff picks where they'll pick songs, and some of us have been lucky enough to have our songs be picked for that first page. And if you're on the first page, obviously you have a better chance to be seen and the 35th page. So and then it's a matter of good tagging, it's a matter of good describing your songs, it's a matter of making good songs, it's a matter of making versions that people need, like a loop version or a 32nd version or whatever. So it's a game. And it's a but what we found is now we're having to look into content, ID to monetize the back end, which there is now because these people are using it on YouTube, then and lazily not even monetizing their own videos, or maybe they're not a channel that's big enough to monetize their videos. And so that music is just sitting on their channel getting hundreds 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of views millions of views, which would pay the composer that that song is in money through one of these companies that collects that content, Id money. So now we've decided that it's time to jump into that whether we want to or not, because people can go through any of those libraries and say, I don't want the ones that deal with content ID because I don't want to have to pay them for monetization, or I don't want the ones that are part of BMI because I don't want to have to pay BMI if my thing is, is, you know, in there, and there are libraries that don't allow BMI composers, there are libraries that don't allow Content ID composers there, you know. So all of that exists. And so I think this year, what the I'm getting ready to I have a video coming up on my channel in a couple weeks called the five new things that I'm trying this year to make music income and one of those is the content ID experiment. So we'll we'll know better in a year. Taxi is I'm in my year to have my taxi experiment. And you know, at the end of this year, I'll have another taxi really reveal to do to say, hey, here's here's how I did or didn't do and if and if it's and if I do what I was supposed to do, which is, you know, put 50 to 60 songs 50 to 100 songs up to taxi over this year, and get a couple forwards and no library action or referrals. Then I'll have to stop. You know I'll have to move on from that experiment into the next thing.

Dave Kropf: 44:51

We're getting close to being to being out of time here. But before we go, I wanted to check in with you as far as the other things that you have going on, I know MC music income takes a lot of your bandwidth on top of you know, being, you know, a composer. But I know that you you do the podcast with Steve from Production Music Academy and you have you always, it seems like you always have a lot of little irons in the fire. So what are some of the other projects you have

Eric Copeland: 45:19

going on my main income is actually still producing clients or being a record label for clients, doing consulting and coaching for clients on Zoom, and or now I'm starting to coach a lot of composers who want to get into stock who want to get into sync, and they want to figure out how to get their, their composing and producing chops up. And so I will have them, you have a lot of people who are trying to start creating this, this music for licensing, and here's why I think you should consider just for brief commercial, why you should consider not dissing stock too much to students and to new composers is because it's a good training ground. It's a good training ground for your compositions, it's a good training ground for your productions, to see if they are up to snuff. And because a lot are not ready to go to st TOS to licensing companies, and you can get way better by being in communities or at least putting stuff up and getting rejected by taxi or getting rejected by Pong five, what's hard to do. But work by getting rejected by someone like motion array, which is a hire an audio jungle, they have pretty higher standards. And you can learn a lot from that. So it's a good training ground. So I work with a lot of people on how they can improve their their productions and their programming. And there are again, from a producer point of view, I'm not getting into their EQ. And if you only use this bandwidth, it'd be better because I'm a producer, not an engineer. But I do a lot of of course, writing and composing is what I try to do mostly, if it's a week, and I've been working too much on video stuff or interviews for the channel, or I've been doing too much client work, or I've been doing videos for other clients. And I do that for clients as well as part of my work. I do their websites, I do their videos, I do their social media site setups, I do their distribution to see the baby or distro kid or whatever, I do a lot of that for people as part of my label. So that's, that's my full sail. At this time, I'm looking to bring teaching into replace some of that if not all of that as because I love the coaching part, but I don't like the doing all the stuff part. And I'm I would give it all the way tomorrow if I didn't have to do it and could just direct all that. Because I'm a good multitasker and a good organizing person for all these artists and writers and producers. So I love the coaching part. And because it's teaching basically, and I'm looking to do more teaching, I'm looking to do stuff like a school like Full Sail first, certainly. And then also, I'm doing some private teaching, individual teaching starting this week. And that's looking to be something that's going to be taking a lot of my time. So it's then it's going to be Yeah, okay, I get up at seven and I have till six, how do I feel all those hours and I have to really be careful right now, I have five days a week, if not some other days where it's just me and my wife on the weekends. And she's working on her computer. And then I'm working here. But I try, I want to get to the point where I work Monday through Friday, I've always had six as a cut off even in Nashville that was a cut off for me with clients. And so I try to do that as best as possible. But my goal is, is to just do all these things, all these music, things I talk, I preach about it on my channel all the time, all the music things hashtag and we need to really just do all those things. Because if you don't have a lot of irons in the fire, you're going to have to have another job paying the bills. And but

