I see a lot of misinformation and wild takes in the comments that I will delete. 1. This is not an LA problem much like the the tech / video game crisis is not a Silicon Valley problem. It's global. But when you live in a city that is built around an industry that's currently struggling, the consequences are much more palpable for everyone. Production (and especially post-production) is not leaving LA as many like to claim. The facilities, community, workers, and decision makers are still here. It's just that production in general has been massively scaled back since the pandemic boom which is leaving a record amount of people unemployed. It appears though that similar things are happening at the very least in tech and video games, potentially other industries as well. 2. This is not about AI, as I said at the beginning of the video. I don't have the same doomsday attitude as many others. Low level formulaic library music might get replaced but we're a long ways away from AI being able to write to picture (with everything that entails). There are also many logistic things that need to be figured out from the studio side anyway (copyright, hundreds of millions in royalties that the studios themselves would miss out on, etc.) and the fact that writing to picture is a niche profession only done by a few thousand people on the planet. It's not lucrative at all to try and create a complicated AI that has use for such few people and would replace even fewer. Library music, as I said, may be a different story since it has broader applications. 3. I was talking a lot more about apps and smart tools replacing entry level tasks and jobs. And while as a working composer I'd LOVE for those tools to become more prevalent and capable, I also see that what's good for ppl like me will be bad for others. Namely those starting out trying to work under and learn from others. Those trying to get a foot in the door. There will be fewer doors I'm afraid. And there already weren't that many to begin with. That's the part that's worrying me a bit because if we stop fostering new talent across industries, then where are we going?
10.00: "I don't have the same doomsday attitude as many others" 10.01: "That's the part that's worrying me a bit because if we stop fostering new talent across industries, then where are we going?"
Point 3: keep helping with your tutorials, etc., and the skill floor will naturally, if painfully, rise; if these new bit tech are made known and fairly commercially (or widely privately) available it could become easy (intermediate) 2nd stage tech for beginners (after 0th stage: name files, input sounds; and 1st stage: basic edits).
By low level library music, are you referring to the royalty free stuff geared towards content creators? The higher level library music heard more on TV and in trailers these days has improved a lot in terms of quality.
You are right, this is a global phenomenon in all business. Some hit harder than others. I have seen this negative development in other businesses how they tighten up and fewer people get to do the same amount of work. How the employees perform is measured. The number of ordinary workers will decrease but the managers will remain. It becomes more important for each worker to bring in more money for the company. The atmosphere has become colder and more rigid. The time to help others has become less. This started earlier as you said and became more noticeable during and after the pandemic. As I see it is about money and how credits created by private banks are becoming less and less valuable. The system the world has for creating credit requires a decrease in value (inflation) in order not to crash. But we have reached the point where the depreciation is too great and is starting to implode. But as long as the people believe that the money has a certain value, the system can be maintained. The reboot you speak of is inevitable. It will affect the whole world and it will be painful.
I was growing up in a theatre that did opera, and I value working together, how fast you can learn from others. Without that it is just dead. As for issues being global, yes, tech is removing generational knowledge passing trough natural means ( but it is especially bad in California because of your super lefty politicians. ). Schools won't cut it and for over 3 decades they are about money and not about art.
Ppl really don’t realize how important MENTORSHIP is (was). Watching over the shoulder of your boss, being there at that perfect moment where something new or novel happened and someone had to (literally) engineer a solution on the fly… you could learn and build camaraderie in those moments. The business has cannibalized itself in the name of profit maximalism, and this moment is the consequence of that. I’m seeing it on the face of my industry companions and it’s devastating.
It's actually refreshing seeing someone talk honestly about this (very on-brand for you). I've been seeing a lot of denial, out-dated perspectives and insights, and a general secrecy regarding this. I don't have a plan to jump ship, but it does cross my mind every once in a while. I just keep thinking that if I tough it out, I'll have an advantage when things stabilize.
We may very well be in a last man standing scenario here. Those who can wait this downturn out will probably reap the benefits later, much like the stock market.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposerExactly ! If one has other means : wait it out. Keep learning, studying, mastering the craft (even if it’s only for yourself without the assignments). Keep posting your “how-to” videos Anne-Kathrin, entry composition lessons, as you do it so brilliantly. After all … exactly: this profession has always been reserved for just a handful of individuals, historically speaking. It was never meant to be an “industry” in the literal sense of the word. It goes back to the dawn of the internet, Napster, CD burners, end of selling music for consumers etc. Technology became cheaper and cheaper, better and better. “Entry level” human factor has been effectively replaced. On a highest end though, there will always be demand for super-skill, individuality, emotional elements that no technology can replace (i.e. soaring vocal melodies, beautiful violin playing, deeply moving composition that no computer can “feel”). As with the live music : performances will be always in demand, but will become something for “aficionados only” -selected audiences worldwide (i.e. private concerts which can become a profession in itself). Remember Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale” about a Chinese emperor who rejected a live nightingale for the fake song of a mechanical bird ? Gee… Andersen felt this 180 years ago when the story was first published. Someone needs to make a movie about this, and the soundtrack could become an Oscar winner 😊
Closing with "the way it has been hasn't been sustainable to begin with anyway" is a good reminder. We can mourn when things change - that's the world I want to live in - at the same time though, I do think it's exciting to be able to build a new way of moving forward with what we've learned up until now as a collective. I like to believe the good human spirit will prevail in the end. It is sad to hear the state of the industry. I really feel for the people that have been laid off. thanks for sharing your thoughts
I probably should have started with that sentence. 😅 We definitely can't continue the way we have been. The strikes and recent unionizations have laid bare a deeply rooted problem while the studios seem to have jumped into the streaming wars without knowing how to make it profitable. Add to that audiences not being happy with what they're getting and you have a lot of people who need to rethink the way they're doing things.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposer In LIVE music performing environment, and (worse) in the recording studio musicians community the exactly same thing happened as well. It started even earlier, around 2008-2010. When I first came to work at Walt Disney World as a pianist (1996) we had live music everywhere! Live shows, concerts with full orchestras playing film soundtracks etc. not to mention bunch of atmosphere groups, recording sessions etc. Bunch of world-class musicians made Central Florida their home. Today perhaps ten percent of those facilities still have live music. How can young generation of musicians gain necessary experience (that takes years and years of work in different styles) to become masters ??? I think John Williams was right… (I’m positive you know what I am talking about). Peace…
@@AnneKathrinDernComposer Well thought out discussion, thank you Anne Kathrin. "Add to that audiences not being happy with what they're getting" Yep. Working far away from the LA industry here in Sweden, I'm honestly stunned by just how bad many productions have become. Not sure you like it mentioning, but IMO wokeness is a major part of that.
Thank you for your thoughts on this matter, Anne-Kathrin. As a film composer not in of LA, with jobs from the East Coast, England, and Australia, I saw a major slowing in the independent film world starting about 5-6 years ago. It appears that the slowing has come to LA. It is almost like when the stock market pauses to figure out what is going on in the economy, before launching into new directions. I wish all the very best to my fellow film composers in and out of LA. Don’t get discouraged. This, too, shall pass.
The thing I'm hopeful for is that the crisis of the highest tier productions could lead to an increase in mid-tier productions in between the Indie and AAA spaces. I don't know if this would be more sustainable for professionals, but I hope that there will be new spaces to work in.
When I was in LA in the 80s, I was a writer and wrote for a lot of music magazines. I also did PR for a large Hollywood studio--Group IV Recording. The co-owners were Angel Balestier and Dennis Sands. That was my entree to the film/TV scoring biz. I got to hang with Dennis and Alan Silvestri when they were working on sessions. I remember when they worked on the mix for "Outrageous Fortune" (Bette Midler/Shelley Long). I met Alan Silvestri on a previous writing gig and even visited him at his home and he told me how he got his start in film scoring with "Romancing the Stone". How the biz has changed since then! Group IV shut down decades ago. Great studio and a lot of amazing projects were done there including a lot of the early Silvestri scores, other scores, and TV shows.
Game Technical Sound Designer (and eventual composer) here. You said that movies and TV are having a harder time but I'm not really sure if games are much better since from the get-go games NEVER established a culture that involves nurturing new talent to feed the industry again. There was never a big interest of any of the companies of fomentating the development of new talent and in bridging the gap between a newcomer and a more experienced person in the industry, they'd rather never invest in the local scene and go elsewhere look for talent (hence all AAA companies having people from dozens of countries inside their teams). This is not an issue only with audio of course, actually I'd say it's even worse outside of audio and is an issue that will eventually come back to bite but it seems like many executives cannot think that long-term or they just have a firm belief that AI will just "fix" it for them. Either way, it is the worst time for someone to be pursuing a career in games that has ever been and I cannot recommend it for anyone that is not already too deep to stop (and even then, I'd advice to HAVE A PLAN B)
@mitsuki1388 I actually majored in and studied game design but left and pursued a career in a different engineering discipline altogether. I now work in aerospace. I still have dreams of being a composer for media and my music and work ethic has been well above average for years, but I have no idea how to break in with connections and gigs. This video doesn't instill a lot of confidence.
What you said about trust can not be over stated. Back in the day when an assistant could watch and learn and ask questions and evolve their skillset in a community environment, they also would be building the trust of the composer and other team members. This would lead to recommendations and more work, etc. These days, the absolute only time I hire anyone is: 1. If you and I have already worked together and I love your work 2. You come highly recommended by someone I highly respect. I've been burned before by hiring someone who wanted a shot. Total disaster. Never again. Learned that lesson once the hard way. This leaves the question: How does someone new build trust with other composers if they're all working remote? Promotions happen in proximity unfortunately.
I think it's also worth mentioning, imo, that there is quite a lot of work out there for composers outside of the typical Hollywood route that people could pivot too if they've been struggling to find work in side the more typical film/video game work. Many companies/studios are producing more content than ever and still using bespoke music: Children's Entertainment companies; audio books, which surprisingly often need bespoke scores; podcast jingles; advertising is still quite big on bespoke music, especially in tech; etc. It might not be the route that people want to take but work is work and those specific industries have helped me maintain consistent work massively, as opposed to trying to get work with big time AAA composers who are already saturated with all the help they need most of the time. This doesn't really solve the community/learning aspect of the composing industry that you've mentioned, but it's work at the end of the day. Anyway, great video, Anne. Thank you for your amazing insights as always!
