Michael Elsner:
What makes it satisfying as a musician is to write music that's authentically you, as opposed to worrying about the next placement and chasing after it. Write good music, record good music, create your alternate mixes, add your metadata. Be a great service to your end users. You will attract the placements. So attract the opportunities as opposed to chasing after them.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry, with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician, and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate sustainable income through music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month, without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution with today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
All right. And we are here live with my friend, Michael Elsner. Michael is the founder of Master Music Licensing. He's had over 2,000 placements of original music in TV shows, film trailers and commercials placed on FOX Sports, ABC, Impractical Jokers. I love that show. It's so good. Hannah Montana, and if you go to his website, you'll see it's just like countless TV shows. It's pretty incredible. And today, we're going to be talking about how to successfully get your music licensed in TV, film, and commercials. So Michael, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today. And for anyone here who is just meeting you for the first time, maybe you can just introduce yourself and share a bit of your story and how you get started with licensing your music.

Michael Elsner:
Yeah, well, it was really accidental. In one sense, I grew up in upstate New York and I moved to Nashville in the late '90s. And I spent about 4.5 years there working on records, but getting turned down as far as like I was taking my music to publishers all the time and it wasn't just in Nashville, even. I was even taking trips back up to New York and meeting with publishers up there and whatnot. And I was really just on that mission, and I was also playing in bands. And so it was going after the record deal and the publishing deal. And after 4.5 years of really getting turned down, I just decided I was going to go try a hand out in LA. And also at that time, the early 2000s in Nashville, the country music market was its own thing.

Michael Elsner:
And it's not like what it is now by any means, but so Nashville's, it seemed like it was very, very small, like a very small window of what you could really target yourself musically to succeed in. And I wasn't writing music like that anyway. I was writing pop songs and stuff. So I went out to Los Angeles in the summer of 2003, and very quickly landed a gig playing guitar on a TV show. And it was through that, that I started learning, well first off, just watching how fast composers worked and literally within two weeks from working on that show, the show would be on. But then I started meeting music supervisors and then one day I just said to one of them, I said, "Can I give you a CD of some songs?"

Michael Elsner:
And she said yes. And two weeks later, I had a featured vocal placement on Cold Case. And that was my very first placement. And, and it was game changing for me because I'd never received that kind of money ever in such a short amount of time for the upfront licensing fee. And I was like, this is the easiest thing ever. Man, I'm so used to getting down and people saying no, but this was the complete opposite. This was like, oh my gosh, thank you. This is great. We love this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I followed that up with another, see I'd written a lot of music over the years. And again, it was just like this, the doors were wide open. They were swinging wide open, and I didn't have to feel like I was beating my head against the wall, which I felt like I'd been beating my head against the wall in the traditional music industry for many years.

Michael Elsner:
And it really kind of started that way. At that time, I looked at licensing as a way to make an income while I was still going after the record deal and pursuing the big dream of course. And it wasn't until around 2010, 2011, that I stepped back and kind of just squeezed on the brakes and asked myself, what am I doing spinning my wheels, trying to do all this stuff to get a record deal at this point anymore? The doors are swinging wide open. I'm doing these records with my band. We're getting the doors closed as far as record labels, but yet where every song is getting placed multiple, multiple, multiple times. So I just kind of had to stop and think, why am I doing that? Then I started getting some composing gigs. My first gig was composing for American Idol in 2010.

Michael Elsner:
And then that just led to a bunch of other shows and then that ultimately led to writing movie trailers. And so that's kind of been the way that it happened for me. However, I just grew up playing in rock bands, playing rock guitar, and I didn't go to music school or anything like that. So the thing that's cool about licensing is again, you don't have to go to music school for it and have some composing degree or anything. You just got to be willing to put in the work and focus on writing good music and recording good songs and recording good audio.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome, man. So just out of curiosity, and I know that there's obviously going to be a range to this, a big range, but what would you say sort of like the average range of per placement that you get for a song?

Michael Elsner:
Whoa, that's such a wide range. I've gotten everything from a couple bucks up to, with trailers, up to $80,000. So it's such a wide range and it's going to depend on a number of different things. I can give you a list what it's going to depend on. That's kind of more what you have to look at. It's kind of like saying, I look at licensing like real estate. How much can I get for a 2,500 square foot house? Well, if you're in the backwards of Alabama, maybe $80,000. If you're in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, maybe 6 million, same house, different location. That's the same thing with licensing, because licensing is going to depend on a number of factors. It's going to depend on the show. Is it going to be a primetime TV show that obviously has a big budget and a large viewership? Or is it going to be just some like infomercial at three in the morning? Okay, smaller viewership.

Michael Elsner:
That's going to depend on the type of placement. Is it going to be a featured vocal, which of course is going to be a higher premium, or is it going to be like a background instrumental, which is going to be a lower premium. You also have featured instrumentals. You also have background vocals. So there's a variety there, or you also have themes as well, but that's kind of like hitting the lottery. So then that's going to depend, change the pricing structure. Then of course, you also have the duration. Are they going to use your song for four seconds or are they going to use your song for two minutes and 20 seconds? So that's what really creates the pricing structure. And it's ultimately going to come down to really the viewership. If your song is on a primetime network TV show, and it's a featured vocal for two minutes, that's a massive viewership.

