There’s been lots of confusion in the library composer world about this whole thing. I’m not 100% up to speed on the whole thing, but I’ll add my 2c to the discussion, FWIW.

So here’s my take on the composer’s union:

It’s really oriented to the composers who score films and tv shows. The producers are doing more package deals where all the production costs come out of the composer’s fee, which is the entire music budget. Yet the producers want fully realized demos (because they have no imaginations for music), which take a team of assistants working around the clock to do due to the extremely strenuous deadlines. And they want some live players, which also comes out of the composer’s package payment. So there are plenty of stories of composers going in the hole to complete a score. Imagine working your ass off for 6 or 8 weeks, 18 to 20 hours a day and then have to take a loan out to pay your employees at the end of it. Bummer.

And if there is a music budget separate from the composer’s fee, it’s much smaller than it used to be, but the amount of music per show is going up. And the composer’s fees are going down too. Part of this is due to the ability of excellent composers to turn out awesome sounding music from their garage or spare bedroom, and the producers realize this and feel that they can pay less because the composer’s overhead is less. Which is partly true, except for the fact that the composer still needs a team of hired guns to help get the music delivered to the mixing stage on time, which might mean, with more music, the composer’s overhead is actually the same or more. Not to mention keeping current with technology. A busy composer doesn’t have time to learn every new software instrument, yet the business demands new and fresh sounds all the time. Guess what? Hire a hotshot programmer to learn the software instruments and help realize the score using the new sounds. It goes on and on.

So it’s understandable why these folks want to unionize. But the problem is, there’s so few of them compared to the total population of composers, that there’s no way they can speak for the majority on this. There’s about 25 or 30 composers in Hollywood who do most of the big films and then a few hundred picking up the crumbs, and many thousands playing gigs, waiting tables, etc., trying to break in to the business. That last tier of folks probably can’t afford the union dues anyway, and they’d take any gig that came along just for the resume building and credits, thus undermining the whole purpose of the union.

But library composers are feeding a different market. There’s some overlap, but library music is used either as an adjunct to, in addition to, or for the entire score, mostly for lower budget TV like reality shows (Some daytime TV is handled this way as well. I write for the Harpo Sounds library which the producers and editors of O***h have complete access to). Of course, there’s a huge market for library music outside film and TV as well. It wouldn’t make sense for a library composer to join this union unless they were also pursuing composing for hollywood films and network tv shows

So that’s probably only a small part of the reason these guys are trying to get this union going. The ground is shifting underneath their feet and it’s making them nauseous.

Modern Marvels (History Channel)
Solved (Investigation Discovery Channel)

I’m also currently writing for Harpo Productions for daily shows and specials.

New royalty free production music libraries I’m now associated with:

• Royalty Free Music Revolution -  featuring Royalty Free Music, Stock Music, Royalty Free Background Music and Royalty Free Music Downloads
• Radical Music Library – featuring Royalty Free Music, Stock Music, Royalty Free Background Music and Royalty Free Music Downloads
• www.prolificartsmusic.com

True Blood!
My piece “Summer Memories” was placed in episode 1-10 of HBO’s True Blood.

Finding Tina Palmer
Score for a documentary called Finding Tina Palmer and I’m writing some music for the film. www.findingtinapalmer.com

Meipporul
The film Meipporul is set for a US April 2009. It will be release concurrently in India. I composed the score for the film.

http://meipporulthemovie.com/