I recently bought Emmett Cookes new eBook called The Business Of Music Licensing I finally had the time to do a review. It’s very well written and if want to sell your own music online it’s a great read.

What can I learn from The Business Of Music Licensing?

By reading the book you get a broad understanding of how the online music licensing industry works. All the terms are explained, you get tips on how to get started and what you should watch out for.

Emmett has also put a lot of his personal experiences and tips into the book and in general he’s not holding back on what he does himself to make a full-time living as a library composer. Its all-there – all you have to do is to take action.

Whats the main focus of the book – Royalty free music or licensing?

The Business Of Music Licensing describes both the licensing part of the music business and the royalty free libraries. I get why Emmett talks about both royalty free libraries and licensing in this book as most who are making a living selling their music online probably do both.

Had the focus been on one area instead of both I do however feel the information could have been even more targeted.

Here at EagleCinematics my focus has so far been on selling my music at royalty free sites that earns me $15-$80 per sold track. To me this has been the best way to get started in this business. In the future I will probably also begin looking more into licensing and here the book will also give me some good pointers

The devil is in the details

For anyone new to tagging and how searching in general works on websites, you find good descriptions of how to do it the right way. Choosing the right keywords for your music is very important and you could literally mean the difference between success and failure – especially at the royalty free libraries.

You also find tips on how to market your music, what kind of styles to write music in, how to approach music libraries, what you should submit for review,  useful resources and much more.

Stuff that in my opinion this could make this book even better

What I would have loved to see in this book was a chapter on how Emmett managed to get from making nothing to making a full time living from selling library music. Perhaps it’s pretty much described in the 3-year plan he suggests, but a more detailed description of his journey, including milestones reached and the mistakes he made would be a most welcome addition.

Another very useful thing in the book is the library list with over 200 respectable music libraries. The list would however have been user-friendlier if it had been categorized in different types of libraries. Update: after having run through the list of libraries I found many of the links not working and a lot good libraries not on it. So make sure you also look elsewhere for good music libraries.

I know that very few wants to show every detail of how their business is run, but some general numbers on where his income is coming from would be cool. I know income in the library business entirely depend on where your focus is, but income numbers are always interesting to people. How much comes from PRO royalties, custom jobs, up-front payments, repeating library sales? etc.

All in all – The Business Of Music Licensing

I think Emmett did a great job on writing The Business Of Music Licensing. As far as I know it’s the only quality book written on the subject of music licensing, where the author also are giving tips about the royalty free music libraries. Every single question I had when I decided to start selling my music online are answered in this book.

Don’t expect to learn some miracle way to make instant profits from your music. As Emmett writes it takes a lot of hard work and dedication, this book can however give you the best possible start.

Having all this knowledge in a well organised format is definitely worth the money (€12.99). I just wish he had written a year and a half ago, as it would have saved me countless hours of researching most of this stuff online 🙂

You can easily buy your own copy of  The Business Of Music Licensing and instantly get a download link.