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I've been in the trailer music industry for 11 years. Here's what they pay and how to get into it...

yapa

New Member
Two wild (but true) things I've experienced in the trailer music industry:
  1. I once saw a major game project offer a total of $350,000 for a :30 - :60 song for their trailer.
  2. I once earned a total of $100,000+ for playing a few seconds of plucked notes.
Who I Am
I've been a composer in the US trailer music industry for 11 years.

As part of an initiative at my studio, I spent a lot of time training teammates interested in writing trailer music. They went from knowing nothing (but being outstanding and instinctual composers) to regularly landing custom trailer gigs without my help.

Some of our credits are with companies like Marvel Studios, Netflix, Apple, Hulu, Amazon Studios, Warner Bros., CNN, and 20th Century Studios.

Here's what I can tell you about my experience with the process and how to get into it.

Custom vs. Pre-Existing Music

These are the two ways you land a paid license on a trailer. You're either going to be asked to write custom music or someone will find something you've already written and ask you to trailerize* it (if it's not already trailer-friendly).

You will likely not score trailer footage, but you might if you work with a publisher that has earned the trust of trailer houses.

If you ever get a chance to see trailer footage, for the love of all that is good, please do not share that with anybody. Do not post photos on social media. The media will pick it up, and you may never work in this part of the industry again. Keep trade secrets to yourself, and respect your audience—they like being surprised!

*"Trailerizing" means taking an existing piece of music and cutting it into a 3-act structure, adding risers, drums, and enhancing elements so it fits the often-larger scale of trailers.

Your Production is Probably Not As Good As You Think

Whether you're creating custom or pre-existing music, your priority will be about getting your production value to a place that can stand with (or go beyond) every trailer you've seen in the last 6 to 12 months.

Based on empirical data, I can say with confidence that if you've never worked in the trailer or pop music industry, your production ability for trailers is probably not as good as you think.

To do this right, you have to learn about 3-act narrative structure, grab the best sample libraries your money can buy, and practice the ever-living hell out of making them sound good. (Record live when possible, but it's not at all necessary.)

Write A LOT of music and show it to people who work in the trailer industry because that's how you're gonna get good.

Don't show your trailer music to people that don't work in trailer music because they aren't part of that industry. They don't understand the requirements. Trailers are a different beast.

Often No, Occasionally Yes

You're gonna get a lot of "no's" when you write custom trailer music.

Those rejections are coming from both trailer houses and trailer music production studios. Every "no" you get is another step to getting a yes. That's especially true if you can get feedback on why your music got rejected.

Once you get the hang of things, you're gonna get the occasional "yes." My first "yes" was a kill fee of $500. Once you get your first "yes," you'll realize it's the start of a hundred future "yeses." Keep going!

Demo Fees & Kill Fees

Demo fees are payments made to you regardless of whether you land the gig.

Kill fees are made only if your music does not get licensed on the ad.

The general consensus with trailer composers is they are rare or uncommon. If you do get them, they're between $250 to a few thousand dollars.

I get demo fees with every project I work on. I don't know why—I think it's because my publisher has good relationships with music trailer houses. Or, my publisher is secretly putting up the money to have me pitch my music.

They're usually a few hundred dollars.

Landing A Trailer Is A Minor Miracle

You're always competing against the very top composers in the trailer business, and their production chops are the best in any part of the music industry.

Most of the customs I do won't land on the final trailer. You can do a great job writing the music, get it accepted by the trailer house, and have it become part of the final edit. But...

There are always multiple trailer houses, each working on multiple edits of the trailer. The chances of yours becoming the one to make it as the final is not in your control.

How Much Trailers Pay

The payment ranges are vast, and it all depends on the amount of music and the terms of the agreement. We might see an average range of $20k to $60k (total).

(Big trailer payments do not happen often. If you work 8 hours per day every day and land 3 big trailers in one year, I would personally say you had an extraordinarily good year.)