Michael Elsner:
So that's going to command a premium as opposed to even like trailers, of course, trailers are advertising, any type of advertising, commercials, whatnot. Those always command a premium, but if it's going to be, like I said, just some little three second snippet in the background of a TV show on The Hunting Network, which I don't know how many people would watch that, it's going to be smaller, so there's a wide variety. And that's why my focus is never on the single placement. Anyone can get a single placement, but if you want to build a career licensing your music, you have to generate consistent placements because it's not only the upfront licensing thing, but it's also the backend royalties. And depending on the show that you get your music on, that show can air in reruns for years and years and years, not only in America, but then also international.

Michael Elsner:
So for example, that I was telling you the story of Cold Case, so we're recording this in 2021. That was in 2000. I still get royalties for that episode of Cold Case still 17 years later. So that kind of shows you the really, and I've made a lot more in royalties than I did on my, in fact, my very first royalty, I made the exact same amount as I made on the upfront licensing gig. So that just kind of goes to show you how royalties can really, really, really, really pay off in the long run. That's why I'm always focused on consistent placements.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome, man. Yeah, that's super cool. So for anyone who's watching this right now, who has maybe heard some buzzings about licensing and they're kind of, they're like curious about it and really they've just been focusing on their music and they have an original artist career and they've recorded maybe an album of songs or an EP or something. And let's just imagine that it's really solid quality that they've either produced themselves and they've really honed their craft or they worked with a producer and it's solid. What are some of the biggest, most common mistakes or challenges that you see artists making when they're kind of at that level? Or, and they just kind of get started with the music licensing.

Michael Elsner:
Yeah, that's a great question. I'll actually start it with a story. When I moved back to Nashville a couple years ago, I would go out with my friends and we'd go out to one of the bars in Midtown, which is where a lot of songwriters would hang out and someone would come up to the table and they'd know someone that was there and they'd start talking about licensing and stuff like that. Of course they didn't know who I was. So I'd say, "Oh man, that's awesome. Congratulations. What shows have your songs been on?" Right now, we just finished the record. So my manager and I were just blasting our music out to supervisors and oh, that's awesome. So what shows are these supervisors working on that you're getting?

Michael Elsner:
Who are you specifically targeting? Oh man, we're just blasting it out to everyone. And at that point I'd just play dumb guy here and oh, tell me everything about it. And then I'd have to stop and be like, you're going to have a problem. Here's the reason why. The problem is just getting a list somewhere of supervisors and blast them with your music. And I equate that to sending someone an email saying like, "Hey, Michael, I know that you live right next to a really nice steak restaurant and I don't have any money to go buy steak, but I'm a really great conversationalist. Will you take me out to dinner?" And you're sending someone who you don't know. You're basically asking them to give you money basically. But you're not really providing any value.

Michael Elsner:
And if you're just blasting out your music to someone and they listen to it, let's say they pull it into their iTunes. Let's just go with this for a second. And you've all experienced this too, I'm sure. I'm sure a friend has sent you an audio file. You've pulled it into iTunes, on your computer or whatever platform you've used to house your music catalog and you pull it in. And of course what shows up? The song title of the artist. But let's say that you're actually working on a show and six months down the road, you need that particular song. Well, A, are you really going to remember that? No, you're not, especially if someone sent you an album, you're not going to remember all the specifics, but on top of it, how are you going to search that?

Michael Elsner:
Well, if you're a supervisor or an editor or music editor, don't forget these people, they're very important as well. You're going to type in keywords. You're going to watch the scene and you're going to start thinking of, okay, well this is summer. So it's summery and with palm trees and people are out on the beach, so it's beachy. And so you're going to think of these adjectives and that's called metadata. And those are the descriptive words that are describing the kind of music that they're looking for for that scene. Those keywords, that metadata also needs to be added to your song so that when someone's typing in those words, your song shows up at the bottom of that search. So just the biggest mistake I see is just people blasting their music out to supervisors. And on top of it, you don't even know what the supervisors are working with.

Michael Elsner:
So this person might be working on like a show where they're using lots of R&B, and you've got like female singer songwriter, like acoustic pop. That's not going to work. So you've really just wasted their time and you're not providing any value. You're basically taking this desperate shotgun approach and the shotgun approach just doesn't work. The other thing you have to keep in mind when it comes to licensing is that the people who license with music, music supervisors, music editors, people who work at music libraries, et cetera, they don't work in the music industry. They work in the TV industry and the film and commercial industries and whatnot. So they absorb and utilize music in a completely different way. They're going to be such searching keywords to funnel down that search. And unless you're adding that information to your audio file, when it gets put into their catalog, unless all that metadata is in the title of your song, that's the reason why so many musicians fail at it because they miss these very simple key steps that provide value to those end users.

Michael Elsner:
Now in the music industry that we're used to, we're used to sending our music out, someone listening to it and deciding whether or not they liked it or not. So all those extra steps are unnecessary. Music, I look at the traditional music industry as a two step process. You finish your song, you send it out, whether you're sending it out to a manager or an A&R person or a publisher or a magazine to do a review, you're sending it out with the intent that they're going to listen to it. They're going to make a decision on it. And then they're going to get back to you, or they're going to write up a review and that's going to be taken care of. But with licensing, when we send in our music, that music ultimately, we want that to go sit in the catalog somewhere. We want that to sit in the music supervisor's catalog on their computer, and we want it so that they can search whether it's today, whether it's next month, whether it's a year from now that they can search for specific uses that your song is perfect for, we want your song to show up at the bottom of that search.