Dave Kropf: 49:12

in that one of those irons might as at least be music--even tangentially--music related I would rather do that than work retail Yeah, or something which I've done, but I could. So if people want to if sorry if people want to get in touch with you how how how amongst all of the the channels and everything. How can they reach I guess

Eric Copeland: 49:33

for the purposes of this, they would just go to make music income.com which is my website, or youtube.com/make Music income. Those will be the best ways for people to track down what I'm saying what I'm talking about. We have a great discord that you've joined recently and we have a lot of great conversations in there and that's always in the descriptions of all my videos, but on maybe is getting comm they can email me personally through the QA Contact thing there. I have many other companies that are I'm creative soul records.com, which is for artists, I have positive spin songs, which is for sync, you know, from the moment music, which is for stock. So all of those exists. But probably the easiest is just to go with the make music income and come there, especially if you're interested in learning more about how to make income from the music, things that you do. That's what we talked about.

Dave Kropf: 50:28

Right? Well, Eric, thank you. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. And like I said, together, we are better. And I think the more we can hear from from folks like you in the industry, doing their things, but with different perspectives, then that's only going to make you a stronger composer towards be able to make a sustainable living, making music wherever, wherever you are on the journey. Of course, that's what you know, that's what 52 cues, is, is all about. Now, obviously, we'll have all of the links and everything in the show notes and in the description. So if you're driving, don't, don't stop or anything. Just go on your phone. It's there for you. Don't Don't go on your phone. Don't touch your phone. Well, Eric, thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate it. Once again, a huge thank you to Eric Copeland from making music and calm again. Good. Go subscribe to his channel. Do it do it right now. It's absolutely fantastic. And like I said, the podcast is great, right Discord server. And so and Eric lives here in Central Florida. I think we're maybe like 20 or 30 minutes apart. And so we've had we've had lunch together. And by the way, we need to do that again. And we need to we need to break bread once again. Maybe, maybe I have you come over to the house and I'll grill up some of my world famous barbecue wings for you. But we will we'll make that happen. We'll make that happen. For sure. We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to be checking out an epic orchestral Hip Hop tension cue written by 52 cues community member Alan Moore.

Shannon Kropf: 52:04

Hey, y'all, I'm Shannon Kropf. And I want to tell you that the 52 cues podcast is made possible by viewers and listeners just like you, composers and producers who are looking for a better way to connect and collaborate. You see 52 cues isn't just another website selling static pre recorded videos to a mass audience. It's a fun, vibrant and positive community that comes together online for sharing cues, getting feedback and discussing what's up in the production music industry. You'll find both personalized feedback and live interaction which are the best and fastest ways to grow your skills and earn more placements. The best part is that the 52 cues community is absolutely free. And when you're ready to take your career to the next level, we offer friends and family subscriptions which unlocks weekly live streams, live interactive group feedback sessions, monthly interactive workshops and more. Head over to 50 to cues.com and sign up today. And while you're there, check out our personalized feedback videos, private lessons, and of course, merch I can't wait to see you at 52 cues.com