This is a decent counter IMO. There's never been so much visual content being produced. Surely that must translate in some way and to some extent to a decent demand for composers? It can't all be doom and gloom surely?
@@MrMikomi Yeah, it does for sure, especially outside of Hollywood. However, it's also true that studios are using library music or royalty free music more than ever and some of the libraries on a subscription model basically bring home no decent revenue for the composers who post on there, unless you are very lucky. So, there is a lot of doom and gloom for sure, but there are positives if you know how to find them
"I don't know where I'm going with this, but" Honestly I love this. My brain/mouth do this all the time. I see issues that I think are worthy of commentary and discussion, even though I don't know what the solution or resolution should even be. I think it's important to talk about it though, even when you aren't certain what your point is. I find transparency and open dialogue so refreshing in not only this industry, but in just so many aspects of life in general. As usual, awesome work Anne, I appreciate what you do, thank you! Up top ✋
@@matthewegeler not sure where you are, but look for projects near to you, even if it just builds your portfolio. Maybe negotiate a percentage of the back end rather than an upfront payment. This might seem odd to say, Arnie had a successful concreting business whilst he was trying to be Mr. Olympia. Bands are glorified T Shirt salespeople. Beyoncé made most of her money in the last few years with some alcohol she was peddling and some beauty line. Shit has changed dramatically. It’s a different labyrinth now…
Berklee Film Scoring undergraduate here. Since the very first semesters, I've been told that the best "job" I can get after I get my degree was to move to LA and become a composer assistant. For a long time, that was THE "best case scenario" and everyone felt the same. However, now after 2 years, I started seeing a general switch in this mentality from both faculty members and students. More "exception" guests would come and share their journey; new technology classes would replace easily accessible composition classes; new collaborative tools would be added to the curriculum, etc. It is safe to say that music schools will not push the panic button because after all, they are a business and they need students. However, at least in my case, I can see progress and less gatekeeping. AI is already happening and it's here to stay. So embrace it now, in the development stages, and I can guarantee that your career will be fine. Remember: AI will not replace workers. People using AI will.
The assistant lie told by educational institutions is one that bothers me the most. They are churning out more graduates every year than there are assistant positions. They create this false narrative that there’s an abundance of those positions when that has never been the case in the past 25 years. There only are a few hundred media composers who have the budgets for a freelance team and only a few dozen who have full time in-house staff. There are hundreds of applicants for each of those positions and they only open up once every few years - and most of them aren’t posted publicly either, they are filled through recommendations from within the system. So this definitely should not be the only plan they give their students before they send them on their merry way.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposerThis reminds me of something that I read probably 15 years ago, on the subject of the proportion of UK teens that the then government was trying to get to go to university: there were more young people graduating with a degree in photography in just one year in the UK than there existed professional photographers in the whole of the EU.
I've been following the "AI Boom" for several years now, since before the Pandemic. What I can assure you of is: that industry is largely grappling with an overblown hype cycle that has nearly everyone else in their thrall. This is unwarranted, they are "shooting the fish in a barrel" rather than working on predominantly practical computing issues, because LLM's, and even the "Smart Tools" are still fairly dumb. The MUCH larger issue with ALL industries right now has to do with the decay of innovation through monopolization. If anything, that's what the FIlm and Recording Industry are wrestling to control within an inch of its life. Hence the corporate duplicity we see in the headlines daily "Big 3 (Sony, Warner, Universal) Sue AI Companies" while on the back pages of World Business News, they are making deals for partial ownership of AI Research Divisions, if not starting their own. When will we Americans learn to separate our church from state, and our wheat from our chaff? 🤔
same thing that happened with Spotify: at first Sony, Warner, Universal fighted it, and then they acquired it. Now they own Spotify and artists are being robbed, as always. Studios become more and more rich and artists more and more poor
I have been composing for folks like Extreme Music (which I started doing during the pandemic) and more recently Bleeding Fingers and Pitch Hammer as a freelancer, composing for Production Music and Trailer briefs. I have composed full scores for several indie films, but the production music work has been fairly consistent as the other stuff seems to have dried up. As busy as I am, the production music $ really isn't enough to pay a mortgage and support a family (I work remotely and live just outside of Boston - another very expensive place like LA). I've been playing live gigs 4-5 times a week to supplement the income but the more of that work I take, the further away I am from composing. Everything you're saying is dead-on. Thank you for your candor (as usual). Every time I think about coming to LA, many of the points you brought up come to mind. It is definitely depressing.
Your observations are spot on. The creative industries will be "humaned" by the core creatives, the managers of the content, and those that can implement and conceptualize on the scale that generative apps will allow. Because for better or for worse the apps will get more advanced with greater flexibility. We will all have to be very adaptable moving forward.
Interesting, Anne-Kathrin, thanks for sharing. COVID followed by the screenwriter's strike was a double whammy I won't soon forget. Hard times all around. In the past year, I remember thinking: is this the silence for the storm? And sure enough, things are starting to speed up now. In Dutch, we have a saying: 'het is hollen of stilstaan", you're either sprinting or standing still. The standing still is likely about to end from what I've seen. It's really important for all of us to take a few deep breaths these months, as I suspect there might l be a massive surge in 2025. Things will be different for sure: more productions in/from the EU and other parts of the world, more geared towards streaming, but I think the amount of content that needs to be made will be staggering. Not to be dramatic, but if we want to make a case for never allowing AI in our branch of the entertainment industry, we'll have to show we can handle the change in workflow, pace, location, etc.
I'm not in "the industry" and I honestly know close to nothing about working with assistants, in infrastructures dedicated to film music production. I learn a lot about this with your videos. Being independent in a small home studio, still gives access to job opportunities, and now that you mentioned it, maybe even more than before, actually. Last time I printed stems in real time was around 2007. Then protools stopped the silliness of being the only software in the industry without an offline bouncing option. I had some issue at first with some weird stuff going on with some Vi's not bouncing properly in some circumstances, but I managed to make it work, and never went back. Even better, I switched to cubase, a few years ago, and as you said, the export fonction is very powerful. I never thought that I could be pretty much ahead of my time, in my situation, though 😅
Hi Anne-Kathrin. This recession has hit Australia hard. Luckily, I live in the country area of Northern NSW. It is not as bad up here around Byron Bay. Lovely to hear you speak the way you do. Very articulate, I must say. Thank You for you expertise, and God Bless. j.
Interesting video. It's always great to hear thoughts from someone inside, so thanks for this. I have to be honest, I never really managed to set a proper foot in this industry. Haven't tried hard enough either, but I have worked with interesting people as sound designer, mixer, doing audio drama, interactive theatre, all sorts. Seeing what's happened in the last few years has been enlightning in a lot of ways. Expanding the talk to some of reasons why things may be so hard today. Considering the composer's job as a niche profession, that depends on the state of an industry like film and TV, where the big money is undeniably revolving around a very limited number of places in the western world (LA on top), we can understand if and why the industry is doing well/not so well. At the moment, the film and television industry is living that transition that music itself lived 20 years ago when streaming started over and Spotify became absolute market leader. With one difference: music streaming platforms made deals with record labels to get the rights to stream their music on their services and have subscribers. Music services had just to get the content for their platforms. They were not producing any (or any relevant, at least). When the time came for film and TV, nobody really wanted it...why? Because production companies were already making money selling tickets in cinemas and then (for what piracy allowed), selling physical devices (dvds, blu-rays), giving rights to broadcasters and so on. Who would want to change this system that has worked so well for decades? Then Netflix comes round. A small company that delivers dvds to rent in your letter box. And then they try to make streaming happen. Once, twice, and again...until the infrastructure is ready. Broadband for video streaming is widespread enough to allow them to build a business, and they start. They get the rights for films, TV series. And people get films on their TVs with streaming paying close to nothing. Marketing genius right? Well yes...one Netflix share today is worth more than 800$. That is more than Apple, Amazon and Tesla bundled together. After all, they have almost 300 million subscribers, right? But Netflix knows that they cannot depend on other production companies rights for their content, otherwise, when they shut the door, they'll be doomed. So they start producing their own content. And other companies, in the meantime, have understood the market trend and see that the only way for them to stay competitive is starting their own streaming service. Amazon, Disney, Paramount, etc...except that something needs considering. Making a film or a tv series is REALLY EXPENSIVE. And Netflix is building its own catalogue, whereas other companies already have one or they don't rely solely on entertainment content for their business. What happens? It happens that Netflix keeps investing money in their business in order to keep the market lead. And it invests more money than it actually is possible short term, because, then again, making films IS EXPENSIVE. And people are paying pennies compared to what they used to pay back when cinema and dvds were a thing and broadcasting was the only way people used to watch content on TV. To be more specific, 1 month of paying any streaming service is cheaper than going to the cinema once a month. There is data highlighting how box office revenues are currently at early 2000 levels, after the COVID hit and how they had been pretty static/not growing much in the few years before COVID (pretty much since streaming came round...)...So what have we got? Products that still cost loads to make and end users paying way less money for the same product. With this picture in mind, it is no wonder the industry is struggling. The consequences are shrinking budges and less money to pay people, in a world where a market leader is still constantly pushing towards what is not a sustainable business model in the long run, which means that it'll probably build a bubble that sooner or later is going to burst, and god knows what will happen when it happens. It's no wonder that the backlash of all this system hits the people who are part of the creative chain (especially the ones at bottom level). And yes, at the same time, technology advances and those (few) companies that make tools for composers invest in trying to make them better, even leveraging AI. Like it's been said, this is not center topic here. Training a LLM costs a lot of money, more than Steinberg can afford to spend in R&D to add an AI based feature to Cubase that would turn the whole process of making music upside down. But still, those minor feature, maybe with AI agents, those timesavers that earlier required assistants to be done, yes those will likely be automated and it won't be long before it happens. And larger models capable of generating always better music, yes they will come too (Udio, Suno...). In a free market, income sources like generic library music will slowly disappear, so with fewer income sources, simply there's going to be less room for people to work in this industry. What can save people struggling or entering the industry now? Not much I am afraid...the market is going where it's going and, at the same time, the AI development (although very far away from taking the job of a film composer), to give guarantees to workers, would require to be regulated (what the EU is doing). Too bad that the world does not work that way. The efforts of economic leading countries will go towards AI development to stay competitive, not against it (China, USA, etc...). If you add to that that american people just elected a president who pushed massively for liberalization and non regulation in tech and AI world...well you see the picture. This is just an opinion, my opinion...but looking at various market indicators, this is not going to get better, it's going to get worse, I'm afraid.