If you design trailer-based SFX, you can expect to receive a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per sound. (I'm always talking about totals here. And again, my experience).

That $350k project was for a huge game release. A friend who works at a big game company once told me that their company invests the same amount of money to market a game as it does to develop one.

There's an abundance of money invested in marketing. The aforementioned $100k+ payment I got for a few notes of music was such a bizarre occurrence; I've never seen that again in the past six years.

Deadlines (And Writing Fast)

If you don't care about the money, a good reason to get into trailer music is to improve your skills in literally every other music production thing you do. Being pushed by people working on high-level projects makes you get good.

That includes learning how to produce things of high quality and creativity very quickly.

The shortest deadline I've ever had was 5 hours to score the entire 2:30 trailer from scratch. In this case, I had footage available. I finished it in 4 hours, landed the placement, and everyone was happy.

The longest deadline I've had was maybe 5 days:
  • 2 of those days were dedicated to panicking and thinking about what I wanted to do;
  • 1 day was used to create the general idea and structure;
  • 1 day to flesh it out;
  • 1 day to finish, mix, and deliver.
On average, the most time I get for trailers is 2 to 3 days. I've gotten emails on Friday for Monday AM delivery more times than I'd like.

Trailer Jobs Can Drag On For A Long Time

It may take 3 days to finish the first draft of a custom trailer track, but it's not unusual for revision requests to come every week for the next many months. You will be working on the same trailer at least once per week for a long time, with no guarantee that your track will win the placement.

If you do happen to get the placement, be prepared to wait 90+ days for the money to get to you.

Sometimes, companies licensing your music will sometimes forget to send quote requests or inform the publisher. Or, your publisher will be working on the deal and not tell you about it, but you'll have already seen the trailer online.

The first trailer license I got was for Netflix. I saw the trailer and heard my music before I even knew my music had been approved and licensed.

Please consider having another source of income before going into writing music for trailers.

Find A Publisher

This has been the most crucial part of my success in the trailer world and in many other music things.

A common publisher-composer deal is 50/50. So if you land a $20k job, the publisher earns (truly earns) $10k.

Without my publisher's connections, I wouldn't have worked on so many projects.

I cannot highlight the importance of a good publisher enough. We all need to find teammates that invest in us. We need to know who will take care of us and invest everything we have into caring for them.

If I were to approach a music library to join their roster right now, I'd look toward movies coming out in 2023 and 2024, write trailer music that could fit those worlds (but don't use the themes), and tell the music library that "I wrote these with those movies in mind and I'd love to work with you on pitching them."

By doing that, we're showing them we can do the work, are willing to do it, and are thinking about wholeheartedly serving the publisher and the trailer houses/editors they serve.

Conclusion

This post is not an all-encompassing trailer music encyclopedia. But I hope you now feel more confident in experimenting with this part of the industry. I've never felt more imposter syndrome than when working on trailer music. But if you do the work over and over again, it goes away. Feel free to ask me questions here.

Wishing you much joy and creativity.

Your friend,
yapa
 
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Additional Thoughts

You Will Get Better With Every Project

Here are a few trailers I've worked on but did not place:
  • The Batman
  • Tenet
  • Luca
  • The Lion King
  • Logan
  • West Side Story
  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
  • Avengers: Endgame
  • Doctor Sleep
  • Star Wars: Rogue One
  • Star Wars: The Force Awakens
  • Star Wars: Solo
  • Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
  • (Fellow trailer music composers are vigorously nodding their heads right about now.)
  • Birds of Prey
  • Call of the Wild
  • Godzilla
  • Some Coen Brothers movie (I never found out what it was)
  • Kingsman: The Golden Circle
  • Reminiscence
  • Hunters
  • Aquaman (I did so many versions of rock songs.)
  • Justice League
  • Mary Poppins Returns
  • Queen and Slim
  • White Boy Rick
  • The Greatest Showman
  • Dumbo
  • Jurassic World
  • Jurassic World 2
  • War of the Planet of the Apes
Imagine how quickly your skills can grow while working on all of those projects. Doing a lot of work is an excellent way to become better, faster, and more creative. (More creative, because constraints and repetition allow you to explore things you haven't done.)