Michael Elsner:
And without taking those extra steps, it's 100% failure rate. That's why a lot of musicians are like, "Man, I tried licensing my music. I never heard anything back." Of course, you didn't hear anything back. You sent someone an email that says, "Hey, I know you live near a steak place, will you take me out to dinner? I can't afford it, but I'm a great conversationalist." And who's going to respond to that?

Michael Walker:
That's so interesting, yeah. And so to recap, it sounds like you're saying that one of the biggest issues is just that they don't have the proper metadata. So when someone, from their point of view, they're looking for a specific type of song to place in a specific point of a film clip or a TV show or something. And they know kind of what they're looking for and they have these ideas, these keywords. So imagine Googling something that you need, like you're going to search for these keywords and if you don't do the job of really providing those keywords, then your songs aren't going to show up and you're not going to get picked.

Michael Elsner:
So, yeah. And it's a little bit, it's like if I can take like an extra minute to kind of give a little broader perspective, we have to keep in mind again, the difference between TV shows and the TV and film versus music, right? So if you watch a TV show, you just got to think of the entire lifeline of that TV show started with a script probably a year and a half ago. That script went through a production company. They had to go through a whole bunch of revisions until they green lit it. Then they had to go through the whole process of everything that goes into hiring the actors, getting the locations, all that crap to actually film it. Now when they were filming it, chances are very high that the director and the producer already had a very good idea of what they were looking for musically at that point, then it goes into editing.

Michael Elsner:
And of course that's when a supervisor comes in and they're now working with the editor and the director and the producer, and they're really refining everything. Music's one of the very last things that comes into the mix. In fact, it's pretty much right at the end. And then once our music is picked and put in there, an editor, a music editor is one who slides it in there. Music supervisor is the one who clears it. The music editor is the one who kind of cuts it up and slices it in [inaudible 00:15:23]. But then all of that gets sent to what's called the rerecording mixer. The rerecording mixer is an individual who mixes all the dialogue, all the sound design, like the wind rusting through the trees and the footsteps and stuff like that and the cars screeching and stuff like that.

Michael Elsner:
And of course all the music. So there's a long line of people before our music gets chosen. And then there's still, not a long line, but still a bit of a line there at least two other people along the line behind us, a music editor and the recording mixer who are going to be best, they're going to be best utilizing the song, mixing it in with everything.

Michael Elsner:
So metadata is one aspect. Metadata is how our song is searched. But then on top of that, we want to provide various deliverables to the rerecording mixer. I'll give you just one simple example, but we mix music in the stereo. Most TV shows and films are mixing 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound. So a lot of rerecording mixers, they want stem mixes. They want the drum stem, the bass stem and the key stem, the guitar stem, the vocal stem so that they can take that song out and they can utilize it in that surround field.

Michael Elsner:
In fact, I don't know one rerecording mixer that I've talked to over the years who's like, "Yeah, I'm happy with just getting a stereo mix." They're always like, "Man, if I can get stem mixes." Because they can then really utilize the surround field and that helps them do their job even better. So metadata is one aspect, but then also the deliverables is a whole other, and again, that's why just sending out that full mix of your song with no metadata and just blasting it out to people, it just doesn't work.

Michael Walker:
That's super interesting. Yeah, so it's really important to have the stems, to have the different components, so that they're most, that's, what's most valuable to them because then they can take those. The remixer can position the instruments, can position everything to go in line with the song, with the show and the dialogue and everything and mix it. So is that the kind of thing that you recommend sending over? So a couple things. So one I wanted to, to drill in a little bit, just out of curiosity, because obviously things that are changing so quickly and with technology, like a lot of cases, like the middle man is sort of being cut out and technology and search algorithms are sort of like making things easier to find.

Michael Walker:
And I'm curious how right now and your take on maybe the future that's kind of what's coming up right now, how songs are getting placed into the TV and the film and is it mostly done through a big database now where people just like search through and they find the right song to place at the right time, just purely based on this interface or is it still like how much of it is still sort of relationships and and having, or even having people pitch for certain placements, like they know this is exactly what we're looking for.

Michael Elsner:
Yeah, that's great question. So a lot of it comes down to, I look at licensing as a team. It's a team sport. Some people will be like, "Oh, Mike's the library guy." I'm not the library guy, just to be very clear. I'm a team player. I pitch to supervisors directly just as much as my company that represents my music, pitch my songs, but I'm all about having the team. And part of having the team is really having like a publisher in your corner, like a music library in the licensing space. A music library is called the publisher. If you're not working with a library, then you should be working with a sync agent. You need to be working with someone. And it comes down to a number of things. First off, there's so many people trying to get into licensing.

Michael Elsner:
So supervisors are getting their inbox blown up, like who really don't understand what their job is. They just know I need to get my music to a supervisor. They don't actually know how to deliver it to them in a valuable way. And that's the key. If you can deliver your music to those people in a valuable way, they will come back to you. It's just like any other business that you will get repeat customers. The problem is, I'd say 98% of musicians just, they take the shotgun approach. They just blast it out and hope for the best. And of course, hopefully you're seeing why that just doesn't work. Instead of just saying it doesn't work, it's hopefully you're seeing why. But as far as where things are moved, there is a platform in the licensing space, much like Spotify would be a platform in the traditional music space.

