Author Topic: Who's making money with audio? (Read 19518 times)

leaf · « **on:** June 25, 2011, 21:54 »

Anyone getting seriously into audio? Which sites are you using?

I am on half vacation / half working the next couple months and thought perhaps it might be a nice time to round out my port with a little audio while I am out and about. ... maybe that is about as effective as shooting stock photos while you are out and about but capturing audio would be more about fun than anything at this point.

microstockphoto.co.uk · « **Reply #1 on:** June 26, 2011, 02:48 »

I am getting into audio right now, "FUN" is the key indeed. "Seriously", I hope but it's too soon to tell.
Not sure if my neighbours will find it equally fun.

I received my new PCM recorder last week and it's working great. I made some experiments and it seems that recording at 44/24 is the best option: gives plenty of headroom for "lossless" editing before the final export as 44/16; 88/24 is overkill. The only editing I had to do is volume adjustment and (sometimes) bandstop filters: it's faster than pictures.

Digital recording means zero background noise theoretically, but I found out that there's a lot of background noise in the surrounding environment, it's very difficult to record a low sound such as birds, wind, rain without catching a plane or car or dog. Recording industrial machines (drills ,hammers, ...) is funnier but I am not sure it's much in need - there are a lot of those sounds already. I must admit that I find it difficult for now to think about useful sounds stockwise.

The best site that comes to my mind is Pond5 of course.

Would be nice to know if there's an IPTC equivalent for audio but I asked in another thread and got no answers so I am afraid there isn't - or no one is interested in audio.

I wonder why no site (that I know) accepts .FLAC: lossless compression, so they could automatically create both .WAV and .MP3

Dreamframer · « **Reply #2 on:** June 26, 2011, 17:48 »

I'm selling audio too. By far the best sellers are Audiosparx and Pond5. Both have constant sales and give 40-60% of earnings to artists. I have few sales worth more than $150 each at Audiosparx.
There are sites that pay thousands of dollars (like Musicdealers) but you really need to be lucky. One of my instrumentals was chosen with few others for a job worth $20 000, but it wasn't a winner.
Both Audiosparx and Musicdealers (and many others) don't accept artists who sell audio through Istockphoto and other cheap agencies.
There is one more site sells from time to time (Revostock).

In general, being on these few sites I earned much more than I was earning on Istock. The move from Istock to these other agencies wasn't easy, since I had to upload and configure everything again, but I didn't regret it.

There was a good place to read reviews of many audio libraries, but they closed the website for guests. Since I was a member, they provided me with one more month of free service. The address is http://musiclibraryreport.com/ratings/
I hope this helps,
Ivan

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #3 on:** June 27, 2011, 06:47 »

My Sony recorder has been sitting in my cabinet collecting dust. IS soundfx sales are few and far between, both for my "natural" audio, and my voice over type clips. Some music that I thought would sell well during baseball season hardly sells at all. So, my IS experiment showed not much success. Maybe I will upload somewhere else if I get the time.

icefloe · « **Reply #4 on:** July 02, 2011, 14:34 »

Quote from: Dreamframer on June 26, 2011, 17:48

Both Audiosparx and Musicdealers (and many others) don't accept artists who sell audio through Istockphoto and other cheap agencies.
There is one more site sells from time to time (Revostock).

In general, being on these few sites I earned much more than I was earning on Istock. The move from Istock to these other agencies wasn't easy, since I had to upload and configure everything again, but I didn't regret it.

There was a good place to read reviews of many audio libraries, but they closed the website for guests. Since I was a member, they provided me with one more month of free service. The address is http://musiclibraryreport.com/ratings/
I hope this helps,
Ivan

Interesting! I am exclusive on istock today and doing only sfx. I dont know much about how other audio stock sites works and it's always interesting to hear other peoples experiences. I was checking pricing of sfx on some of the other sites but couldn't see there was a big diffenece from iStock, but maybe the royalties are better?

I read on Audiosparx about that they don't accept artists who sell audio through Istockphoto and some others, but one of the first artists I found there is also selling on istock (as nonexclusive of course) so I dont know how hard they really are on this.

rinderart · « **Reply #5 on:** July 09, 2011, 12:09 »

Have a few hundred foley effects working. Nice Little income stream. And a lot of Fun. All ya need is the Zoom H4D.

leaf · « **Reply #6 on:** July 09, 2011, 18:46 »

Quote from: rinderart on July 09, 2011, 12:09

Have a few hundred foley effects working. Nice Little income stream. And a lot of Fun. All ya need is the Zoom H4D.

I'm using the zoom H2 .. not quite as fancy as the h4D but I am pretty happy with it.

microstockphoto.co.uk · « **Reply #7 on:** July 10, 2011, 03:00 »

I am using the Olympus LS-10 and I am quite happy

madelaide · « **Reply #8 on:** July 10, 2011, 09:16 »

I know Ivan sells music, while those of you using recorders aim, I suppose, at sounds such as footsteps, birds singing, waterflow, etc - isn't this a different market from music clips?

icefloe · « **Reply #9 on:** July 10, 2011, 11:44 »

I'm not sure, but for Sound effects (sfx)/Recordings and Music I think the buyers are pretty much the same. There's more money in music, but of course takes more time to make.

The big problem with doing sfx recordings (I hate the word SFX, but thats what they call it!) is to make a profit in it. To make a high quality recording, say of a bird soundscape, it take a long time, and the gear isnt cheap, but I earn less compared to what photographers gets for the pictures.