These feel like really useful insights thanks. My 2 cent suspicion is that these days more than ever before, corporate interests are squarely fixed on the only metric that measures their success, which increasingly no longer seems to even include the quality of the widget or service they offer, just the dividend payout to shareholders. I think until that bottom line metric of success changes (somehow?) too many core issues will remain in an unsolvable state for the workforce at large, across industries really. Perpetual YOY growth is not reasonably sustainable. Unless you're nvidia I guess. But to my eyes, like, everyone's chasing this crazy unachievable standard, driving pressure to accelerate moves to leaner payrolls and less overhead. I have no idea how we get to the next paradigm, but I'm remaining naively hopeful that we will build something better and maybe even better suited to artistic efforts in particular. Eventually.
Great video! I feel like many of the jobs you talk about have been unnecessary for ages. And only exist because of extra cash/exploiting interns and studios being too lazy to upgrade their equipment (the downtime for upgrades is expensive), but with the pandemic some studios took time for those workflow upgrades. Forever now automation in the studio industry has been destroying entry level jobs. I graduated audio school in 2008 and had some internships in college before that. These days it’s all about hustle culture and freelancers and has been since i graduated. The fulltime engineer became the assistant, and the assistant tasks went to the unpaid intern. Now the intern tasks are not needed and assistant is just a part time employee at best. The studio manager role (aka admin assistant/front desk person) now barely exists due to so many automated productivity software available (CRMs, zapper, etc). This is a slow change. Imo i think the big businesses need to die to make way for smaller (aka cheaper) artists, studios, and composers. More people getting work instead of everything going to a small few who exploit their employees at the promise of learning and a dream that rarely actually happens. I know mastering engineers that did all the work on some major albums for a huge mastering engineer and he got no real credit despite doing all the work and his pay was barely a livable wage, while the mastering engineer took most of the money and all the credit for his work. Similar is true in the composing world. Just because the composer put their stamp of approval on it and told a few low paid grunts his vision doesn’t give them the right to pay pennies and take all the credit and rewards (aka royalties). You see one person only has so much time and can take on only so much work, but a team can do a lot more. I think the way forward is good for everyone imo. As far as training, yeah that’s been gone for ages. It’s all barely anything and it would take years for you to get enough experience and knowledge to properly go off on your own and that’s by design as you would be competition in the eyes of the owners. So little nuggets is how it is. But i feel ya on the coworkers things, many industries have become much more solitary and lonely as a result. Also i left LA 11 months ago for Portland (i lived in LA for 11 years) because there’s no work in LA that pays to live in LA anymore. The consistent work i got in LA i can do remotely so Portland is cheaper and i can pay more than half my bills with that instead of less than a quarter of it😂. Rent is half as much here and i feel like i can get more. I currently live in a house (2 housemates) where i have a dedicated studio space and a bedroom. Such a thing would be unthinkable at the price I’m paying in LA. In fact i’m paying the least amount I’ve ever paid in rent right now. Most of my close friends and some clients left LA for Nashville (most of my singer-songwriter friends) or Portland I found. Portland has been freaking amazing because of a massive indie market. It’s not reliant on the falling major entertainment industry. People spend more time on youtube and twitch these days than watching traditional hollywood stuff anyway.
Absolutely fascinating video. A worrying situation that seems to be endemic in other sectors too. A lot of my translator colleagues are fretting about AI too. I imagine the answers will prove to be a hodgepodge of different potential outcomes.
Thank you for creating this video. The video game industry in the 'Eastside' area of the greater Seattle Area in Washington State has also been experiencing this change. I have noticed many universities have been pumping out "film composers" degrees without giving full disclosure of graduates who actually find work. One student who visited me was proud of the fact that his instructor had scored a film. One film! I appreciate that you speak truthfully and do not sugarcoat what is happening. Yes, it is sad, but it's a compounded sadness when a student spends $100,000 on an antiquated degree. Very few people go through life with only one job title. Everyone needs to plan accordingly.
Thank you Anne-Kathrin for this video. For those of us outside of LA, it gives us a glimpse of what things are like there. Over the history of the world market changes have impacted most jobs and changing/adapting is really the only option. Knowing exactly how to do this in this situation is certainly challenging, but necessary. You make really great videos that are a joy to watch so thank you!
I think what you said abt indie projects popping up could really be true, because all this tools while taking entry level jobs from big players also allow small composers to do all by themselves, and It could bring some really good art on the surface
As someone who is mainly a consumer of film/music and not part of that industry, this was very interesting to hear. Things are changing everywhere in all creative industries, and everyone feels like they're in suspension. I'm hopeful that new exciting times are lying ahead of us, but I'm also sure that not everyone will be able to change.
Anne ,thank you for this very clear and considerate insight into our industry,as a composer who has 7 film scores on streaming platforms ,I am feeling the effects of a slowed down industry.What ever work there is ,goes to a small group of composers who have trusted and long relationships with filmmakers.What you say really resonates.Sean ,Cape Town
Excellent video Anne-Kathrin. As someone who spent a couple of weeks at Remote Control visiting Hans and many composers there back in 2017, I can confirm that even at that time it was mostly tech teams & assistants left there. 7 years later it definitely got worse (to the point Hans is basically almost never there himself anymore). We're far from what Media Ventures was in its golden age in the late 1990s to 2010s I'd say. And even newcomers just spent a short amount of time before going solo on their home studios... I do know some who actually went from compound to home studio but in the end decided it was better to separate personal & professional life and got an office back. But that's becoming the rarity for sure... I do differentiate Remote Control and Bleeding Fingers, which is another beast.
You are completely right on all points in this videos. I feel bad for the up and coming young people in our industry. I had the advantage of coming up through commercial recording studios and working for composers and learned so much from my many bosses/mentors. I see so few opportunities and I'm kind of lost for answers when I get asked about the best way to break int the industry. Like you, I really hope things pick up and change for the better. Great video, thanks for this.
Thanks for the insider's insights with full transparency and honesty. I only got into the media composition space a few years ago (I guess I might be part of the problem) and I dream of an environment that you described in the beginning of the video. "Composer compounds" where you could share and learn sounds amazing! I have recently offered my services to a few composers to assist them in any way, at my expense (including travel) to experience that kind of "over the shoulder" learning you described. No takers on that offer. I don't think that kind of in person environmental learning experience can be replicated through UA-cam videos so I would be willing to invest a little to learn a lot, but I don't think that is going to work either. I am fortunate to be a part of a diverse collection of filmmakers in the Seattle area and we are all "on the rise" together and I will see where that takes me, but I do yearn for some composer collective environment like you described.
The pandemic really messed up my momentum, and I wasn't able to get back to where I was. I have a couple irons in the fire, but as far as finding jobs and/or internships it's just not happening 😑 right now I'm working a day job and investing my spare time into other indie projects and my friend's startup.
Thank you for making this video. Though I am very curious to know your views or suggestions for emerging composers considering all of this, I do agree with everything you said and I am curious to see how everything adapts to this change and the new landscape of this industry altogether.
Never before in history has such information become public knowledge as in this girl's videos. You won't find such knowledge in books or other UA-cam channels. There are also some very interesting videos of what goes on behind the scenes in the soundtrack production industry on composer Trevor Morris' channel, and some very cool reflections on Christian Henson's channel (Spitfire, The Crowhill Company). But nothing compares to the information contained on this channel.
Loss of institutional knowledge is going to be a big problem for the industry I think. It's already struggled with this since the collapse of the old studio system (not to ignore its serious problems, but it was a marvelous apprecticeship system), but it's getting so much worse. And I know that seems wrong given, you know, channels like this. UA-cam and Masterclass and so on. In some ways there are more places to learn than ever. But those places are also more shallow. Nothing beats years of intensive on-the-job training, especially in the arts. Also I think studios have gotten too big. The few lumbering superconglomerates we have left don't have the agility to adapt. I think we'll see some dinosaurs fall, or at least be forced to downsize, before there's a new normal. Btw, off-topic but I just have to say your makeup looks amazing! I know you've been geeking out over makeup purchases lately and it's def paying off :)
I agree with your views. It is not just media music that is impacted. Sorry for the fake profile but with internet those days I prefer to keep it anonymous😅. I'm a multiple skills musician and I really love media composing. I have composed for the BBC and video games. I'm mainly a song composer and studio session musician. I live in Derby in the UK (the city of Tomb raider and Lara Croft). It is a great place because I can easily travel to Birmingham, London and Notthigham, which are great cities for music. I have to say that I gave up making a living from media composing as I can see how both world are collapsing, at least the big Studios. Ubisoft,... I also think that Hollywood is a bit on a decline for the moment. However, a few of my colleagues who are making a living from media composing are working more and more in Europe and especially Asia. I don't think AI will ever replace composers, or at least not before a very long time. I have read a very interesting article about this. Basically what we call an "AI" is not an AI. It is an algorithm. A very clever one but just an algorithm. When analyzing musics to learn to "compose", it convert the music into binary (if i remember well). AI can't "listen" to music. That point makes a massive difference in the capacity of AI to compose music. Apparently, we are still very far from an AI that can listen and understand music. But for composing riffs and beats for exemple, or background music for a serie that early composer are selling on websites, an AI can easily do that today unfortunately. Where the AI is very good and is getting better is mixing and mastering. I think it is not just the music industry that is changing but our entire economic system. Is it for a good or bad, I don't know personally but what I'm sure is that, when things are changing, we need to adapt. You are gold! I really find your videos interesting. Thank you🙏
The more solidified it is, it means that the solidified area feels the danger and becomes alert. I always remain optimistic, Maybe in the future, music, art, film, and TV will increasingly lean toward self-actualization. Indie artists will find it much easier to collaborate and trade with one another, especially with the rapid development of technology in every aspect, as well as AI. Under this scenario, aesthetics may evolve and accelerate at an unprecedented pace.