Michael Elsner:
Actually, there's two really. One is called Disco and one is called Source Audio. Now Disco is utilized in one way. And Source Audio is used utilized in another way. Source Audio is really the main platform and Disco might be taking it over although I don't see that happening anytime soon, but Source Audio really is the main platform. However, this is going deep just to answer that question, there's a editing software called Adobe Premier. I'm sure you guys have heard of that. That's one of the main, it's like, there's like two main editing softwares that editors use to do films and TV shows and Adobe. Adobe just announced one of their extensions is a Source Audio extension. They just announced it like a month ago. Then this is actually going to be a complete game changer for musicians in the future.

Michael Elsner:
But this also understands understanding Source Audio,, and Source Audio is a key player in the licensing sphere. But basically what that does is that now allows all the editors access to this massive platform with, I mean, millions of songs. So just for example, one of my publishers that I work with, their Source Audio catalog is over 300,000 tracks. So as you can see, that's just one out of hundreds of publishers. So you can see how this opens up the door to having millions and millions of tracks now at the disposal of these editors. Now, the key aspect to this though always is going to come back to the metadata. And now if an editor is being able to search through a million songs or more to find the right thing, well, of course they're going to type in again, specific keywords.

Michael Elsner:
And if your metadata is not thorough, then your music can be great, but it's just not going to be found. It's not going to show up at the bottom of that search. So we do have to keep in mind that there are a lot of people in the licensing game. It doesn't mean that there's not any opportunity. In fact, I think there's an abundance of opportunity because we see more and more and more opportunities showing up all the time. We see more and more networks, more and more TV shows. Of course, all these TV shows, the commercials are targeted to their demographics. So you might have one product, but 14 different commercials for each targeting a different demographic. The Friday night commercial's going to be completely different than the Saturday morning commercial targeted for the kids, right?

Michael Elsner:
So there's more and more opportunity for our license for our songs, but at the same point, that just requires us to understand how to license our music even more, and to start working with the key players that will get us in that game and constantly pitch on music. If you don't want to work with other people, then you have to understand that as a musician, you're going to be the one constantly pitching your music. But if you want to work with an agent or a library, then just like working with a realtor, they have their outlets. They're always marketing your music. And that to me is the way to do it. You should always be pitching your music and targeting it specifically to supervisors who are working on shows that you know use music along the lines of what you write. So you should always be doing that, but you target them in a very value oriented way.

Michael Elsner:
Of course, you let them know, you have all the metadata, you have all your versions and your stems ready to go again for the music editor and for the rerecording mixer. And then of course, when you're working with a library, they always have their outlets that they're constantly working with. Now, a lot of supervisors will actually go directly to libraries now, and it's really for legal reasons. And just one simple legal reason would be because a lot of musicians don't understand that when they take the drum beat from Michael Jackson's Beat It and then build a track around it, they actually don't have the rights to that.

Michael Elsner:
And that can cause a legal problem for say, the supervisor licensing the song directly from an independent artist who they don't really know. Maybe they're not sure whether or not they know the real rules of copyright and copyright infringement. So by going to a library, the library is ultimately the company that takes on that responsibility. Again, this goes deep to libraries have E&O insurance and Arizona missions insurance. And so it kind of covers them if that kind of stuff happens. So this is not like just a little thing that we play around with. This is very serious, as far as how even the legal side is handled. And again, that's just one of the reasons why a lot of supervisors now will either work through established agents or libraries.

Michael Walker:
All right, let's take a quick break from the podcast. I can tell you about a free, special offer that we're doing right now, exclusively for our podcast listeners. So if you get a ton of value from the show, but you want to take your music career to the next level, connect with the community of driven musicians and connect with the Music Mentors directly that we have on this podcast. Or if you just want to know the best way to market your music and grow an audience right now, then this is going to be perfect for you. So right now we're offering a free two week trial to our Music Mentor coaching program. And if you sign up in the show notes below, you're getting access to our entire Music Mentor content vault for free. The vault's organized into four different content pillars. The first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and the last, not least the business.

Michael Walker:
When you sign up, you unlock our in depth master classes from a network of world, class musicians and industry experts on the most cutting edge strategies right now for growing your music business. On top of that, you'll get access to our weekly live masterminds, where our highest level modern musician coaches teach you exactly what they're doing to make an income and an impact with their music. Then once a month, we're going to have our Music Mentor spotlight series. And that's where we're going to bring on some of the world's biggest and best artist coaches and successful musicians to teach you what's working right now. And one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top Music Mentors. So a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast are there live interacting with you personally. So imagine being able to connect with them directly.

Michael Walker:
On top of all that, you'll get access to our private Music Mentor community. And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of Music Mentor and maybe the most valuable is that you're going to have this community where you can network with other artists and link up and collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career. So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now, sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing content, connect with the community and sign up for the live master classes that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our body as supporting the show. So don't miss it out, go sign up for free now, and let's get back to our interview.

Michael Walker:
It's super interesting. Yeah, it is, it's also interesting thinking about, I mean, it comes to mind for me, I'm sure that this is already happening, probably to a large extent, but probably not good enough yet is the ability of algorithms to basically listen to a song and do that work of like saying, okay, here's all the words that describe this song. Like obviously there's things like Pandora, and Spotify's algorithm that are kind of doing that on the backend where they're kind of creating this metadata for you, but it sounds like what you're saying is that right now it's still really, really important that those tools don't really fully encapsulate or do the job of creating all that metadata and that maybe you being able to create that on your own is super valuable and also having the outlets or having like the agency or library or something that you're working with to be able to facilitate that is still something that's going to help you significantly in getting ahead.

