Phill Mason

Can you see what I did there in the photo?

Ok folks, I’d like to ask you all a favour. I have a couple of questions I’d like you to comment on. I’m doing some research into the music for video field and your feedback would be very much appreciated.

Let’s say you’ve finished filming for your latest video masterpiece and you know it requires something else to give it that crucial edge, that final pro touch, because you’re looking at dominating your competitors and it needs that extra sparkle they just don’t have. Either an Intro jingle, signature tune, musical branding, underscore for voiceover, an outro etc, call it what you like, but music is the emotional icing your video requires. What I would like to know is this;

1. Would you not bother with music and put your video out as it is – perhaps it doesn’t need musical enhancement?

2. Do you search online for the masterpiece to compliment your video and purchase the piece if its right?

3. What would you pay for a Royalty Free Piece of music? Something or Nothing?

I’m sure there are many of you who are capable of writing your own piece of original music, so this really goes out to those who can’t, but I’d still be interested to know if you like the idea of such a service.

I’m in the process of putting together some "Modular Royalty Free Music", let me explain. This came about when a friend asked if I could put a piece of music to their video – no problem I said, I’d love to. Thing is, there was a problem – how long should the music be! Sure he knew his video would be approx 4 minutes long, but he also said it could be 4 or 6 minutes.

You see he wanted to have the piece of finished music with him out in the field, so when he’d finished editing his filming for the day, he could upload his video to his office or client completely topped, tailed and with music and all the trimmings to boot.  This is when the modular music idea kicked in. If I could provide a client with modular pieces of music to accompany their video, the length would not be an issue and neither would its length need to be predetermined.

Here’s How The Modular Royalty Free Music Works

I provide you with an intro piece of 2 and/or 4 bars, a main underscore piece of 4 and 8 bar lengths similar to a verse of a song for the bulk of the video – something that’s easy to narrate over and finally an outro piece with alternate endings. Also additional layered pieces of music can also be provided in order to give your music additional variation throughout. Various fill-ins, Chorus pieces and Middle 8 parts can provide total flexibility and freedom for music creation without the difficulty of editing and arranging your video to fit the music. With music in MP3 or WAV modular form, arranging your music can be as easy as a simple drag and drop procedure in your NLE video software.

I have plans to provide music ranging from totally free music loops, to paid modular pieces right up to a music score you can purchase outright. I’m considering publishing other peoples compositions in order to provide a platform and outlet for other musicians/composers and also to provide clients with a vast varied library of Royalty Free Music all in one place.

I’ll add some modular audio examples to this post in a few days for you to listen to. You’ll be free to download them and try them in your next video creation so you can let me know how it worked out for you. Please consider commenting on my questions above as this will give me with some insight into whether or not you would use a service like this and in return I hope I can provide you with some useful compositions.

Thanks for your time and have a cracking 2009 – Happy New Year.

The title of this post is one of those questions that I’d bet nearly every internet marketer has asked themselves at one point in time, I know I certainly have. How Easy Is It To Make A Million Dollars? I remember laughing at a comment as I watched a Frank Kern video where he reminisced about his early marketing days and he said I remember thinking -  "how can I get a Million people to give me one dollar" – how many of us have pondered over that one before? Or equally, how can I get 100,000 people to give me $10? The numbers don’t really matter when you’re simply thinking hypothetically, but how many of you have actually taken the time to find out what it really does take to make a Million dollars? Not many of you I bet.

Well, if you’ve ever made a Million of anything, you know it’s bloody hard, but its not until you physically put the numbers down on paper or in my case, into an Excel Spreadsheet, that you begin to realise that the numbers required to make a Million dollar per year business happen, are not so ridiculously high as you might of originally thought!

I like to use charts, graphs, diagrams, spreadsheets, scraps of paper or whatever necessary to clearly see what’s required for any business plan whatever size or scale it maybe. This allows me to scale the business plan either way in order to see if it is an achievable scalable business in the early stages. I made a simple Excel spreadsheet called "Annual Turnover Calculator" – see image below. This allows me to see what quantities of traffic and sales are required to achieve various annual turnover goals. I’ve used a very low conservative 1% conversion rate for my numbers, but you could change this to whatever you like. 1.5% – 2% is probably more realistic in the early stages.

So, whether you are planning for a $25k per year business or that $1,000,000 business we all strive for, a simple calculator can really help you focus on actual figures needed to make it happen and as you can see from the image below, there’s some serious money to be made for those of you who can drive the right amount of traffic to a tasty sales page in a hungry niche market. None of this is rocket science, simply a process. Get the research right and the rest will become a lot easier.

If you’d like to have the Excel Spreadsheet for your own planning, you’re most welcome to have a copy, just click the link below and save it to your hard drive.
Download the Annual Turnover Calculator Here

Happy Planning and here’s to a most successful and prosperous 2009.

Happy New Year.

WordPress have listened to their users and come up with a totally new interface. We’ve probably all seen this moveable dashboard type interface before on popular social media websites, but what do you think about the new WordPress interface, good move, or not. Watch the video and leave a comment, I’d love to know your opinion.