Mayhaps, the only composers getting hired are those who have a bit of a name, who show their face on social media, play in a band, who would be ready to sign stupid 360-contracts, e.g. who can be marketed. There used to be a time when (film-)composers were just rather unknown people. You saw their name on the credits roll, but that was about it. So, if online-looks play a part, probably most composers wouldn't meet modern day expectations. ;)
It is pretty depressing to hear this. It seems we should refocus purpose towards human connection but that’s probably never going to happen because clearly it would take the richest to be able to set that up.
I was one of the last runners at a very big studio compound. One of the biggest. And I was really hoping to turn that into an assistant composer position. But the pandemic did just what you’re describing. So I went back to school and graduated Berklee. But here I am still looking for even a part time position. It is rough out here.😂
It's the same deal for us in post sound. A lot of people got into the industry during this massive heyday of "content creation" and now that production levels have sunk to what they were pre-streamer wars, many of the young people who got their big breaks during that time are now out of luck. So many careers and dreams just totally up-ended and gone. I would be surprised if they came back anytime soon but you never know. Doing my best to stay optimistic.
If I had to guess, I'd rather say the indie world will start blooming a bit more. The way the studios were producing content over the past few years was unsustainable to begin with (and as they later found out not profitable either). I think if we want a sustainable industry, we need to rethink how we make and distribute things, and also what is getting made in the first place.
I decided to just give up on becoming an assistant thanks to some of the conversations i would see lurking the teammates discord. It just seemed like focusing on being a composer was the way to go. Not to mention some of the assistant horror stories i would see thrown around. Heck if there's one good thing about assisstants and interns no longer being needed its that at least they wont get mistreated.
This is some serious and kinda weird feeling information since in Germany everybody feels like things are getting rougher and tougher more than ever in every industry. And it's weird because on the one hand, music production wise there are more plugins and sample libraries out there than ever, being pushed out for 20 bucks per license that would have cost a fortune 10 years ago. On the other hand there are less and less jobs. My feeling is, as they said in "The Lord of the Rings", we kinda digged to deep in terms of technology. It's not that A.I. just steals other people's jobs, it's that we don't even worship "the human resource" anymore and rather trust some piece of software more than anything else. Unfortunately this seems to be an natural process since time and money is (unfortunately) everything we need today and if you do not adapt to modern techniques, you will lose both of it. Sad but true.
A brave video well put. In think it's much bigger than a technological change, it's global and across all industries. The big difference is that these things, which have been true for so called "unskilled" workers for a hundred years or more are now true for skilled workers on a scale never before seen. All I know is that it will not stop or improve until we all come together and make changes. No one group is enough, it's time to reach out in all directions.
I work in animation, and it's a similar story. The streaming wars plus the lockdowns made a boom economy that couldn't last. It was compounded budgets that were too big for a return on more and more shows along side shitty budgets to feed the "content" beast.
Aspiring composer here. I’m currently finishing a training about writing music to picture and am about to look for my first clients. Additionally, the training I’m following includes a two-day event in L.A. next summer, specifically dedicated to meeting pros from the industry, networking and getting our professional photos and website done as well. After watching your video, coming from France, I think it is still worth connecting to people overseas, even if work won’t come specifically from L.A. but I’m curious to know what you think about it.
I worked as an assistant at a mastering studio in NYC in 2007/2008 that was bustling with work. And then Ozone Mastering Assistant appeared and i immediately thought that it was only a matter of time before my old boss would have to retire. Luckily he found a job teaching at a school in Mexico but he doesn’t do actual mastering work anymore.
I feel like we've been on the way to, or even in the midst of the next indie wave. Feels like the early 2010s. The big game/film studios were struggling, but there were so many indie games/movies that were on their way into the zeitgeist. The indies eventually were absorbed into bigger studios or they grew into bigger studios themselves. The (now) big studios are crumbling again, and I can see the indie hype train coming back in the next year or two. Projects (especially for freelancers) will be much smaller for a while, but with the smaller scope will come greater quantity as the next generation of these studios is growing. At least that's how it seems to me given the last decade or so.
Hello! So in my experience of (back in the day) a record producer and orchestrator and and jingle writer we also had a community in a way where we could hang out with each other, eat together, share skills and ideas etc.. so my question is this: are there work-from-home-communities that in some ways work a bit like the old office workplaces did?
It’s interesting to see this side of composing. I don’t have much of a niche yet; but ive been getting back into composing exercise using what I know as an educator and multi-instrumentalist. I’d love to write for film, but I’m happy writing for ensembles too, there’s a big market for student ensemble music.
Hey Anne, thanks for sharing your insights - it was interesting to watch. Sad as well. You mentioned how some activities are accelerated by tech and a technical question came to my mind. It's about stems mixdown for a dub stage of a movie. Do you have a favorite way of batch rendering stems for a dub stage which would preserve all the send reverbs? Or you don't do it at all? I know you've mentioned in a video a few years ago that you are not asked for rendering reverb but maybe that has changed? From my perspective sometimes reverb is a crucial element making a sound of a given instrument. And I want to preserve it the same way as I would preserve the room sound in which the recording took place. Sending a very dry audio file to a dub stage engineer would require him to "make" a sound of that instrument. I know some people are creating multiple reverb/effects instances for every group (BUS) they want to export. But that creates problems because I would have to multiplicate a lot of effects tracks when wanting to mixdown about 20 stems (reverbs, delays, some other creative effects X number of stems).
Abstract real estate prices have ruined all economies who switched business investment for real estate parasitism, pushing up the price of business and extracting any potential.
This matches my experience. I finally quit a 100% remote job because, although I could easily do the work, I could never completely learn the company's processes. If I had been in an office, it would be simple to ask a colleague. The company admitted their processes were broken, but longtime employees had the advantage, and new (remote) folks were bewildered.
Collaborative work like this, sure... my day job is in accounting at a university and all we need is MS Teams and video chat (which is fine by me lol). I'd love to attend writing sessions with people in the near future, though. I miss jamming out
Yep. Current LACM Film Score Major Bachelor student, came out for the degree 2 years ago and have definitely felt getting a foot in the door of most composer's studios as an uphill battle. Seems like I graduated high school a few years too late. Outside of a referral, getting a hold of composer's direct contact information, (even much less established) in the attempts of looking to help out even on a short term basis feels impossible. At this point I would sit through rush hour traffic on the 101 to knock on a studio door and offer them a coffee if most composers hadn't moved to home studios.
I applied to be a film composer, but ended up being a road sweeper. I’m more likely to have a full blown conversation with my dog “frank” about dog politics than being a film composer…. No idea what I’m on about, but it is a shame 🤷🏻
Removing the need for legwork and assistants is a good thing in principle, as it makes the product (music) cheaper and consumed more, allowing more people to do higher level tasks. But looks like the issue is with the demand for music. A bit worrying how demand is lower even with lower prices.
No. They are just changing. Like jobs always do. Like jobs at any given level of seniority does. For example, take an industry I know very well: private equity. When PE was just starting in the 60s and 70s, all the math had to be done by hand. One if the key job tasks as an entry level PE associate is to run the financial model and see if the deal is worth doing financially. Back then, an entry level employee would spend months doing the math with pen, paper, and calculator. Now it is done in Excel and can be done in one day. So do associates basically no longer exist? No. Their jobs just changed. They went from running numbers all day to managing the lawyers and accountants and bankers. They spend much more time now on communicating what the analysis says instead of merely creating the analysis in the first place. Jobs change
I hope you are right. We may be seeing unprecedented times with the way technology is becoming more and more efficient at doing slightly more complicated menial tasks. But at the same time it's perfectly possible that jobs will just change in nature or that entirely new jobs will pop up.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposer I’ll also elaborate (mainly because I like to hear my own voice). As I see it, and of this I am 99% confident on, there is going to be a major bifurcation that is going to happen. Basically, I think an “entry-level role” is going to be defined by the project you work on, not by the actual job tasks. That with how technology is changing, it will be who your client is that determines what “level” you are for most people. (1) As you said, the number of assistant/gopher/intern jobs at studios is going to go down. This “passive path,” where you merely have a job and get a bunch of opportunities simply by showing up to do the work (although that doesn’t mean one can necessarily capitalize on that opportunity), is going to become less and less common. The chance to work with Beyonce or the Beatles or Run-DMC early in your career (as some grunt doing work any 10 year old can do) is going to go down. (2) But, with technology, a new path is opening up. There is an “active path” that I think more and more people are going to go down. Let’s take, for example, some 18 year old kid who just graduated high school and they want to get into mixing music. Instead of going to some grunt job at a studio, while in college for… marketing they go on to UA-cam and learn some basics of mixing through UA-cam. They then come across Warren Huart’s channel and join his Produce Like A Pro Academy, download a bunch of multitracks, and puts together some actual mixes. Then, after learning some stuff from UA-cam and getting some multitracks to practice on, they start reaching out to local-level artists to mix for using those practice multitracks as samples to show the artists. And you’ll move up in the business through actually doing the work instead of being some grunt that does automatable tasks that aren’t adding any actual value. And this applies across all music work, not just mixing. Producing, film scoring, game work… with technology making it easier to learn and with technology making it easier for musicians/directors/developers/etc to create their work, there has been and will continue to be an explosion of “entry-level” clients. It is also easy to find these types too thanks to social media and such. We don’t need to be introduced to new music or games or movies by waiting for it to come on the radio or through a trailer. And this business is fundamentally about relationships. Yes, there is a minimum talent level that’s required. But the bar isn’t really that high. Most people can meet the standard if they want to put in the work. It is as much a relationship game as anything else. Look at John Williams for example, god king of composers. Before meeting Spielberg, John’s career was indistinguishable from dozens of other composers. His career was nothing special. Before Spielberg, if I anonymized the films, no one would be able to pick out John from dozens of other contemporaries of his. But then he met Spielberg. Through Spielberg, John met George Lucas. How did Spielberg learn about John? Through John’s work. And John did such a good job that Spielberg referred John to George. And that’s how three of the most recognizable pieces of music ever created came to be. By John having actual work product to interest potential clients and by making good relationships. Which is exactly what this “active path” does. It gets people actually making music and developing relationships. Compared to running errands and putting away cables for years. While there is absolutely value in “being in the room,” I agree with you on how important that is, getting actual experience composing/mixing/etc is way more important. And that’s becoming significantly easier to do as an “entry-level” person
As in many industries where change occurs, the decision to either wait and see, or lead and innovate, is fraught with dangers. Possibly, small groups within the industry with a common concern but positive outlook, could share financial and technical risks to take advantage of the new dawn, whatever it may be.