Michael Elsner:
Yeah. I kind of liken it to this. If you want to license your music on your own, and you're like, I'm just going to reach out to music supervisors on my own, that's awesome. And you totally should, but understand this. That's like living at the end of a cul-de-sac and putting a for sale by owner sign in front of your house. You're the last end, and you're hoping that someone's going to make a wrong turn and come down there and drive by your house and go, "Oh, I should call that person.", as opposed to working with an agency or really a realtor or brokerage that actually they have that access. They can put your house up on the MLS and then people from all over the world at anytime can get on realtor.com and check it out.

Michael Elsner:
That's really the difference between working, doing it 100% on your own, and actually working with a realtor or a library or an agent. And this comes down to, if you just want to get a sync placement, that's not hard. Anyone watching this can get a license. I've had some of the biggest licenses that you could get, and they've been fantastic, but I can't retire yet. So I can guarantee you that one placement for you will not be your retirement, but what's wonderful about licensing is that as you have consistent placements, you have a whole different lifestyle and a whole different level of freedom, not only musically in what you can go into your studio and just write whatever you want to write and not have to worry about anything, but then you also have just have all the nice benefits of kind of like what I was saying earlier.

Michael Elsner:
You have the residual income of song, even that particular Cold Case episode, 17 years later, still paying royalty. And that's like owning multiple pieces of real estate that people are paying you every month to live in. It's the same thing. It's that recurring income that just will keep coming in. And so my focus in what I teach and what I share with others is not like, oh, you skip one placement. That's easy. Anyone can get a placement. I really focus on teaching those who are serious about generating consistent placements, and making this a focus of your career, because when you are able to do that, it becomes a whole game changer for you as a musician. That's both personally satisfying, then of course you have the backend aspect of financially satisfying as well.

Michael Walker:
Awesome, man. There's so many like different directions. You can go to dig deeper into this. This topic is awesome. And I love talking with people like you where it's just, it's so clear that you have this depth of mastery and experience to be able to speak from. It's fun. One thing that we could talk a little bit about is you talked about how important it is to make sure that you have the assets in order to make sure that if you do happen to get an opportunity or placement, that you can give them all that they need in order to remix the songs and you give them all the stems. So could you talk a little bit about that for anyone who's listening to this? How can they make sure that they're preparing ahead of time? Let's say that they're going to get their songs produced and mixed. How can they make sure that they prepare the correct assets so that in the future, if they're going to organize them, they can make the most out of it?

Michael Elsner:
Yeah, so the way that I work is, is I will take a step back and I'll show you the system because the system to me is easy. And the way that I work is I like systems. I like being able to do something and being able to shut off your brain and just do it repetitively. And it always works. The systems we know work and they've proven they work. So I have a four step process that I do take every single song through, every single record through and that I've been doing for years, this is what I teach others. Step one of course is just to build your catalog. And what I mean by that is write the music that you're passionate about. Don't go chasing after what you think people want. There's a lot of different opinions out there on how to do this.

Michael Elsner:
And people will say like watch a show and then write music like that show. And that's not my opinion of it. I've done that before. I was a composer for a couple shows. As fun as it was, I didn't enjoy it. I always enjoyed just coming into my studio and playing with bands and writing the music I wanted to. And I'll be honest with you, I've had more success with the songs that I authentically wanted to write versus the times that I was chasing after the placements. So step one to me is just write the music that you authentically want to write that's authentically you because when you marry that to picture that authenticity is going to come across even more. So that's the first step. Now, once you've finished the process of writing that song and recording it, you're going to create your full mix.

Michael Elsner:
Once your full mix is done, you are now automatically in step two of my process. And this is the cool thing about the way that I've laid this out is that there's really no guesswork. You automatically know where you're at. You've created your full mix. You're now in step two. I call step two, creating valuable content. Now in step two, what we do is we create all of our alternate mixes, our stems, or our alternate versions that we're going to send our end users. This is going to be part of our deliverables. So if you have a vocal song, obviously you're always going to create an instrumental song, but you may notice that when you're mixing the song and maybe you're having an engineer mix a song for you, because you're sitting back on in the studio, you'll sing to maybe they're muting some stuff and they just mute it down to the vocals and the piano or acoustic guitar.

Michael Elsner:
Oh my gosh, that sounds great. Well, boom, there you go. There's an acoustic mix for you. Maybe you notice that there's just a really cool drum and bass group through the track that you just never noticed with everything else about it. That's a drum and bass group. And when you start thinking about this, I want to encourage you over the next couple days, start watching TV shows and listening to the music. You will hear just drum and bass roofs in the background. You'll hear just acoustic piano, vocal and acoustic guitar vocal tracks. You'll also start noticing that you hear a section of the song where it's all instrumental. And then at a certain moment, there's something that happens in the scene and it just automatically fades into like the big chorus. Well, an editor at that point took the instrumental version and cross faded it into the full version.

Michael Elsner:
And so this is what I mean by the deliverables because they're not just going to take your song and plop it in there. The more deliverables you give them, the more options the music editor has to manipulate it. Maybe there's just going to be the acoustic vocal for one section of a scene. And then at another poignant moment, it goes right into the big chorus from the full mix. By providing these deliverables, this just increases our opportunities for placement because we can have a great song, but if they can't utilize it in the scene the way that the director and the producer are envisioning, then you're going to lose that placement to someone else who's delivered the correct deliverables. And as I said earlier, music is one of the things that comes in all the way at the end. So there's not a lot of time.