My main job is film scoring, so I've been able to use all of that experience and offer it as value to the filmmakers and studios I work with. You can do the same for Production Music, songwriting, and many other things.

Everything we do makes us better at everything that's related.

A Long Journey
Here's an infographic for the journey your trailer music takes to reach final approval:

328431854_727758452263360_4419294533709884347_n.jpg

A Tangent About Huge Payouts and Helping Your Community

You may find yourself in luck with one of these extraordinarily large payments. Even a $30k payment isn't exactly uncommon. If you ever feel like you haven't earned it, think back on all those years you spent training, working for free, and getting all those "no's."

There will be times when you feel like you've been given too much, even after thinking of all the effort it took. Accept it and use it to help the people around you.

I can't tell you how many conversations I've had about this. It's shocking for any musician or composer, especially ones who've spent half a lifetime or more trying to make something of their music (like your friend Yapa).

If I can reiterate my unsolicited advice...

If you ever have more money than you need, use it to find ways to improve the lives of your community members. You'll eventually find yourself thriving in more ways than one.

If I remember correctly, my first few trailer payments vanished into the pockets of Sallie Mae and other debts.

But every dollar I've made since has been put into paying my fellow music creators. (Or paying myself so I could spend more time helping people for free. It's a balance—you can only volunteer for so long until you have nothing again. Speaking from experience.)

It's something I'm proud of and have worked towards every day for most of my career. The biggest reason I'm so confident in myself is that I know my fellow creators have my back.

I'm sure most of you have felt this many times before, but I still have the urge to describe the pure joy of putting time (and money when you have it) into the people around you.

If your cup is full, please try to fill as many other cups as you can. Your cup will grow even bigger than you thought.
 
What's the typical delivery format? Stereo? 4.0, 5.1, Atmos ?
Always Stereo. If other formats have been delivered, I've never done or heard of it.
Great post :emoji_ok_hand:

Which platform do you find most publishers prefer you to send tracks via - disco, dropbox, etc?
Thank you! I don't know what most publishers prefer since I've been exclusive (by choice) with one for essentially all of my career. I use Disco with my publisher because they have their whole system set up to be organized on their end.

I know publishers don't mind using Dropbox. In fact, when Disco isn't working right, I'll also use DropBox to send files.
 
Awesome posts Yapa! Thanks for sharing all this.

Sorry for going a bit off topic here but what's your opinion on trailer music trends?

I mean stuff like the piano ping starting the trailer, the remix of a popular song, braams, signals, etc, which are part of the trailer language in a way.

Are these perpetuated simply because they work? Is it because clients ask for that stuff?

Also what about this somewhat recent trend of trailers starting with an announcement with a counter saying something like "TRAILER FOR X STARTING NOW!".
 
Yapa,
thanks for the great post.
I love your point about being an active part of your community, looking out for each other and helping the people around you (if you can).
 
That was a lavishly generous post. You've given back to all of us in spades with your compassionate, generous sharing.

Many kind thanks; you've inspired me to get involved as I've been on the fence as to how to proceed.

All my best, thanks for being such a great person.

Mike
 
Awesome posts Yapa! Thanks for sharing all this.

Sorry for going a bit off topic here but what's your opinion on trailer music trends?

I mean stuff like the piano ping starting the trailer, the remix of a popular song, braams, signals, etc, which are part of the trailer language in a way.

Are these perpetuated simply because they work? Is it because clients ask for that stuff?

Also what about this somewhat recent trend of trailers starting with an announcement with a counter saying something like "TRAILER FOR X STARTING NOW!".
Thanks for your kind words, Pier! I don't have a positive or negative opinion on any of it. Despite its effectiveness, I think the piano ping is getting a little tired. Can't tell you how many times I've recorded piano pings on the off chance I'm able to find a new way to do it. I do hope someone thinks of a new way soon.