This is so true. I know about the same number of people who went to LA and those who left after a certain amount of time. The attrition rate is insane, and there's definitely a disconnect between schools and the real world in terms of expectations."
@@alvarorodriguezfilmmusic I do not think schools are disconnected from the real world, they know exactly what is wrong, but they want to keep cashing on fake hopes.
I definitely think a lot of schools need to be more honest about how many jobs there actually are, what the success rate of the job is, and also what the expected pay is going to be. They prey on people's dreams and charge a fortune for it. It's really predatory, considering there are only a few thousand people doing this full-time successfully.
Well, that's a but disheartening to hear. As someone who's been trying and failing to get a foot in the door by 2018, it makes me reasses my priorities and consider dying out as a school teacher, as I probably won't be able to make a living out of it in the short term and more likely never will. But idk... Giving up without putting up a fight was never my thing. Probably it's just a matter of how longer I can get knocked down before I can no longer stand 😅
The problem with AI is it's actually much easier to make an AI that generates complete final product than it is to make one that helps individual steps of making a product. This is because the components of a film/video game/music album are not available to the companies building AI in any quantity (does the public ever see those stems?), but complete product is. Generative AI in its current form is entirely dependent on the training set and can learn how everything fits together and come up with completely new finished products. Rather than "a long way off from being able to write music to picture," complete video with audio and music has been demonstrated already, while currently primitive due to the enormity of information involved in a complete film or game, remember photo AI was fairly primitive just a couple years ago. So the pattern of technology just assisting and automating steps of a human process is what is being replaced by AI, not helped by AI. It's not the producer or director that will hire a composer, it will be the film studios evaluating product completed by one or two people with no human assistance at all. And that's only a transition to the studio also being disintermediated and the consumer working directly with the AI on being entertained in any way they want, created in real time for their individual preferences. The bright side of this is that we have a hobby to keep us entertained, rather than most people who will just veg out to the AI's latest concepts. Ironically, people who had success in the industry will be more distraught about this change than people who never did and remain enthusiastic even though the audience has all gone home long ago. They never had an audience or a paycheck for it and only have intrinsic motivation.
If there are no entry level jobs, no new people can get into that industry, the people currently in it will age out and die, and the industry will die with those people. So there will always be entry level jobs as long as that industry remains alive.
I suppose my main worry is that there will be fewer positions and that those will be mostly given to people who already have connections into the industry. The film and TV industry is already rife with nepotism and it's certainly favoring those who have a lot of wealth to wait things out. That might intensify in the short-term. I hope not though.
Thank you for being honest, 1st. I think there’s only a few songs that that are good. 2nd. The good musician get ripped off and there’s so much more to them. 3rd. I feel that when composing it can be spied on (a bit too far) but that’s how I feel. Also good topic.
Eventually this gatekeeping will cause a severe shortage of composers for major blockbuster films John Williams is in his 90s Hans Zimmer in his 60s to 70s one day they will pass away whether people like it or not and if their is no one to replace them that was mentored the composer shortage will happen there should be a ton of composers in thier 30s and 40s scoring films but thier isn't because of the gatekeeping
aspring composers just look locally or for small projects. ive been able to network in Va and find some decent gigs it isnt hans zimmer level of course but im doing what i love. if something AAA comes my way that will be awesome if not im still chugging along
Anne, you like many other are asking the same question, is the 4th Industrial Revolution, the mature of artificial intelligence. Everything is changing
I see a lot of misinformation and wild takes in the comments that I will delete.
1. This is not an LA problem much like the the tech / video game crisis is not a Silicon Valley problem. It's global. But when you live in a city that is built around an industry that's currently struggling, the consequences are much more palpable for everyone. Production (and especially post-production) is not leaving LA as many like to claim. The facilities, community, workers, and decision makers are still here. It's just that production in general has been massively scaled back since the pandemic boom which is leaving a record amount of people unemployed. It appears though that similar things are happening at the very least in tech and video games, potentially other industries as well.
2. This is not about AI, as I said at the beginning of the video. I don't have the same doomsday attitude as many others. Low level formulaic library music might get replaced but we're a long ways away from AI being able to write to picture (with everything that entails). There are also many logistic things that need to be figured out from the studio side anyway (copyright, hundreds of millions in royalties that the studios themselves would miss out on, etc.) and the fact that writing to picture is a niche profession only done by a few thousand people on the planet. It's not lucrative at all to try and create a complicated AI that has use for such few people and would replace even fewer. Library music, as I said, may be a different story since it has broader applications.
3. I was talking a lot more about apps and smart tools replacing entry level tasks and jobs. And while as a working composer I'd LOVE for those tools to become more prevalent and capable, I also see that what's good for ppl like me will be bad for others. Namely those starting out trying to work under and learn from others. Those trying to get a foot in the door. There will be fewer doors I'm afraid. And there already weren't that many to begin with. That's the part that's worrying me a bit because if we stop fostering new talent across industries, then where are we going?
10.00: "I don't have the same doomsday attitude as many others"
10.01: "That's the part that's worrying me a bit because if we stop fostering new talent across industries, then where are we going?"
Point 3: keep helping with your tutorials, etc., and the skill floor will naturally, if painfully, rise; if these new bit tech are made known and fairly commercially (or widely privately) available it could become easy (intermediate) 2nd stage tech for beginners (after 0th stage: name files, input sounds; and 1st stage: basic edits).
By low level library music, are you referring to the royalty free stuff geared towards content creators? The higher level library music heard more on TV and in trailers these days has improved a lot in terms of quality.
You are right, this is a global phenomenon in all business. Some hit harder than others.
I have seen this negative development in other businesses how they tighten up and fewer people get to do the same amount of work. How the employees perform is measured. The number of ordinary workers will decrease but the managers will remain. It becomes more important for each worker to bring in more money for the company. The atmosphere has become colder and more rigid. The time to help others has become less.
This started earlier as you said and became more noticeable during and after the pandemic.
As I see it is about money and how credits created by private banks are becoming less and less valuable. The system the world has for creating credit requires a decrease in value (inflation) in order not to crash. But we have reached the point where the depreciation is too great and is starting to implode.
But as long as the people believe that the money has a certain value, the system can be maintained.
The reboot you speak of is inevitable. It will affect the whole world and it will be painful.
I was growing up in a theatre that did opera, and I value working together, how fast you can learn from others. Without that it is just dead.
As for issues being global, yes, tech is removing generational knowledge passing trough natural means ( but it is especially bad in California because of your super lefty politicians. ). Schools won't cut it and for over 3 decades they are about money and not about art.
THANK YOU. I am so tired of the false positive hope. We need to be real about this. Things are bad.
Ppl really don’t realize how important MENTORSHIP is (was). Watching over the shoulder of your boss, being there at that perfect moment where something new or novel happened and someone had to (literally) engineer a solution on the fly… you could learn and build camaraderie in those moments. The business has cannibalized itself in the name of profit maximalism, and this moment is the consequence of that. I’m seeing it on the face of my industry companions and it’s devastating.
It's actually refreshing seeing someone talk honestly about this (very on-brand for you). I've been seeing a lot of denial, out-dated perspectives and insights, and a general secrecy regarding this. I don't have a plan to jump ship, but it does cross my mind every once in a while. I just keep thinking that if I tough it out, I'll have an advantage when things stabilize.
We may very well be in a last man standing scenario here. Those who can wait this downturn out will probably reap the benefits later, much like the stock market.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposerExactly ! If one has other means : wait it out. Keep learning, studying, mastering the craft (even if it’s only for yourself without the assignments). Keep posting your “how-to” videos Anne-Kathrin, entry composition lessons, as you do it so brilliantly. After all … exactly: this profession has always been reserved for just a handful of individuals, historically speaking. It was never meant to be an “industry” in the literal sense of the word. It goes back to the dawn of the internet, Napster, CD burners, end of selling music for consumers etc. Technology became cheaper and cheaper, better and better. “Entry level” human factor has been effectively replaced.
On a highest end though, there will always be demand for super-skill, individuality, emotional elements that no technology can replace (i.e. soaring vocal melodies, beautiful violin playing, deeply moving composition that no computer can “feel”). As with the live music : performances will be always in demand, but will become something for “aficionados only” -selected audiences worldwide (i.e. private concerts which can become a profession in itself).
Remember Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale” about a Chinese emperor who rejected a live nightingale for the fake song of a mechanical bird ?
Gee… Andersen felt this 180 years ago when the story was first published.
Someone needs to make a movie about this, and the soundtrack could become an Oscar winner 😊
Closing with "the way it has been hasn't been sustainable to begin with anyway" is a good reminder. We can mourn when things change - that's the world I want to live in - at the same time though, I do think it's exciting to be able to build a new way of moving forward with what we've learned up until now as a collective. I like to believe the good human spirit will prevail in the end.
