Do you want to know what it takes get paid to write and produce music for TV? 

I've been doing it for 21 years, make 6 figures+, and want to show you everything I know in my private membership. 

Click the video to learn more:

You are learning how to produce music. Great start!

Dear fellow composer, producer, songwriter:

Would you like an insider's look at what it takes to write and produce music for TV?

So you probably have a hard drive full of unheard songs, or unfinished ideas. And you don’t know what to do with them, right?

You may have taken a course on how to write pop songs, and got excited that you finally finished few songs in a month! Right? Great! I bet your Mom loves it!

Now what?

Does anyone make money with music anymore?

Is Spotify the thing? Doesn’t seem like it, from all the griping I’ve heard about teeny payouts.

Do you need 5 million fans or a giant YouTube channel? So you JUST need to get a few million views on your videos and YouTube will send you checks? Okay, THAT seems like quite an undertaking.

I have like 210 subscribers. On the videos on other channels with my most popular songs on YouTube, people always thank the channel owner for uploading great music. okay, thanks?

I knew nothing about TV music.

I was a rosy-cheeked 20-something, moving to Los Angeles with the promise of a publishing deal waiting for me.

Let me spare you the sad details, but they include the deal falling apart, and years of soul-sucking temp jobs, delivering documents and driving my wife's car into the ground, and assembling furniture. 

HELLO DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND <insert sobbing sounds>

I had this naïve idea.

What if I could make some extra money doing instrumental music for something like TV, while I'm trying to get together a demo that will knock a new publisher off it's feet?

Okay, as if you can just snap your fingers and start making money on the side. Let's hear it for youthful exhuberance and Grade-A ignorance of how things work.

I was just thinking of how much harder it is to write a song, write lyrics, get a singer over, play engineer while they sing the same line 20 times, shop to publishers.

Hey, I'll just use my little home studio to write instrumental stuff and find a home for it!

Oh, Todd, you poor, dumb child.

HOWEVER... me not knowing any better is exactly why I thought it was a spectacular idea to randomly pick a handful of publishers out of a BOOK (those are sheets of paper with info printed on them, bound together in a volume OR SO I'M TOLD) and MAIL off demos (the mail is a service that delivers actual non-digital items OR SO I'M TOLD).

Sometimes I like to say that Fate was simply taking pity on me, sad that my dreams fell apart and I was driving around Los Angeles, assembling furniture from IKEA and Staples and drowning my sorrows in Popeye's Fried Chicken.

CUT TO: I start working with a few publishers.

I had no idea of the potential of this thing. I was still focused on being a big shot songwriter and producer. I cringe now at the idea that I was almost "looking down" on this music library thing.

I could've missed out on the Whole Enchilada.

After all, I had left Nashville in a Blaze of Glory, a publishing deal waiting for me in LA LA Land, I had hung out in Babyface's Beverly Hills mansion with Toni Braxton (kids, they were HUGE in the mid 90's), other recording artists like Jon B and El DeBarge, hanging out at the sweet recording studio of my future publishers on Beverly Drive...and this was shortly after coming off the road from a tour PLAYING TROMBONE with a country music star, ending with an epic New Year's eve gig in Las Vegas. I was flying high.

I had momentum and hope and I just KNEW that I was gonna hear my songs on the radio and be pimping a sweet ride and buying my wife WHATEVER SHE FREAKING WANTS.

and make my parents proud

and no longer struggle

SO...I had a hard time letting go...

But of What? This was just about the time of the rise of Napster (google it) and digital file sharing. 

The Record Business didn't see IT coming.

They were trying to stop the future. The time of digital distribution and streaming was on it's way, like a slow rising tide, and they were going 'pew pew' with lawsuits, fighting a flood with buckets.

and so..the Record Business starting falling apart, my friends who were successful writers and producers eventually all lost their place as things were kind of shaking down and budgets crumbled.

Right around this time, Fall of '98, I was in NY, co-producing a song with a male R&B group on Motown..and that same month I got my first placement on TV, a talk show.

I didn't know it yet...but this was a giant Fork-In-The-Road.

