How to Produce Music for Commercial or Video Use

Learning how to produce music can open up the doors to an exciting career. But, it’s not always easy to get started.

When you’re first starting out, you may have trouble getting people to purchase or license your music. With the help of a few simple tricks, you can learn how to produce music for commercial or video use.

You can learn how to target people that need music for their video projects. This can include a wide range of video projects. Everything from educational videos to corporate training videos requires some type of background music to make the video more enjoyable.

While you may not get your music to appear in a major movie or television show, you can start making a reasonable income by licensing your music for commercial use. Here are a few steps to help point you in the right direction.

Start with Instrumental Music

Creating music with a universal appeal is easier if you remove the vocals from the track. So, if you want to get started with commercial music production, you should focus on instrumental music and beats.

Background music won’t typically include vocals. Regardless of the genre of music that you produce, you should leave the vocals out for now.

Orchestral music is a popular genre, as it works well in the background. The following video provides a few tips for creating commercial-quality orchestral music using FL Studio 11. If you use a different digital audio workstation, you could still pick up a few useful tips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDaNs3AMWIg

Orchestral music remains the most popular form of background music for commercial use. But, it’s not your only option. Hip-hop beats are also popular. Bass and drum tracks work well in the background for a wide variety of purposes – including dramatic or tense scenes in a video production.

Create a Wide Variety of Tracks

Next, you should begin building up a large collection of tracks. Each track should be different. The idea is to present a diverse selection of sounds, to appeal to a larger group of people.

If you don’t care as much about the genre, then you should explore multiple styles. Create music for different genres to increase your chances of selling music.

You should also create a variety of long and short tracks. Some people may only need 10 seconds of music, while others need a 10-minute track to play in the background.

The needs will vary based on the demands of the project. To appeal to a wider audience, you should have a mixture of long and short tracks.

Keep Your Tracks Simple

You don’t want to include too many sounds in your track. You want to keep it simple. Remember, most of these tracks will be used in the background for video use. They shouldn’t overpower the scene. Instead, they are used to enhance the scene.

Sometimes, if a song doesn’t sound quite right, it will help if strip it down and remove a few elements.

Limit the number of instruments that you include. Don’t get too fancy with a variety of sounds and changes. The track should have a similar vibe from beginning to end.

Always Sit on Your Music Before Uploading

While you should have a variety of tracks available for people to use for commercial use, you don’t want to include a large variety of crap. You want to offer quality music. If you’ve got 100 songs for people to sample and 10% of the songs are garbage, then you’ll miss out on opportunities to license your music.

Before you upload your music, you should sleep on it. The next day, listen to your track from beginning to end. You need to take a break from a project before you consider it done.

This also applies to the production process. This is similar to how a painter paints. They’ll apply several brush strokes and take a step back. If you’re going to spend a few hours working on a song, you should take a break every 30 minutes. Step back from your music.

When you work nonstop, it’s hard to hear your music clearly. You need to step away occasionally and come back to your work.

Get Other People to Listen to Your Music

Feedback is necessary if you’re going to improve your music production skills. You should definitely get other people’s opinions of your music.

Uploading some of these tracks to YouTube or SoundCloud could help provide feedback. Pay attention to the comments that people leave and use this to fine-tune your sound.

You could also get friends or family to listen to your music. Keep in mind that everyone has different tastes. Also, most of the music that you’ll be producing is meant for background use – not casual music listening.

Submit Your Music to Royalty-Free Sites

At first, you may have trouble getting people to license your music for commercial use. It will help to build up a resume. So, to boost your career, offer your music for free.

Submit your music to royalty-free sites. These are websites where people will go to find free background music for commercial use.

This helps you get your music out there and also provides you with a chance to gain valuable feedback. You may also receive requests for specific types of music from people that have used and enjoyed the tracks that you’ve offered.

Final Thoughts on Producing Music for Commercial Use

As with any career, producing music for commercial use will require dedication. You’ll need to improve your craft. You should devote an hour or two to music production several days per week.

Set goals for yourself. For example, you could plan on producing one new instrumental track or beat per week. Try to complete one track that you can upload each week so that you can begin building your online collection of music for commercial use.

Producing music for commercial use is a great way to start fine-tuning your music production skills. In addition to these tips, if you’d like more advice on making money through music production, then register for our upcoming webinar on selling your own music.

Source: ArtistPR Music Production