It is sad to hear the state of the industry. I really feel for the people that have been laid off.
thanks for sharing your thoughts
I probably should have started with that sentence. 😅 We definitely can't continue the way we have been. The strikes and recent unionizations have laid bare a deeply rooted problem while the studios seem to have jumped into the streaming wars without knowing how to make it profitable. Add to that audiences not being happy with what they're getting and you have a lot of people who need to rethink the way they're doing things.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposer In LIVE music performing environment, and (worse) in the recording studio musicians community the exactly same thing happened as well. It started even earlier, around 2008-2010. When I first came to work at Walt Disney World as a pianist (1996) we had live music everywhere! Live shows, concerts with full orchestras playing film soundtracks etc. not to mention bunch of atmosphere groups, recording sessions etc. Bunch of world-class musicians made Central Florida their home. Today perhaps ten percent of those facilities still have live music.
How can young generation of musicians gain necessary experience (that takes years and years of work in different styles) to become masters ??? I think John Williams was right… (I’m positive you know what I am talking about). Peace…
@@AnneKathrinDernComposer Well thought out discussion, thank you Anne Kathrin. "Add to that audiences not being happy with what they're getting" Yep. Working far away from the LA industry here in Sweden, I'm honestly stunned by just how bad many productions have become. Not sure you like it mentioning, but IMO wokeness is a major part of that.
Thanks!
Thank you!
Thank you for your thoughts on this matter, Anne-Kathrin. As a film composer not in of LA, with jobs from the East Coast, England, and Australia, I saw a major slowing in the independent film world starting about 5-6 years ago. It appears that the slowing has come to LA. It is almost like when the stock market pauses to figure out what is going on in the economy, before launching into new directions. I wish all the very best to my fellow film composers in and out of LA. Don’t get discouraged. This, too, shall pass.
This is actually a very good analogy. Those who can wait out a downturn may reap the benefits later. ❤
The thing I'm hopeful for is that the crisis of the highest tier productions could lead to an increase in mid-tier productions in between the Indie and AAA spaces. I don't know if this would be more sustainable for professionals, but I hope that there will be new spaces to work in.
When I was in LA in the 80s, I was a writer and wrote for a lot of music magazines. I also did PR for a large Hollywood studio--Group IV Recording. The co-owners were Angel Balestier and Dennis Sands. That was my entree to the film/TV scoring biz. I got to hang with Dennis and Alan Silvestri when they were working on sessions. I remember when they worked on the mix for "Outrageous Fortune" (Bette Midler/Shelley Long). I met Alan Silvestri on a previous writing gig and even visited him at his home and he told me how he got his start in film scoring with "Romancing the Stone". How the biz has changed since then! Group IV shut down decades ago. Great studio and a lot of amazing projects were done there including a lot of the early Silvestri scores, other scores, and TV shows.
Game Technical Sound Designer (and eventual composer) here. You said that movies and TV are having a harder time but I'm not really sure if games are much better since from the get-go games NEVER established a culture that involves nurturing new talent to feed the industry again. There was never a big interest of any of the companies of fomentating the development of new talent and in bridging the gap between a newcomer and a more experienced person in the industry, they'd rather never invest in the local scene and go elsewhere look for talent (hence all AAA companies having people from dozens of countries inside their teams).
This is not an issue only with audio of course, actually I'd say it's even worse outside of audio and is an issue that will eventually come back to bite but it seems like many executives cannot think that long-term or they just have a firm belief that AI will just "fix" it for them.
Either way, it is the worst time for someone to be pursuing a career in games that has ever been and I cannot recommend it for anyone that is not already too deep to stop (and even then, I'd advice to HAVE A PLAN B)
@mitsuki1388 I actually majored in and studied game design but left and pursued a career in a different engineering discipline altogether. I now work in aerospace. I still have dreams of being a composer for media and my music and work ethic has been well above average for years, but I have no idea how to break in with connections and gigs. This video doesn't instill a lot of confidence.
What you said about trust can not be over stated. Back in the day when an assistant could watch and learn and ask questions and evolve their skillset in a community environment, they also would be building the trust of the composer and other team members. This would lead to recommendations and more work, etc. These days, the absolute only time I hire anyone is:
1. If you and I have already worked together and I love your work
2. You come highly recommended by someone I highly respect.
I've been burned before by hiring someone who wanted a shot. Total disaster. Never again. Learned that lesson once the hard way. This leaves the question: How does someone new build trust with other composers if they're all working remote? Promotions happen in proximity unfortunately.
Your videos are incredibly informative also for people working *with* composers, like session musicians. Lots of food for thought!
I think it's also worth mentioning, imo, that there is quite a lot of work out there for composers outside of the typical Hollywood route that people could pivot too if they've been struggling to find work in side the more typical film/video game work. Many companies/studios are producing more content than ever and still using bespoke music: Children's Entertainment companies; audio books, which surprisingly often need bespoke scores; podcast jingles; advertising is still quite big on bespoke music, especially in tech; etc. It might not be the route that people want to take but work is work and those specific industries have helped me maintain consistent work massively, as opposed to trying to get work with big time AAA composers who are already saturated with all the help they need most of the time. This doesn't really solve the community/learning aspect of the composing industry that you've mentioned, but it's work at the end of the day. Anyway, great video, Anne. Thank you for your amazing insights as always!
This is a decent counter IMO. There's never been so much visual content being produced. Surely that must translate in some way and to some extent to a decent demand for composers? It can't all be doom and gloom surely?
@@MrMikomi Yeah, it does for sure, especially outside of Hollywood. However, it's also true that studios are using library music or royalty free music more than ever and some of the libraries on a subscription model basically bring home no decent revenue for the composers who post on there, unless you are very lucky. So, there is a lot of doom and gloom for sure, but there are positives if you know how to find them
"I don't know where I'm going with this, but"
Honestly I love this. My brain/mouth do this all the time. I see issues that I think are worthy of commentary and discussion, even though I don't know what the solution or resolution should even be. I think it's important to talk about it though, even when you aren't certain what your point is. I find transparency and open dialogue so refreshing in not only this industry, but in just so many aspects of life in general.
As usual, awesome work Anne, I appreciate what you do, thank you! Up top ✋
As someone who is dumping all of their time, effort, and money Into becoming a new composer, this sucks to hear
It's an opportunity though, to push harder, better
(from a composer in constant despair)
Adapt. If you persevere, you turn the odds in your favor.
Fear not. I am just starting into this arena and I am 68
@@matthewegeler not sure where you are, but look for projects near to you, even if it just builds your portfolio.
Maybe negotiate a percentage of the back end rather than an upfront payment.
This might seem odd to say, Arnie had a successful concreting business whilst he was trying to be Mr. Olympia.
Bands are glorified T Shirt salespeople.
Beyoncé made most of her money in the last few years with some alcohol she was peddling and some beauty line.
Shit has changed dramatically. It’s a different labyrinth now…
@@notsure1135 im in a seemingly pretty dry market. I'm in detroit.
Berklee Film Scoring undergraduate here. Since the very first semesters, I've been told that the best "job" I can get after I get my degree was to move to LA and become a composer assistant. For a long time, that was THE "best case scenario" and everyone felt the same. However, now after 2 years, I started seeing a general switch in this mentality from both faculty members and students. More "exception" guests would come and share their journey; new technology classes would replace easily accessible composition classes; new collaborative tools would be added to the curriculum, etc. It is safe to say that music schools will not push the panic button because after all, they are a business and they need students. However, at least in my case, I can see progress and less gatekeeping. AI is already happening and it's here to stay. So embrace it now, in the development stages, and I can guarantee that your career will be fine. Remember: AI will not replace workers. People using AI will.
True. AI won't replace your job. The person who understands how to use AI will.
The assistant lie told by educational institutions is one that bothers me the most. They are churning out more graduates every year than there are assistant positions. They create this false narrative that there’s an abundance of those positions when that has never been the case in the past 25 years. There only are a few hundred media composers who have the budgets for a freelance team and only a few dozen who have full time in-house staff. There are hundreds of applicants for each of those positions and they only open up once every few years - and most of them aren’t posted publicly either, they are filled through recommendations from within the system. So this definitely should not be the only plan they give their students before they send them on their merry way.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposerThis reminds me of something that I read probably 15 years ago, on the subject of the proportion of UK teens that the then government was trying to get to go to university: there were more young people graduating with a degree in photography in just one year in the UK than there existed professional photographers in the whole of the EU.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposerthey’ve started also including the suggestion to get work in music libraries, but not much else.
I've been following the "AI Boom" for several years now, since before the Pandemic. What I can assure you of is: that industry is largely grappling with an overblown hype cycle that has nearly everyone else in their thrall. This is unwarranted, they are "shooting the fish in a barrel" rather than working on predominantly practical computing issues, because LLM's, and even the "Smart Tools" are still fairly dumb.
The MUCH larger issue with ALL industries right now has to do with the decay of innovation through monopolization. If anything, that's what the FIlm and Recording Industry are wrestling to control within an inch of its life. Hence the corporate duplicity we see in the headlines daily "Big 3 (Sony, Warner, Universal) Sue AI Companies" while on the back pages of World Business News, they are making deals for partial ownership of AI Research Divisions, if not starting their own. When will we Americans learn to separate our church from state, and our wheat from our chaff? 🤔
We may never learn…
same thing that happened with Spotify: at first Sony, Warner, Universal fighted it, and then they acquired it. Now they own Spotify and artists are being robbed, as always. Studios become more and more rich and artists more and more poor
I have been composing for folks like Extreme Music (which I started doing during the pandemic) and more recently Bleeding Fingers and Pitch Hammer as a freelancer, composing for Production Music and Trailer briefs. I have composed full scores for several indie films, but the production music work has been fairly consistent as the other stuff seems to have dried up. As busy as I am, the production music $ really isn't enough to pay a mortgage and support a family (I work remotely and live just outside of Boston - another very expensive place like LA). I've been playing live gigs 4-5 times a week to supplement the income but the more of that work I take, the further away I am from composing. Everything you're saying is dead-on. Thank you for your candor (as usual). Every time I think about coming to LA, many of the points you brought up come to mind. It is definitely depressing.
Thanks for your thoughts
Your observations are spot on. The creative industries will be "humaned" by the core creatives, the managers of the content, and those that can implement and conceptualize on the scale that generative apps will allow. Because for better or for worse the apps will get more advanced with greater flexibility. We will all have to be very adaptable moving forward.
