Hello Dave,
thanks for joining the conversation, you haven't hijacked the thread at all.
First of all I am glad to hear that your concert music is going well, from my perspective this is an excellent outcome.
@Acclarion said:
That said, a very simple and basic question for all of you that write for "clients." Where are these clients?
Please bear in mind that I have a day job, I haven't got that many clients at the moment as a composer, not quite yet. As far as I can tell, clients are everywhere but it's neither easy to receive commissions nor to do decent placements, word of mouth is still the best thing and networking in person is really important: that's why I recently moved from the south of Italy to England, there's much more going on here.
When I was in Italy, I have had requests to make bespoke soundtracks from people who knew my work because I was in a band and they were videomakers, actually I contacted them because I needed a videoclip for my band and then I came across their script for a short film. A friend of these videomaker who is a director saw the short film (with my music) and asked me to score a commercial for him. An actor from the same short film asked me to do an arrangement for a tv opening he was writing (local tv). These were unpaid projects, I did that for practice (and naivety) back then.
The screenplayer from that commercial wrote another commercial last summer, they were looking for some library music and they asked for my help, I pitched 3 of my existing tracks and one made it. I sold a non exclusive license in that case and I was really pleased with it.
This tells me how powerful the word of mouth is.
Apart from this I have sold library/stock music on a few different platforms, it does work but it's a small side income. As I said I want to self-publish from now on and retain 100% of licensing fees (well, apart from the taxes of course).
In other words, I can't answer your initial question in full because I am not big enough, but I can say for certain that real networking is essential. Here in Guildford I have met a lot of young composers/sound designer who make a living out of music, some of those were just participating at the local game jams and then they were asked to work for bigger companies or tv. I will eventually make it! 😃
Francesco