The iPod generation of producer is picky and literate and wants its music fast. CDs are just about passé. Forget bland elevator music and cheesy versions of once-potent rock anthems. Today’s companies offer hungry, and often impatient, clients every possible genre, from rap and hip-hop to cutting edge electronica and folk, all available and accessible 24/7 with constantly refined Web searching and downloading
"Web technology and downloading are the big stories," reports Dennis Pontillano, director of marketing at LA-based Killer Tracks. "A lot of our clients would far rather have a virtual library on demand rather than deal with shelves of CDs, so downloading has become a really big element for us. It’s far more convenient and faster."
To that end, the company is currently performing an extreme makeover on its Web site, which will be unveiled this month. "It’ll be a lot more user-friendly," he promises. That doesn’t mean the BMG-owned company is turning its back on CDs. "We’re still creating them and we have close to 1000 now," he adds. "And some clients still prefer them."
Not all new technology has had instant appeal for users. Despite taking a lead in 5.1 music, the company never got the response it expected. "It’s been out there a while, but the market’s been a little slow in that area, and the same with our Sonifier [a browser-based application]," reports Pontillano. "It’s still a viable tool, but the response has been slow to catch up with the technology."
At Manhattan Production Music, Ron Goldberg, director of sales and marketing, also reports that downloading is a big trend. "It gives clients 24/7 access, and it’s generating a lot of business for us, especially with small jobs where we normally wouldn’t send out CDs," he states. Using the company’s Music Source search engine, clients can find "any genre — and in seconds, as we’ve revamped it all in the past year and broken it down into sections like in a traditional record store," he notes.
The company is also releasing a new collection, Live Trax, this month. "The whole idea is that it’s 100 percent live recordings, with real musicians and instruments — no synthesizers at all," notes Goldberg.
This month Associated Production Music (APM) will unveil MyAPM, a new online music management portal with improved search functionality, intuitive search categories and project management capabilities. The new production music portal lets clients perform guided searches, allowing them to easily and quickly access tracks the company offers for a particular use.
APM also just acquired exclusive distribution rights to West One Music, a new music library from UK-based Fireworks which includes a wide-ranging collection of more than 1300 tracks including the latest pop/rock, electronica and diverse world music.
At FirstCom Music in Dallas, senior VP Ken Nelson reports that the company’s "main focus" is on downloading services and creating customized compilations. Their new Evo library even has its own dedicated Web site. "With clients ranging from corporate to film, TV and cable, we’re seeing a lot more demand for tailored packages, especially for hard drives," he says. "Many clients don’t have the time or resources to download or wade through stacks of CDs."
"Clients don’t want to listen to demo CDs anymore," agrees Jack Waldenmaier, president of Dallas’ The Music Bakery. "But they do want the highest quality, so we use Flash for our streaming and clients can download MP3." The company also just made SmartSound, "a great program that automatically edits music to any required length," available on its Web site.
Downloading and delivery isn’t the main focus at Megatrax Production Music in North Hollywood, CA. "The biggest trend is the huge jump in clients using search tools on our Web site," notes CEO Ron Mendelsohn. "Only about 5 percent of our clients download, but nearly all of them use our search tools, and we offer two: Music Source and Play MusicFinder."
At VideoHelper in Manhattan, director of marketing Betsy Todd reports that the company offers 30 CDs with some 2200 cuts, many of them "unusual and quirky. Our clients are mainly in the TV promo business, but we’ve seen a big jump in movie trailer clients over the past year, with many of them looking for quirky material."
Like the other companies, VideoHelper relies heavily on its Web site and caters to clients who "don’t have a lot of extra time to start mixing individual tracks," notes company co-founder Joe Saba, "So our cuts are specially designed to be easy to edit. Probably the biggest trend now is the whole move to downloading online sounds. It’s changed the whole way music libraries work."
At 615 Music Library in Nashville, president Randy Wachtler reports that the company adds some 15 new discs a year, with its main focus on live instrumentation. "We work with about 80 different composers," he says, "and we just finished a new CD, Hollywood Premieres Vol 11, an action adventure disc that was inspired by such hits as X2."
615 debuted its Web site back in 1998 and is constantly refining its 24-hour service to make searching and downloading simpler. "Clients can go there and access our entire library," notes Wachtler. "Some still prefer to have a CD in their hands, so it’s also a matter of slowly changing old habits."
Like the other companies, Groove Addicts, the Los Angeles producer and worldwide distributor of high-end production music for the professional film, video and audio producer, offers its clients a music-on-demand service through its online catalog. According to General Manager Cindy Rosmann, the site is "constantly updated" and showcases a music search-and-retrieval system that currently offers some 15 libraries with 60,000 cuts ready for quick download.
"We’ve always been very niche-oriented, and our number one call is contemporary," reports Rosmann. "But we recently added classical music to satisfy the TV and film demand. We also ramped up production on our Mind Bender series because of demand and just added five new CDs to it, and we now have two full-time music supervisors doing searches all day."
Downloading audio has become "huge," she adds, "with more and more clients going to hard-drive solutions instead of the clutter of walls of CDs. And with new music being added constantly, our clients can easily search and sample the very latest music with just a few keystrokes."
If searching for and downloading high-quality audio from the Internet is winning the battle for client dollars and attention, 5.1 definitely seems to have faltered in the race. At 615, Wachtler says users want "the very best audio quality, that will match what they hear when they go to the movies." But he reports that 5.1 "is still a pretty specialized market. It’ll grow, but it’ll take time." Rosmann agrees; "There just hasn’t been that much client interest or demand yet," she states. "Maybe as HDTV expands it’ll take off."
Adds Nelson, "The potential’s still there, but 5.1’s not a focus for most of our clients right now." Manhattan Production Music is doing 5.1 DVD audio and video "as a test CD for consumers," adds Goldberg. Like Killer Tracks, though, the company sees the demand for 5.1 as a market "yet to emerge."
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