Michael Elsner:
I hear people say like, "Oh, if they like my music, then they'll tell me to go back and remix it and this and that." No, they're not going to do that. They don't have that amount of time to do that. So maybe it's a big film, they will. But for the most part, that's not going to happen. So that's creating viable content. It's creating all your stems and your mixes, alternate mixes. Once you're done with that, once you've created all of those, you're automatically now in step three, which is now I call it mastering metadata, but that's adding all the thorough metadata to every audio. Once we burn all the audio files, we have nothing else to do but burn them. Boom, now we have to start adding the metadata to them so it's very, very clear what process we're in.

Michael Elsner:
We add the metadata. I go through actually 25 different, I have a spreadsheet, so basically 25 columns of metadata. It's extremely thorough. And one of the things that I credit my amount of placements to is the fact that my metadata is just always on point. My music's very average. My metadata's fantastic. And that's really a key thing that I always try and drive home when I'm teaching this to people is the metadata has to be on point. You can have the best track, but if it's not found, you're not even in the game. What gets you found is the metadata. And then once we've completed the metadata, so now we have all of our files and all of our deliverables ready. Now that's when we go through the process of, I can just call it step four, sending our music out.

Michael Elsner:
So that's the process of actually targeting and being very specific in who we target, as far as who we're sending our music to. For example, if I write, say I get together with a country writer and I write three country songs, and then in two weeks I get together with a pop writer and I write three pop songs, I have six songs, three in two different genres. I'm not going to send them all to the same person because a supervisor who's working on a show that's using country music might not be using pop music and vice versa. So I'm going to target them. I'm going to find the shows, for example, let's say these songs in the style of Keith Urban or Carrie Underwood, I'm going to find the shows that have had Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood placements lately.

Michael Elsner:
And maybe I'll expand out of that, go look at people like Dierks Bentley and have to look at a bunch of other country artists and just start looking up their names. But I would go find what country artists are getting placements recently. And then that's going to be my target area for those three country songs. And then if I've got pop songs, I'm going to, what artists have used the style of, maybe they're in the style of Adele or something like that, then I'm going to go find all the shows recently that Adele or similar artists have had placements on and I'm going to target those supervisors that way. Now at the same time, I also have my team, my publisher of my library, that's also now, they now have those songs with all the metadata as well, and they're going to be funneling it out to their contacts. On top of that, by being with the library, they have sub publishers worldwide. So now their sub-publisher in Europe is funneling it out to the shows there. There's a sub-publisher in Australia who's funneling it out to the shows there. So that's how we're able to literally cover a global area with the music without having to sit home and spend the next seven months with our head in our computer and in the spreadsheet sending out emails every day.

Michael Walker:
So good, man. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I just, honestly, I just am awestruck when I get to talk with people like you and everyone that's on this conference in terms of just the amount of time and value that, I mean just what you shared right there. And just creating that step by step process literally to save decades of time is just what an incredible time that we live in that there's even these opportunities to have courses and guidance, to be able to break these things down. One visual that came up as you were describing the idea of doesn't matter how good your song is. If you don't have that metadata, if people can't find it, then nothing's going to happen.

Michael Walker:
This is like a weird visual, but I was imagining the stream of let's say like, they're like eyeballs, this is again, very weird, but like stream of eyeballs that are going through the sky and they're going through the sky. And each of your little pieces of metadata is like little magnets on the ground. And it's like if you don't have the metadata, then it's all the attention that's flowing by, that's looking for these songs are just going to go on by, but it's like, you have these little magnets and each of them has the different words that describe the songs. They can kind of have a magnetic pull. They can pull that attention towards the song.

Michael Elsner:
It just reminded me. It just reminded me actually last time that you and I did this, I actually pulled up my screen and I had you. And I think I gave you a, a scenario and I think you just gave me five random words. Remember we did a search and I ended up with one or two songs in that search? And I was showing that as an example of, and those were songs, those were words that you chose. I gave you a scene, describe the scene word wise. And we ended up in that funnel and that's right there. You're right. Every word that you add to the metadata becomes magnet for literally someone's eyes. Because again, you want to always show up at the bottom of that funnel of every search to at least be able to be in the game. I would rather lose the placement because my music didn't fit the scene right as opposed to just never being found.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, yeah. So I guess that kind of speaks to the point of, so it sounds like what you're saying is that you don't want to just for the sake of having as much metadata as possible. It's like copy and paste all of the words that describe your songs because that doesn't actually work. You want to get more specific with it.

Michael Elsner:
Yeah. You want to get specific, but at the same point, you also got to keep in mind that the people that work in this industry are not, they're not stupid. So if they see you showing up in every search and it's irrelevant, then you're going to be very quickly blacklisted. And at the same point, whoever you work with wouldn't do that anyway, because that just gives them a bad reputation as well. Again, the whole thing is not to try and pull one over on someone or just always show up in the bottom of any search for whatever reason. No, you want to show up in every relevant search because as you do this more and more again, you want repeat customers and you want people to go, okay yeah. They're great for that. They're great for that. And I know this, every time I look up this particular type of thing, Elsner always shows up, let me just go see what that guy has. That's what I want people to do. Because I want them to come and go okay. Every time I listen to his stuff, it's always, they might not fit the scene. That's fine. But it's always relevant to what they're looking for.

