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Today I have the pleasure of sharing with you a conversation I had with Jonathan Parks of Alibi Music. Alibi has been such a great resource for me over the years and I know many of you are interested in writing music for libraries.
In our conversation, Jonathan covers how:
- diverse the music library landscape is
- you don’t have to live in LA to be successful in sync
- “library” music is good music, first and foremost
- you can work with Alibi
Let’s get to it:
TT – Tell us a little about yourself and Alibi.
JP – I’ve been licensing music for just about 20 years now. Started a library for a commercial music house in 2004 and left to start ALIBI in 2011. ALIBI is a large independent catalog of music that has licensed music and sound design to every major film marketing campaign in the last 10 years, thousands of commercials & promos, and many scripted and unscripted shows. We have a roster of 350 composers/artists in 21 countries and work directly with clients around the world.
TT – Describe the process of writing for a library.
JP – It’s not always exactly the same. Generally we’ll select composers/artists we work with to commission pieces of music and songs based on requested or foreseen needs for the clientele of ad agencies, trailer houses, networks, and production companies. The writers will produce tracks based on notes and references and our producers will give notes to get the music to its maximum potential of emotion, production quality, and structure.
TT – What is something we wouldn’t typically know about library music?
JP – I believe 40% of the music heard on television is “library” music. There is not really a norm unless we’re speaking about a very specific type of production in a very specific medium (trailers, commercials, shows, etc). We’ve licensed trailer music to donut commercials, whistling ukulele happy commercial music for trailers… trailer music isn’t just what everyone thinks of as “trailer music” though that is an obvious genre, you can hear our mariachi, hip hop, pop, elevator music etc in hundreds of well known trailers. Which is true for any other video production type as well.
TT – How does someone get to work with Alibi? Anyway to stand out?
JP – ALIBI’s always taken the Steve Martin approach of “be so good they can’t ignore you”. While we do this in so many different ways in what we do, the most important way is by working with composers/artists that are so good that we can’t pass up reaching out to them when we hear their work. Work that shows that they understand and put in the time and energy to mastering the craft of writing/producing outstanding music, and writing/producing outstanding music for licensing needs – which in my opinion are the same thing.
TT – How would our readers go about submitting their music to Alibi?
JP – People can submit their music here: [email protected]
I hope you enjoyed getting a direct link to one of the top music libraries. Here are some of my own key takeaways to remember about working with music libraries:
- They need every kind of music: from 1920s Jazz to Bluegrass, you can spread your wings creatively.
- The deals are typically buyouts for the particular songs you give them, so you’re not locked into an overall publishing deal.
- You still keep your writers share.
- It is one more part of your revenue stream arsenal as a musician, music producer or artist and can even help fund your artist project.