How to Market Yourself Online as a Film Music Composer

The career path for a film composer used to be a lot different than it is today. In the old days, you would have to find some way into a very select group if you wanted to become a successful writer of film music, but this is no longer the case. With the help of proper online marketing, you should be able to get a start to your composing career without moving to Hollywood or New York.

The internet has created a realistic option of freelancing for people in all sorts of fields, but especially for those in media production and artistic fields. This is the age of non-locational work and telecommuting through the web. In fact, people from around the world are constantly collaborating on projects without even seeing each other. Files can be sent online and worked on independently.

What this means for film music composers is that you can work on scoring someone’s film that is on the other side of the planet. Obviously, this opens up the possible market for your services. Add to this the fact that more people worldwide are working with film and video because of their increased internet application, and a dramatic cheapening of production equipment prices, and you can see that the demand for music is greater than ever.

In order to take advantage of this worldwide film music market, you need to be able to promote yourself on the internet, and this starts with having a website.

A film music composer’s website is like their online business card, only it has to be much more than that. It is the first thing people will see about you and maybe the only thing, so it must make a good impression. Since potential clients and listeners will be interested in you as a composer, samples of your music should be the first thing they get to.

Your website should feature audio tracks of your music prominently, and even more desirable, would be video samples. If you have clips from films that you have scored these should be easy to find as well. Since its always good to have visual material on websites, you might want to have a somehow related picture that goes along with each audio sample.

Beyond the music, your site should be simple, yet functional and professional. It should seem like you either spent a lot of time or money on it, and it should display aspects of your personality as well. Your site should be a representation of you on the internet, and it should give people an idea of what they can expect from you as a composer.

Luckily, getting a website made or making one yourself is not as big of a deal as it used to be. A film music composer may be able to construct their own if they don’t have a big budget for website design professionals. Free content management systems like Wordpress are available for download and can give you a highly functional website that will only require a little tweaking to suit your needs.

Once you have your website you are ready to start an aggressive film music marketing campaign. In the beginning, you will most likely have to score a few films for free, but this is not a bad thing. It will help you practice your craft, give you some more exposure, and give you sample material for your site. Just don’t get too many people thinking they can always come to you for a free film score.

Being a film music composer is still a tough career, and even with a nice website and some serious compositional skills, it still may take a while for your name to get around. However, with a persistent online marketing strategy and some hard work, you should be able to start drawing in some paying work. The world of film music is much more open than in anytime in history, so know that you have that on your side.