Michael Elsner:
And that's essential because I don't want to waste people's time. And I don't want people to ever think that I'm wasting their time. I want to have a good reputation and they get, and people, if they start working with you, if they start licensing your songs, they will come back. You don't need to have hundreds and hundreds of people licensing your music. You need to have a handful that just love working with you and your music so much that they keep coming back because these people go from show to show, to show, to show, to show. And it's not always supervisors. It's also editors. I get a lot of placements through et editors and I get a lot of the same songs placed over and over and over and I'll go and I'll research and see, oh, what is this show? Who's working on this? And I'll go to IMD guy. I look it up. I'm like, oh, that guy used my song last year, the exact same thing on the show he was working on last year.

Michael Elsner:
And you start noticing this trend, like some of these editors, they do stuff quickly too. So they'll put their little folder together of the songs that they know work and when they can pull them in, they'll pull them in. And so you want to be able to serve them and serve them good so that they keep coming back to you because that only helps them do their job.

Michael Walker:
Right. Yeah, that's so good. One thing that you just mentioned there, I think is a really valuable thing to dive deeper into is, is this idea of relevancy, and how, I feel like relevancy is sort of this very, very powerful concept to understand because nowadays, and also I want to hear your take on this in terms of, because we've talked a little bit about how the process of writing these songs and being successful with sync that you don't necessarily have to, like this is an extreme way of looking at it, but "sell out" and just like kind of follow the trends and you kind of just do the things that are in mainstream or whatever.

Michael Walker:
And certainly, it seems like in some ways it's so clear, like you can kind of like, like you said, authenticity is really important and it's kind of easy to kind of see when something just doesn't feel good, even though it's like got all like the right sounds or super trendy, it's just kind of like, it doesn't hit in the right way. But this idea of relevancy, because relevancy doesn't necessarily mean popular. It means like it's showing up at the right time and it's valuable. It's kind of like the sharp point. And so I'm curious on your thoughts around this, because I think there also is kind of like, or maybe, maybe I'm wrong, but where's that line? Where's that balance between like, well say that someone is just like wants to write and record music that just no one's really searching for, like no one, like there's not really any TV or film that's looking for it.

Michael Elsner:
I have answers. Yeah, so there's an element to it where when I say write music authentically a little bit, my background is yeah, I know people know me as a licensing guy, but really I'm a guitar player and I built my career up as a guitar player. I fell into licensing because I was playing on sessions and a lot of TV shows and played on a lot of TV shows and films over the years for other composers. But growing up, I was a big fan of progressive metal. I was a huge fan of like fans, like Dream Theater and Yes and Rush and Kansas and stuff like that. Well that's really, and I like that stuff. It's technical. I've done some crazy guitar records that are just all odd time signature nuttiness, but I'm smart enough to know that that stuff has no place in TV.

Michael Elsner:
I love it. And I think that that's definitely an authentic part of who I am, but at the same point, I watch enough TV to know that there's no crazy like seven, eight time signature nuttiness. So there's an element of being aware of what's actually getting used. One of the first things that I tell everyone is to stop watching TV and start listening to TV. I watch a lot of TV. I like watching TV and I listen to a lot of it. I'll be watching TV with now my wife and 15 minutes will go by and I'll ask her what just happened, because I didn't pay attention to anything. I was so caught up in the music, and she's used to it. But I will listen to so much of the music to always be understanding what's going on musically and what's getting used.

Michael Elsner:
That being said, when I say write authentically, you want to write music with that in mind. I take elements of stuff that I love. I love guitar music. I love '80s guitar players and stuff like that. But I don't think that you could listen to anything that I've done and be like, "Oh, that guy's a total like '80s shrink guy." Just copying like old records or something like that. You couldn't do that. I take that influence because I like the technical aspect of it. But I add it to a modern sound because I listen to a lot of what's getting used. And so there's that fusion. I don't sit down and write dream theater music because I know that that's not going to get used. So there is that fusion of what can I take from this influence that I love and at it.

Michael Elsner:
Now that being said, I'll give you some examples. I wrote a song back in 2006 with one of my writing partners. And this was part of a record that we did called Hypno Glow, I think was the name of the record there was just a bunch of odd music with a bunch of electronic and stuff underneath it. Five years later, well, we had placements on some of those songs, but five years later, one of those tracks that had no placements, zero placements during those five years, got picked up as a theme song for a Saturday morning kids' show. We're 10 years now into that theme song, started in 2011. So that was an authentic piece that sat for five years. I was just doing a thing with a music supervisor friend of mine for a group of his students. He teaches a online class at a college and asked me to do a little review of some of my placements.

Michael Elsner:
And as I was doing some research, I found that my trailer for Maleficent 2 in 2019 and Disney's Aladdin with Will Smith in 2019, both Disney films, by the way. Both of those were the exact same track from an album that I did in 2011. It was actually the first trailer album I did in 2011. So that track took eight years before it actually got picked up for two trailers in one year. And actually as I did more research, it was the exact same editor. So when it comes to writing authentic music, again this comes back down to the whole idea of consistent placements. You're chasing after things, you're chasing after one particular sound for one particular placement that you're hopefully going to get, but if you write music that you enjoy writing, you're going to continuously build your catalog. And a bunch of those songs will get placed immediately.