The entertainment industry isn't dying, it just smells funny.
That should have been the title of my video.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposer it's sort of a rip off of a Frank Zappa quote 😉 but I concur
Smells funny indeed
Interesting, Anne-Kathrin, thanks for sharing. COVID followed by the screenwriter's strike was a double whammy I won't soon forget. Hard times all around. In the past year, I remember thinking: is this the silence for the storm? And sure enough, things are starting to speed up now. In Dutch, we have a saying: 'het is hollen of stilstaan", you're either sprinting or standing still. The standing still is likely about to end from what I've seen. It's really important for all of us to take a few deep breaths these months, as I suspect there might l be a massive surge in 2025.
Things will be different for sure: more productions in/from the EU and other parts of the world, more geared towards streaming, but I think the amount of content that needs to be made will be staggering. Not to be dramatic, but if we want to make a case for never allowing AI in our branch of the entertainment industry, we'll have to show we can handle the change in workflow, pace, location, etc.
I'm not in "the industry" and I honestly know close to nothing about working with assistants, in infrastructures dedicated to film music production. I learn a lot about this with your videos. Being independent in a small home studio, still gives access to job opportunities, and now that you mentioned it, maybe even more than before, actually. Last time I printed stems in real time was around 2007. Then protools stopped the silliness of being the only software in the industry without an offline bouncing option. I had some issue at first with some weird stuff going on with some Vi's not bouncing properly in some circumstances, but I managed to make it work, and never went back. Even better, I switched to cubase, a few years ago, and as you said, the export fonction is very powerful. I never thought that I could be pretty much ahead of my time, in my situation, though 😅
Hi Anne-Kathrin. This recession has hit Australia hard. Luckily, I live in the country area of Northern NSW. It is not as bad up here around Byron Bay. Lovely to hear you speak the way you do. Very articulate, I must say. Thank You for you expertise, and God Bless. j.
Interesting video. It's always great to hear thoughts from someone inside, so thanks for this. I have to be honest, I never really managed to set a proper foot in this industry. Haven't tried hard enough either, but I have worked with interesting people as sound designer, mixer, doing audio drama, interactive theatre, all sorts. Seeing what's happened in the last few years has been enlightning in a lot of ways. Expanding the talk to some of reasons why things may be so hard today. Considering the composer's job as a niche profession, that depends on the state of an industry like film and TV, where the big money is undeniably revolving around a very limited number of places in the western world (LA on top), we can understand if and why the industry is doing well/not so well. At the moment, the film and television industry is living that transition that music itself lived 20 years ago when streaming started over and Spotify became absolute market leader. With one difference: music streaming platforms made deals with record labels to get the rights to stream their music on their services and have subscribers. Music services had just to get the content for their platforms. They were not producing any (or any relevant, at least). When the time came for film and TV, nobody really wanted it...why? Because production companies were already making money selling tickets in cinemas and then (for what piracy allowed), selling physical devices (dvds, blu-rays), giving rights to broadcasters and so on. Who would want to change this system that has worked so well for decades? Then Netflix comes round. A small company that delivers dvds to rent in your letter box. And then they try to make streaming happen. Once, twice, and again...until the infrastructure is ready. Broadband for video streaming is widespread enough to allow them to build a business, and they start. They get the rights for films, TV series. And people get films on their TVs with streaming paying close to nothing. Marketing genius right? Well yes...one Netflix share today is worth more than 800$. That is more than Apple, Amazon and Tesla bundled together. After all, they have almost 300 million subscribers, right? But Netflix knows that they cannot depend on other production companies rights for their content, otherwise, when they shut the door, they'll be doomed. So they start producing their own content. And other companies, in the meantime, have understood the market trend and see that the only way for them to stay competitive is starting their own streaming service. Amazon, Disney, Paramount, etc...except that something needs considering. Making a film or a tv series is REALLY EXPENSIVE. And Netflix is building its own catalogue, whereas other companies already have one or they don't rely solely on entertainment content for their business. What happens? It happens that Netflix keeps investing money in their business in order to keep the market lead. And it invests more money than it actually is possible short term, because, then again, making films IS EXPENSIVE. And people are paying pennies compared to what they used to pay back when cinema and dvds were a thing and broadcasting was the only way people used to watch content on TV. To be more specific, 1 month of paying any streaming service is cheaper than going to the cinema once a month. There is data highlighting how box office revenues are currently at early 2000 levels, after the COVID hit and how they had been pretty static/not growing much in the few years before COVID (pretty much since streaming came round...)...So what have we got? Products that still cost loads to make and end users paying way less money for the same product. With this picture in mind, it is no wonder the industry is struggling. The consequences are shrinking budges and less money to pay people, in a world where a market leader is still constantly pushing towards what is not a sustainable business model in the long run, which means that it'll probably build a bubble that sooner or later is going to burst, and god knows what will happen when it happens. It's no wonder that the backlash of all this system hits the people who are part of the creative chain (especially the ones at bottom level). And yes, at the same time, technology advances and those (few) companies that make tools for composers invest in trying to make them better, even leveraging AI. Like it's been said, this is not center topic here. Training a LLM costs a lot of money, more than Steinberg can afford to spend in R&D to add an AI based feature to Cubase that would turn the whole process of making music upside down. But still, those minor feature, maybe with AI agents, those timesavers that earlier required assistants to be done, yes those will likely be automated and it won't be long before it happens. And larger models capable of generating always better music, yes they will come too (Udio, Suno...). In a free market, income sources like generic library music will slowly disappear, so with fewer income sources, simply there's going to be less room for people to work in this industry. What can save people struggling or entering the industry now? Not much I am afraid...the market is going where it's going and, at the same time, the AI development (although very far away from taking the job of a film composer), to give guarantees to workers, would require to be regulated (what the EU is doing). Too bad that the world does not work that way. The efforts of economic leading countries will go towards AI development to stay competitive, not against it (China, USA, etc...). If you add to that that american people just elected a president who pushed massively for liberalization and non regulation in tech and AI world...well you see the picture. This is just an opinion, my opinion...but looking at various market indicators, this is not going to get better, it's going to get worse, I'm afraid.
These feel like really useful insights thanks. My 2 cent suspicion is that these days more than ever before, corporate interests are squarely fixed on the only metric that measures their success, which increasingly no longer seems to even include the quality of the widget or service they offer, just the dividend payout to shareholders. I think until that bottom line metric of success changes (somehow?) too many core issues will remain in an unsolvable state for the workforce at large, across industries really. Perpetual YOY growth is not reasonably sustainable. Unless you're nvidia I guess. But to my eyes, like, everyone's chasing this crazy unachievable standard, driving pressure to accelerate moves to leaner payrolls and less overhead. I have no idea how we get to the next paradigm, but I'm remaining naively hopeful that we will build something better and maybe even better suited to artistic efforts in particular. Eventually.
Great video! I feel like many of the jobs you talk about have been unnecessary for ages. And only exist because of extra cash/exploiting interns and studios being too lazy to upgrade their equipment (the downtime for upgrades is expensive), but with the pandemic some studios took time for those workflow upgrades.
Forever now automation in the studio industry has been destroying entry level jobs. I graduated audio school in 2008 and had some internships in college before that. These days it’s all about hustle culture and freelancers and has been since i graduated. The fulltime engineer became the assistant, and the assistant tasks went to the unpaid intern. Now the intern tasks are not needed and assistant is just a part time employee at best. The studio manager role (aka admin assistant/front desk person) now barely exists due to so many automated productivity software available (CRMs, zapper, etc). This is a slow change.
Imo i think the big businesses need to die to make way for smaller (aka cheaper) artists, studios, and composers. More people getting work instead of everything going to a small few who exploit their employees at the promise of learning and a dream that rarely actually happens. I know mastering engineers that did all the work on some major albums for a huge mastering engineer and he got no real credit despite doing all the work and his pay was barely a livable wage, while the mastering engineer took most of the money and all the credit for his work. Similar is true in the composing world. Just because the composer put their stamp of approval on it and told a few low paid grunts his vision doesn’t give them the right to pay pennies and take all the credit and rewards (aka royalties). You see one person only has so much time and can take on only so much work, but a team can do a lot more. I think the way forward is good for everyone imo.
As far as training, yeah that’s been gone for ages. It’s all barely anything and it would take years for you to get enough experience and knowledge to properly go off on your own and that’s by design as you would be competition in the eyes of the owners. So little nuggets is how it is. But i feel ya on the coworkers things, many industries have become much more solitary and lonely as a result.
Also i left LA 11 months ago for Portland (i lived in LA for 11 years) because there’s no work in LA that pays to live in LA anymore. The consistent work i got in LA i can do remotely so Portland is cheaper and i can pay more than half my bills with that instead of less than a quarter of it😂. Rent is half as much here and i feel like i can get more. I currently live in a house (2 housemates) where i have a dedicated studio space and a bedroom. Such a thing would be unthinkable at the price I’m paying in LA. In fact i’m paying the least amount I’ve ever paid in rent right now. Most of my close friends and some clients left LA for Nashville (most of my singer-songwriter friends) or Portland I found. Portland has been freaking amazing because of a massive indie market. It’s not reliant on the falling major entertainment industry. People spend more time on youtube and twitch these days than watching traditional hollywood stuff anyway.
Always appreciate your videos and your insight from inside the industry.
Absolutely fascinating video.
A worrying situation that seems to be endemic in other sectors too. A lot of my translator colleagues are fretting about AI too. I imagine the answers will prove to be a hodgepodge of different potential outcomes.
If anyone was wondering, the first shots were from Vienna! Come visit us :)
I was wondering, thanks!
Thank you for creating this video. The video game industry in the 'Eastside' area of the greater Seattle Area in Washington State has also been experiencing this change. I have noticed many universities have been pumping out "film composers" degrees without giving full disclosure of graduates who actually find work. One student who visited me was proud of the fact that his instructor had scored a film. One film! I appreciate that you speak truthfully and do not sugarcoat what is happening. Yes, it is sad, but it's a compounded sadness when a student spends $100,000 on an antiquated degree. Very few people go through life with only one job title. Everyone needs to plan accordingly.