Here's a very quick wrap up:

Even though I watched them shoot the music video on the salt flats out in the California desert, and I was envisioning my phone ringing off the hook... they decided to go with a different single. and basically no one knew my song existed. I didn't get the co-producing credit. I was listed simply as some dude who programmed the drums and keys.

I wrote for about another year or so with one of the co-writers of that song...that fizzled...okay, ended on a sour note.

So between the record biz both fading and screwing me over for the last time....and my quarterly payments from TV placements going up every quarter...

Yeah, I finally GOT IT. 

TV Music libraries are a legit thing. shows need music, and one day I called one of my publishers and said "Hey...so...what if I gave you more music? What do you need?"

I had a glimpse of the future, the possibilities. Of course it didn't hurt that he told me one of his top writers was making over $10,000 a month.

About January, 2000, Y2K, my then ASCAP check showed up. It was $9,000 for the quarter, or about $3,000 per month to live on for 3 months. I needed just about $3,000/month to live. HOLY. CRAP. My expenses were covered until the next quarterly check. I WAS OFFICIALLY A FULL TIME COMPOSER. This was a special milestone for me, for sure. I was beaming with happiness, overwhelmed with relief. It was suddenly possible to envision $10k/mo checks.

Now, these days, if I don't make at least $10,000 a month, I'm kinda screwed. Life in LA in a house with 2 hungry teenagers is no joke.

NOW, disclaimer. I'm not here to be your agent or some kind of middle man. I am here to show you everything I know about the TV music library business, including what kind of music gets placed, what it sounds like, and show you step-by-step how I do it.

If my name and my music were erased from the minds and hard drives of publishers and editors and music supervisors by some evil comic book Super Villain...well, that would suck...

BUT..I would be okay.

Having the ability to write and produce all of these styles I've honed over the years, being able to create music that's in demand... and deliver that in crisp 24-bit, 48K and ready to broadcast..

It's my Super Power.

I could start again, rebuild. make relationships. My music would make a way. Within a year of making 5-10 tracks a week, I would have hundreds of new tracks out there, like little yellow Minions, working on my behalf. Fortunately, this Super power can be carried out not in skin-tight brightly colored spandex, but at at home, quite possibly in underpants. Your Welcome, Entire Universe that has eyeballs.

and so...Is that enough about me...because I feel like that's really just quite enough about me.

HOW ABOUT YOU?

• would you like to understand what it takes to get your music on TV?
• did you know there's a place for ALL kinds of music out there, in promos, in trailers, on TV? and it has nothing to do with having 100,000 Spotify followers?
• did you know that ready-for-broadcast music can be created in hours, not days?

  ---

I'm asking because, well, I didn't know.

In another video, I ask "Did you know there's music on talk shows?", because when I first told friends what I was doing. several pretty much said "There's music on talk shows?"

A little perspective on music education prices

Now, I'm not saying Production Music Club is the same as a 4-year degree...but I'm saying this will be truly educational and eye-opening, and taught by a full-time working composer/ producer/ songwriter, and real-world tools, with real-time experience backing up everything I teach.

Also, I'm feeling a little silly about my prices right now.

Most people have heard of Full Sail University. 

ouch

CSU Northridge is considered a bargain.

bro

NYU Tisch School of The Arts

dude

Where do you have music, Todd?

Here's a sampling of trailer albums, trailers, and TV shows I've had music on.

OR you could just keep doing what you're doing...

you could just go back to doing your thing, going it alone, wondering what to do with your music.

For the price of Production Music Club, you could just keep getting that weekly Grande Latte Mocha Frosty Frothy Half-Caff Something Frappuccino at Starbucks, or one weekly meal at McDonalds or Taco Bell, and literally see that money go down the toilet (sorry).

Most likely this will NOT do much for your music - or your career. Money quite literally going down the...drain. #boo #hiss

I bet that you spend way more than the friendly price of PMC on random things each month, and you have no idea where it went.

Odds are you have spent more than a year’s worth of Production Music Club membership fees on one single sound library and have barely used it. Ouch. Oh trust me I have done the same, and worse. Multiple times. It hurts.

Take back a little control and steer this ship! You are WORTH it. People are learning and growing in here.