Michael Elsner:
And they'll give you some traction for a while and some songs won't, and it might take five years and it might take eight years, but when they hit, like I was using those as examples, because a theme song is massive, and trailers are big too. Having those two big trailers in one year with the same song as a lot of money. But those songs sat for extended periods of time before they really made a boatload of cash. So that to me is so important because it's okay for a song to sit as long as you wrote it authentically. When it gets married to the right thing, it will pay off. But along the way, the other tracks on the Darklight record, they were getting placements. The other tracks on the Hypno Glow record, they were getting placements. So again, it always boils down to consistent placements, serving our end users with great music but then also serving them the way that they can best utilize that music.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. Yeah, and that's really helpful to understand, I think. It sounds like what you're saying is that you need to have both. You need to have something that's valuable and that's relevant and also sometimes the things that are relevant, maybe they're not relevant right now, but like eight years from now turns out that it's relevant now, but that there is like a mixture of bringing authenticity to it. You have to really enjoy it. It has to really, you bring the elements of the things that define your taste and what your style makes you you, but you also, it's okay to keep an eye out for what's relevant right now and what's valuable and what's helpful. And yeah, I think that's super [inaudible 00:47:17]

Michael Elsner:
We've all seen really bad movies with really bad acting, where you know that bad actor is just reading the line exactly how they memorize it, not adding any emotion to it, like this is the line I need to say, I need to say it right now. And you just go, whatever. Well, that's not an authentic presentation, but then we watch some amazing actors like Tom Hanks, who plays all these different characters or Johnny Depp, and they play these unique characters and they're authentic in their approach. They really make you believe that they're like the captain of a pirate ship and a guy living on an island by himself with a volleyball. But it's that authenticity in their presentation of it that draws you in and keeps you engaged with the movie.

Michael Elsner:
That's why it becomes a good movie or a good film. Well, music is no different. Music has to play that same role. And music is one of those things where even if everything's played right, and the notes are correctly played and in time, you can still hear authenticity versus inauthenticity in music. And I think that's one of the really nice things about it. So that comes across, and when you marry it, like I said, the picture that authenticity will either come across and enhance the visuals or that inauthenticity will come across and it will detract from the visuals. So we should always be writing music that's authentic to us and not chasing after the placement because not every placement, believed me. I've lost out on more placements than I've ever had by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands. But that's okay because the placements that I've had have worked well, and it's provided a good career. So to me, what makes it satisfying as a musician is to write music that's authentically you, as opposed to worrying about the next placement and chasing after it. Write good music, record good music, create your alternate mixes, add your metadata, be a great service to your end users, you will attract the placements. So attract the opportunities as opposed to chasing after them.

Michael Walker:
Boom, mic drop. That's so good. I love that analogy too. I don't think I've never thought about it or heard it that way before with the actors, bad actors versus good actors and how it just feels shallow or just yeah, the reading from a script doesn't work versus someone who's like, really even for them, even if they're acting, it's like they bring so much authenticity, so much truth. And I think that part of the secret, I think of really good acting is that they are able to kind of temporarily let go of their personality, ego, and really assume this identity. So for them in that moment, it's like who can make it feel most true to themselves as they're going through it? Definitely really, really interesting. Cool, man.

Michael Walker:
So Michael, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. It's always awesome to talk with you and just so much wisdom and value from a lifetime of work in this realm. And I think it's a huge opportunity for so many of the musicians here to be able to leverage the assets of the music that they've already invested so much time and energy into recording, and just to really value their work. So really appreciate you and what you do. And I know that throughout the year, sometimes you have different launches and sometimes the course isn't available and whatnot. So could you talk a little bit more about your course? Is it available right now and what can they expect?

Michael Elsner:
Yeah, yeah. I've actually made it now available full time. And so you can sign up at any time you want. I changed that just because I have so many people now in the Facebook group that there's so many great conversations happening that I didn't want to just hold, if people want to learn licensing, if you want to learn licensing today, then you should be able to learn licensing. And the Facebook group that we have is so powerful now with all the conversations that have happened in there and all the success stories and stuff like that. So I didn't feel like there was a need to just launch here and there. So it's available 24/7. It's awesome. I'd give you a fun little story before I wrap up. There was a guy in Canada who signed up very at the end of 2019 in January after Chris and I did a bootcamp.

Michael Elsner:
He sent me a message and said, "Hey, Michael, 2020 was my first year of course, during the pandemic licensing. Almost had 400 placements, things from like Saturday Night Live to hockey and kid shows and stuff like that." And I responded back to him and I said, "How much of that would you equate to the Master Music Licensing course?" And his exact response was, "All of it, Michael. I knew nothing before I got started with the program." And so I've been able to have a lot of cool placements in my career. But I'll tell you, there's nothing that's more fulfilling at this point for me than to see people who are learning the process that I've learned over the past 17 years or so, apply that to their own career and have those types of successes. And that's what I absolutely love, and I think it's the most fun thing.

Michael Elsner:
So you're welcome to check out the course at any time. I offer a 14 day money back guarantee. Of course we all do, but it allows you to get into the course, allows you into the private Master Music Licensing group, and really see if this will be a good fit. So I encourage you if, if licensing is something that you want to do and you're ready to take it seriously, and you like systems where one thing leads right into the next and takes the guesswork out of it, then this is a program I think you'll really enjoy and get a lot out of.

Michael Walker:
Awesome, man. Well, I super, super appreciate it. And Michael, you're the man. Hope you enjoy your time here in sunny, sunny, Florida. And maybe we'll have a chance to connect in next week.

Michael Elsner:
That would be awesome. All right, Michael, thanks for having me.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value at its episode. Make sure to check out the show notes, to learn more about the guests today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. It's time to be a modern musician now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.