As for trends in general, my philosophy when creating new work is to be 80% familiar and 20% fresh. When I write music or design sounds, I combine what is currently (or previously) popular with entirely different ideas and musical techniques.

My advice to anyone wanting to innovate in the arts is to combine disparate ideas, especially if those ideas are ones you have an affinity with.

Also, the goal is always to serve the audience best, and I think "TRAILER FOR X STARTING NOW!" (and other techniques) is a reaction to that. All advertisement (or art in general, really) aims to gain and retain attention and engagement. Anything we can do to get our work closer to that is a service to the people who listen to our music.

Also also, remember when trailers didn't have that initial 5 seconds of a high-octane pre-trailer? The 5-second pre-trailer came about as a reaction to YouTube's 5-second skip window for ads. Technology can often dictate trends.
 
How can I join your team?
I appreciate you wanting to! Thanks for asking.

I'm purposely posting with a pseudonym, so you'd have to do a few things:
  • Find out who I am (and if you do, don't share that info with anyone)
  • Send me a proposal for how you can offer my team value based on what we do and how we do it. Back that up with evidence that you can deliver on what you've said (e.g., "I've done X, and here's the result"). Once you've covered that, include a bit about how you think the team could help you achieve your goals.
Assuming you don't want to go through all that, my best advice for working with a team like mine is to keep watching what certain community members say about how they treat others. Work with people who genuinely care for others for their inherent value. Skills can be taught; ambition and drive can be encouraged, but it takes feeling supported by the people you're with for all that to happen effectively.

Once you've identified those individuals, please do everything you can to work with them because they'll take you far.
 
Thank you for your insightful and honest post! <3 I believe it's special occasions like these that truly give value to the community and especially for those who are just finding their way forward. I haven't been in trailer realm myself, but have rather focused on building a catalogue and grinding my spot in the streaming realm. I see many similar "required strengths" in both realms, especially the idea of just grinding your skills by constantly producing material even if that specific material would not end up being incomewise meaningful, and also honing your production skills with focus on dishing out as high quality material as possible as fast as possible.

I do believe that one main reason da Vinci was such a master was that he produced such an insane amount of stuff throughout his career. If you create 10,000 pieces of art, it's no wonder a few of those are insanely good. You can't get to that point by just trying to do a masterpiece as the first thing.
 
Ahhhh …..@yapa! I think I know who you are (your secret is safe) and I’m not surprised at the generosity you continue to bestow to the composer community at large. Sad that this kind of support/industry info sharing is so rare…thanks again!
 
Amazing post and all of it rang true with my experience as a trailer composer too! Thanks for taking the time to put that together for everyone.

A couple things really irk me about the industry and curious if you had any thoughts to chime in.
Maybe I'm being a little too critical / bitter since I quit the trailer industry more or less for these reasons.

Movies like Star Wars: The Force Awakens have so much money for marketing but only a few publishers manage to wrangle in $500 kill fees. Why are so many composers asked to work for free on the same project? Seems like the studios and pubs are leveraging free labor as an "opportunity" for young composers. Studios could easily afford $500 for every composers demo but the paperwork might be a nightmare? Are they even aware how many composers work on one trailer?

I agree with 3 big trailers being an awesome year. But if you spend 8 hours a day doing customs that's only a $45k payday for a year of work with maybe a few kill fees here and there? Those numbers don't seem very tenable. Trailers don't pay back end royalties and trailer production music generally relies on those random big synchs too. Also maybe you're competing against your own production music releases by doing customs so frequently?

Warner Bros is difficult about composers / pubs sharing their music done for a trailer and asks that it not even be posted or credited on their social media. So some huge trailers you potentially can't even get credit for doing.

-----

It seems tricky to manage as a solo career long term unless you get into the publishing side and leverage the free or low paid work of other composers so the publishing entity can maximize the odds of landing synchs and meet their clients demands.