Dave Kropf: 53:11

And that was past tense by Alan Moore. First of all, thank you so much for sending this along. He submitted this for our week 24 weekly feedback thread. Oh, right. 52 cues. And so thank you so much for sending this along. You know, I have a super soft space in my heart for, for orchestral, epic orchestral, hip hop type cues like this. And one of the things that I really wanted to talk about was this cue. It's a question that actually came up somewhat recently is, can you change keys in a queue? And typically, the answer is no, dot dot dot astericks. Right. So So in general, Production Music needs to be in the same key. And so with tension music and light tension, music, and and, and like ukulele, happy clappy, whatever, typically, it all needs to stay in the same key. However, there are a handful of, of sub genres or moods or emotions that can kind of get away with it, one of one that comes to mind is dramat EQs, you can kind of get away with many more harmonic shenanigans in dramedy because that that Angular cord, cord cord movement actually adds to the quirkiness of it. Similarly, with some certain types of tension music, especially a cue like this, you can get away with chord changes or not chord changes, key changes, because it's those key changes that help add to the suspense and the intensity. So as the cue progresses, that that that ramping up of energy that, that twisting the knife of tension gets accomplished by adding some key changes. And so, so I think that's really, really a good strategy. I feel like we might have veered a little too far here. By the end, by the time we get to the intersection here, I feel like we're a little we're I'm going to fast forward kind of into this last act, if you will. So we're kind of in the same key. So we're good. I think this is all really working harmonically. Then we do something here that, that that there, that feels like some some unstable harmonic motion here at the end that I'm not sure I'm not sure we need. I think we can sort of go back in my, in my mind, it happened a little a little bit more than I thought about let me clear my little pencil here. I thought I have a little bit more looks like it sounds like it just happened that one time and so. So yeah, I don't know maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong there. But but you do a really good job of using the key changes to push, push the tension forward. I think this is all really working. I think we need to work on the low end of our mix, feels like it's a little a little muddy kind of maybe if I'm guessing around 500 hertz four to 500 hertz or so. Just carve out that low end because it's feeling really kind of boomy. And it's probably those big impacts might be the drums the like taiko drums I will say that the hip hop drum pattern that we have feels a little little repetitive which is cool, it really really works. But if it feels kind of like a loop throughout the whole thing great layering here adding adding octaves above it job building building Alright, so we were pulling the energy back a little bit into the key change, let's add some kind of Arizer some kind of energy bill that helps kind of push energy into that key change and it could be a cymbal swell it could be you know, a white noise riser or something I'm gonna back it up just a little bit here. So could have done this right. The brass stabs I would do just like one octave the first time through and then layer on And they feel a little thin unlike the beginning where we had our low end kind of a little bit of out of control I don't feel like there's enough flow into these brass steps they feel a little out and and if you're going to pull the energy back, even further shot right so we're kind of doing this right I think this is all working Yes. Working wasn't working nice riser risers shot. All right, so So we're pulling back the energy I would bring bring riser into kind of a vacuum moment I guess. Oops, let me turn that off. I don't know why I let me back that up which which we kind of have we might just need a reverse sound effect and I think that's a running a running commentary is I think we could use more transitional elements, little risers in sweeps at these phrase points and so we're back to some of the mixing issues that we had at the beginning of the mix here. And I would layer on top of that I wouldn't pull energy back because previously might be those big drum hits. Feels like we pulled those drum hits back when we go forward a little bit and here's here's where the drum loop is really sounding. The drum loop is really sounding repetitive and I think also it needs and could benefit from some 16th Note energy you know it could be as simple as you know, a shaker I've got plenty of little eggs you know here if you don't have an egg, you can always just make a shaker This is a if you're listening to this on the podcast, you may have to hit the YouTube to see this but if you're watching the YouTube this is a tic tac bottle with kosher salt in it right so you don't have to have you know, expensive gear or anything or just get a Tylenol or some lentils and I'm not sure we need we need another edit point we have that at this point and we do something very similar setting that section up and so not to not have an edit point. I think having an another edit point is okay, but it seems like it's the same mechanism that we did previously. Just a thought and so we're pulling energy back again. I like the giving it to the Celli I get those brass or too loud. Don't dig that. In and I don't think you need that high like piccolo trumpet. Wow, like lips hanging out the end of the bell type trumpet? No, I don't think he necessarily need that. And now that I've listened to it, again, I think this whole section here at the end just needs to be rising energy or it's like leave it all on the table. Give them a really big Big Bang ending. And that will get the job done. And hopefully, hopefully, you know, get a placement or appeal to an editor because there's a lot going right with this queue. I can absolutely see this on some kind of cooking show, you know, or you know, some countdown type of a show where you know contestants are competing. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. So thank you, Alan more so much for sending this along. As I mentioned, this was a he submitted this into last week's feedback thread, we post feedback threads every week, that and composers and members of the community post their cues. And they give feedback and they receive feedback. And it's one of the main aspects of what we do here at 52 cues. So we'd love to see you at the community over the community, head over to 52 cues.com and click on Join Now. And we'd love to have you it's free to join and we do have other you know, subscription tiers and if you want to, if you're looking to kind of push your career forward, you know, out of just kind of watching YouTube videos, you know, like you're doing here, if you're wanting to maybe take some next steps into the into cultivating your own sustainable career in production music, then then yeah, see what see what's right for you, maybe the friends or family, if you just want to, to kind of toss a coin to the YouTuber, then you can head check us out over at PATREON would absolutely love to have you. But once again, a huge thank you to the family, friends and patrons of the 52 cues community who helped keep all of this going. Thank you so very much. I want to take a moment, you know, if you're watching this, and just watch their names fly by at a nearly unreadable pace at the end of today's video just to recognize their contributions to keeping things going here, but I think that's going to do it for me this week. I really, really loved having you. And so excited about the community where it's going and what we've been doing. And I'm trying to remember what next week's topic is, Oh, next week, it's topic as of today is never say, never the two words that you need to remove from your vocabulary as a working production music composer and that is always and never so you want to stick around for that. But that's going to do it for me today. Thank you so very much. I hope you had a great week. I hope you have a stellar and productive weekend and I look forward to talking to you next time until then. Peace. The 52 cues podcast is copyright 2020 to Dave Kropf. All rights reserved. The music played on the podcast is copyright of their respective owners and is used for educational purposes only. For more information including joining the 52 cues community and submitting your cue for consideration on the podcast head over to 50 to cues.com