Dreamframer · « **Reply #10 on:** July 10, 2011, 15:19 »

Quote from: icefloe on July 02, 2011, 14:34

Quote from: Dreamframer on June 26, 2011, 17:48
Both Audiosparx and Musicdealers (and many others) don't accept artists who sell audio through Istockphoto and other cheap agencies.
There is one more site sells from time to time (Revostock).

In general, being on these few sites I earned much more than I was earning on Istock. The move from Istock to these other agencies wasn't easy, since I had to upload and configure everything again, but I didn't regret it.

There was a good place to read reviews of many audio libraries, but they closed the website for guests. Since I was a member, they provided me with one more month of free service. The address is http://musiclibraryreport.com/ratings/
I hope this helps,
Ivan

Interesting! I am exclusive on istock today and doing only sfx. I dont know much about how other audio stock sites works and it's always interesting to hear other peoples experiences. I was checking pricing of sfx on some of the other sites but couldn't see there was a big diffenece from iStock, but maybe the royalties are better?

I read on Audiosparx about that they don't accept artists who sell audio through Istockphoto and some others, but one of the first artists I found there is also selling on istock (as nonexclusive of course) so I dont know how hard they really are on this.

Probably the artist didn't tell to Audiosparx staff that he sells on Istock too. Royaties on Audiosparx are 60% for exclusives, and 40% for non-exclusives.

microstockphoto.co.uk · « **Reply #11 on:** July 10, 2011, 19:36 »

@madelaide and icefloe:

I agree making music and sound effects are two different things - although with some similarities

And I agree it's not very profitable, at least for me at present - but even stock photography wasn't profitable when I started and then only after uploading hundreds of pictures I started to see some sales

so who knows about audio... it's funny to try; and you learn a lot of things about bitrates, dithering, compression/limiting, noise reduction,... may be useful in a future life as a dj or sound technician

icefloe · « **Reply #12 on:** July 11, 2011, 01:26 »

I can't help have a feelin that sfx recording will never be as profitable as photography, because the market will never be as big as for images. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe in the future.

At the moment there's no reason to invest more than a few $ 100 in gear, because you will earn the same royalties whether you used $ 500 or $ 4000 gear when you've made your recording. Not to talk about the workinghours...

Well, I will try not to sound negative

, I do audio because I love to and selling stock is so far just a funny thing, just as you say microstockphoto. But if profit doesn't improve in the not too distant future, then at least I will consider my involvement in the audio stock business.

elvinstar · « **Reply #13 on:** July 11, 2011, 08:04 »

I wonder if the stock audio market will increase as we see more iPads, tablets, etc. With the ability to embed video into website and online magazines, it seems like there might be a larger demand in the future.

icefloe · « **Reply #14 on:** July 19, 2011, 00:40 »

Quote from: madelaide on July 10, 2011, 09:16

I know Ivan sells music, while those of you using recorders aim, I suppose, at sounds such as footsteps, birds singing, waterflow, etc - isn't this a different market from music clips?

Quote from: microstockphoto.co.uk on July 10, 2011, 19:36

@madelaide and icefloe:

I agree making music and sound effects are two different things - although with some similarities

I have been thinking about this some more. Sound recording ("sfx" if you prefer) and music should be separated in the stock system. As long as they are baked together as one market recording can never achieve profitability, because they are constantly compared with each other, and music will always be counted higher. Recording have more in common with photography and the pricing of these two categories should be similar.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #15 on:** August 04, 2011, 15:08 »

Interesting. I have years and years worth of reel to reel recordings, (Ampex 71/2 IPS full track) cassette field recordings (Teac deck, not a pocket recorder) and later MD recordings, which probably don't meet the standards. I wonder how recordings of race cars on track sell? I did a quick search and like the video link, there are some serious, multi-channel and multi-mic placement recordings by one vendor.

H4D is discontinued and I suspect the H2 as well. Now H4n model at just under $300, H2n $199 @ B&H. H2 announced as available in Sept.

Prohibited Web Sites - We do not accept any artists whose music tracks they wish to sell at AudioSparx are participating in or at any of the following web sites or programs listed below. In our opinion the web sites above devalue the music industry and do a major disservice to creative music artists by excessively discounting music pricing on a regular on-going basis. Consequently we do not wish to associate ourselves with artists who sell their music at those sites and thereby assist in this devaluation of the industry, and who would just end up competing against themselves at our site, where we strive to maintain reasonable and fair pricing:

AudioMicro.com
RumbleFish.com
Stock20.com
AudioJungle.net
iStockMusic.com (aka iStockPhoto.com)
OakStockMusic.com
SmashTrax.com
RoyaltyFreeHeaven.com
SoundDogs.com

Funny how those devalue and competing against oneself ideas come up just like Micro?

The do mention 20 sound musical tracks or 50 SFX tracks. Someone might want to start building now if they want to sell there later? Looks like a professional site with fair commissions. But like everything else, it makes me wonder how much the Micro market has taken a bite out of their sales?

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Author Topic: Who's making money with audio? (Read 19518 times)

leaf

microstockphoto.co.uk

Dreamframer

Sean Locke Photography

icefloe

rinderart

leaf

microstockphoto.co.uk

madelaide

icefloe

Dreamframer

microstockphoto.co.uk

icefloe

elvinstar

icefloe

RacePhoto

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