Or

Your publisher is a badass and makes money from trailer music in other ways. Such as public releases, tv synchs, content id, etc. I would honestly only work with pubs that put a lot of effort into those aspects (other than just landing massive synchs / customs.) Really slow motion, Brand X, Audiomachine, etc are amazing at diversifying so their composers can make royalties that aren't so random.

-------

On one hand it can be a really great way to grow and get started as a composer but on the other hand it seems oddly exploitative considering the amount of money studios have for marketing and the amount of success a good trailer can bring to a film. Considering the insane deadlines, rewrites, and needing to literally be on call for the project incase they need edits or stems, that seems like a massive ask for a relatively small payout?


It's important to address the bullshit aspects of working on trailers so composers can see past the "amazing opportunities" and understand what will be demanded from them. It can be an insane amount of work for little to no reward. Other than learning and being proud that you were offered the chance to work on something huge and delivered something you thought was awesome.
 
Amazing post and all of it rang true with my experience as a trailer composer too! Thanks for taking the time to put that together for everyone.

A couple things really irk me about the industry and curious if you had any thoughts to chime in.
Maybe I'm being a little too critical / bitter since I quit the trailer industry more or less for these reasons.

Movies like Star Wars: The Force Awakens have so much money for marketing but only a few publishers manage to wrangle in $500 kill fees. Why are so many composers asked to work for free on the same project? Seems like the studios and pubs are leveraging free labor as an "opportunity" for young composers. Studios could easily afford $500 for every composers demo but the paperwork might be a nightmare? Are they even aware how many composers work on one trailer?

I agree with 3 big trailers being an awesome year. But if you spend 8 hours a day doing customs that's only a $45k payday for a year of work with maybe a few kill fees here and there? Those numbers don't seem very tenable. Trailers don't pay back end royalties and trailer production music generally relies on those random big synchs too. Also maybe you're competing against your own production music releases by doing customs so frequently?

Warner Bros is difficult about composers / pubs sharing their music done for a trailer and asks that it not even be posted or credited on their social media. So some huge trailers you potentially can't even get credit for doing.

-----

It seems tricky to manage as a solo career long term unless you get into the publishing side and leverage the free or low paid work of other composers so the publishing entity can maximize the odds of landing synchs and meet their clients demands.

Or

Your publisher is a badass and makes money from trailer music in other ways. Such as public releases, tv synchs, content id, etc. I would honestly only work with pubs that put a lot of effort into those aspects (other than just landing massive synchs / customs.) Really slow motion, Brand X, Audiomachine, etc are amazing at diversifying so their composers can make royalties that aren't so random.

-------

On one hand it can be a really great way to grow and get started as a composer but on the other hand it seems oddly exploitative considering the amount of money studios have for marketing and the amount of success a good trailer can bring to a film. Considering the insane deadlines, rewrites, and needing to literally be on call for the project incase they need edits or stems, that seems like a massive ask for a relatively small payout?


It's important to address the bullshit aspects of working on trailers so composers can see past the "amazing opportunities" and understand what will be demanded from them. It can be an insane amount of work for little to no reward. Other than learning and being proud that you were offered the chance to work on something huge and delivered something you thought was awesome.
I have gotten the impression that like with many aspects of music production industry, trailer business is no exception in the way that handful of people can do really well, but most of the people have to make due with less, leading to the situation where one has to juggle many aspects at the same time - other production work on the side etc. hoping for better times and good luck.

I have found that in any situation where you have to rely on others and accept the fact that the deals involve giving up major parts of the revenue stream, it is way much harder to reach sustainability and freedom, in comparison to situation where you can be in full control of the outcome. This has been one of the major reasons I have focused on purely own catalogue and having all the strings in my own hands with as little splits and deals as possible. Sure, the workload is heavier because you get no support from anywhere, but when you get things rolling, the sustainability and freedom is already there.
 
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