Thanks for the insight this channel continues to be greatly valuable
Simply put, this is why you're so important to me.
Thank you Anne-Kathrin for this video. For those of us outside of LA, it gives us a glimpse of what things are like there. Over the history of the world market changes have impacted most jobs and changing/adapting is really the only option. Knowing exactly how to do this in this situation is certainly challenging, but necessary.
You make really great videos that are a joy to watch so thank you!
I think what you said abt indie projects popping up could really be true, because all this tools while taking entry level jobs from big players also allow small composers to do all by themselves, and It could bring some really good art on the surface
As someone who is mainly a consumer of film/music and not part of that industry, this was very interesting to hear. Things are changing everywhere in all creative industries, and everyone feels like they're in suspension. I'm hopeful that new exciting times are lying ahead of us, but I'm also sure that not everyone will be able to change.
Anne ,thank you for this very clear and considerate insight into our industry,as a composer who has 7 film scores on streaming platforms ,I am feeling the effects of a slowed down industry.What ever work there is ,goes to a small group of composers who have trusted and long relationships with filmmakers.What you say really resonates.Sean ,Cape Town
BTW I love your channel. Thanks for what you bring to people.
Great perspective Anne-Kathrin, agree with everything 100%. Thanks
Excellent video Anne-Kathrin. As someone who spent a couple of weeks at Remote Control visiting Hans and many composers there back in 2017, I can confirm that even at that time it was mostly tech teams & assistants left there. 7 years later it definitely got worse (to the point Hans is basically almost never there himself anymore). We're far from what Media Ventures was in its golden age in the late 1990s to 2010s I'd say. And even newcomers just spent a short amount of time before going solo on their home studios... I do know some who actually went from compound to home studio but in the end decided it was better to separate personal & professional life and got an office back. But that's becoming the rarity for sure... I do differentiate Remote Control and Bleeding Fingers, which is another beast.
Your views are on point! Thanks for the video
You are completely right on all points in this videos. I feel bad for the up and coming young people in our industry. I had the advantage of coming up through commercial recording studios and working for composers and learned so much from my many bosses/mentors. I see so few opportunities and I'm kind of lost for answers when I get asked about the best way to break int the industry. Like you, I really hope things pick up and change for the better. Great video, thanks for this.
Thanks for the insider's insights with full transparency and honesty. I only got into the media composition space a few years ago (I guess I might be part of the problem) and I dream of an environment that you described in the beginning of the video. "Composer compounds" where you could share and learn sounds amazing! I have recently offered my services to a few composers to assist them in any way, at my expense (including travel) to experience that kind of "over the shoulder" learning you described. No takers on that offer. I don't think that kind of in person environmental learning experience can be replicated through UA-cam videos so I would be willing to invest a little to learn a lot, but I don't think that is going to work either. I am fortunate to be a part of a diverse collection of filmmakers in the Seattle area and we are all "on the rise" together and I will see where that takes me, but I do yearn for some composer collective environment like you described.
The pandemic really messed up my momentum, and I wasn't able to get back to where I was. I have a couple irons in the fire, but as far as finding jobs and/or internships it's just not happening 😑 right now I'm working a day job and investing my spare time into other indie projects and my friend's startup.
Same boat. The pandemic crushed my momentum. I almost had an agent! Sending you best of luck
@christycm5946 thanks! Same to you, we'll just have to hang in there for now ❤
Thanks for sharing you thoughts with us: Sometimes we must to face the facts, I think is the only way to find a way out (or in this case a new way).
Thank you for making this video. Though I am very curious to know your views or suggestions for emerging composers considering all of this, I do agree with everything you said and I am curious to see how everything adapts to this change and the new landscape of this industry altogether.
Thanks for your content, you rock!
Thnx 4 sharing this great info with us. So good to know
Never before in history has such information become public knowledge as in this girl's videos. You won't find such knowledge in books or other UA-cam channels. There are also some very interesting videos of what goes on behind the scenes in the soundtrack production industry on composer Trevor Morris' channel, and some very cool reflections on Christian Henson's channel (Spitfire, The Crowhill Company). But nothing compares to the information contained on this channel.
Loss of institutional knowledge is going to be a big problem for the industry I think. It's already struggled with this since the collapse of the old studio system (not to ignore its serious problems, but it was a marvelous apprecticeship system), but it's getting so much worse. And I know that seems wrong given, you know, channels like this. UA-cam and Masterclass and so on. In some ways there are more places to learn than ever. But those places are also more shallow. Nothing beats years of intensive on-the-job training, especially in the arts.
Also I think studios have gotten too big. The few lumbering superconglomerates we have left don't have the agility to adapt. I think we'll see some dinosaurs fall, or at least be forced to downsize, before there's a new normal.
Btw, off-topic but I just have to say your makeup looks amazing! I know you've been geeking out over makeup purchases lately and it's def paying off :)
I agree with your views. It is not just media music that is impacted.
Sorry for the fake profile but with internet those days I prefer to keep it anonymous😅.
I'm a multiple skills musician and I really love media composing.
I have composed for the BBC and video games.
I'm mainly a song composer and studio session musician.
I live in Derby in the UK (the city of Tomb raider and Lara Croft). It is a great place because I can easily travel to Birmingham, London and Notthigham, which are great cities for music.
I have to say that I gave up making a living from media composing as I can see how both world are collapsing, at least the big Studios.
Ubisoft,...
I also think that Hollywood is a bit on a decline for the moment.
However, a few of my colleagues who are making a living from media composing are working more and more in Europe and especially Asia.
I don't think AI will ever replace composers, or at least not before a very long time.
I have read a very interesting article about this. Basically what we call an "AI" is not an AI.
It is an algorithm. A very clever one but just an algorithm. When analyzing musics to learn to "compose", it convert the music into binary (if i remember well). AI can't "listen" to music.
That point makes a massive difference in the capacity of AI to compose music.
Apparently, we are still very far from an AI that can listen and understand music.
But for composing riffs and beats for exemple, or background music for a serie that early composer are selling on websites, an AI can easily do that today unfortunately.
Where the AI is very good and is getting better is mixing and mastering.
I think it is not just the music industry that is changing but our entire economic system.
Is it for a good or bad, I don't know personally but what I'm sure is that, when things are changing, we need to adapt.
You are gold! I really find your videos interesting. Thank you🙏
The more solidified it is, it means that the solidified area feels the danger and becomes alert. I always remain optimistic, Maybe in the future, music, art, film, and TV will increasingly lean toward self-actualization. Indie artists will find it much easier to collaborate and trade with one another, especially with the rapid development of technology in every aspect, as well as AI. Under this scenario, aesthetics may evolve and accelerate at an unprecedented pace.
Mayhaps, the only composers getting hired are those who have a bit of a name, who show their face on social media, play in a band, who would be ready to sign stupid 360-contracts, e.g. who can be marketed. There used to be a time when (film-)composers were just rather unknown people. You saw their name on the credits roll, but that was about it. So, if online-looks play a part, probably most composers wouldn't meet modern day expectations. ;)
It is pretty depressing to hear this. It seems we should refocus purpose towards human connection but that’s probably never going to happen because clearly it would take the richest to be able to set that up.
I was one of the last runners at a very big studio compound. One of the biggest. And I was really hoping to turn that into an assistant composer position. But the pandemic did just what you’re describing. So I went back to school and graduated Berklee. But here I am still looking for even a part time position. It is rough out here.😂
Very well articulated. I work in the IT industry/music, and most of what you sayries. resonates, even in other indust
It's the same deal for us in post sound. A lot of people got into the industry during this massive heyday of "content creation" and now that production levels have sunk to what they were pre-streamer wars, many of the young people who got their big breaks during that time are now out of luck. So many careers and dreams just totally up-ended and gone. I would be surprised if they came back anytime soon but you never know. Doing my best to stay optimistic.
If I had to guess, I'd rather say the indie world will start blooming a bit more. The way the studios were producing content over the past few years was unsustainable to begin with (and as they later found out not profitable either). I think if we want a sustainable industry, we need to rethink how we make and distribute things, and also what is getting made in the first place.
I decided to just give up on becoming an assistant thanks to some of the conversations i would see lurking the teammates discord. It just seemed like focusing on being a composer was the way to go. Not to mention some of the assistant horror stories i would see thrown around. Heck if there's one good thing about assisstants and interns no longer being needed its that at least they wont get mistreated.
Appreciate you Anne-Kathrin Dern, thank you!
Very interesting infos! Keep them going please 🙌
I was at RCP in 2017. I thought maybe it was empty because it was summer break. But maybe the composers were already moving into their own home setups
This is some serious and kinda weird feeling information since in Germany everybody feels like things are getting rougher and tougher more than ever in every industry. And it's weird because on the one hand, music production wise there are more plugins and sample libraries out there than ever, being pushed out for 20 bucks per license that would have cost a fortune 10 years ago. On the other hand there are less and less jobs. My feeling is, as they said in "The Lord of the Rings", we kinda digged to deep in terms of technology. It's not that A.I. just steals other people's jobs, it's that we don't even worship "the human resource" anymore and rather trust some piece of software more than anything else. Unfortunately this seems to be an natural process since time and money is (unfortunately) everything we need today and if you do not adapt to modern techniques, you will lose both of it. Sad but true.
A brave video well put.
In think it's much bigger than a technological change, it's global and across all industries. The big difference is that these things, which have been true for so called "unskilled" workers for a hundred years or more are now true for skilled workers on a scale never before seen.
All I know is that it will not stop or improve until we all come together and make changes. No one group is enough, it's time to reach out in all directions.
I work in animation, and it's a similar story. The streaming wars plus the lockdowns made a boom economy that couldn't last. It was compounded budgets that were too big for a return on more and more shows along side shitty budgets to feed the "content" beast.
Aspiring composer here. I’m currently finishing a training about writing music to picture and am about to look for my first clients. Additionally, the training I’m following includes a two-day event in L.A. next summer, specifically dedicated to meeting pros from the industry, networking and getting our professional photos and website done as well. After watching your video, coming from France, I think it is still worth connecting to people overseas, even if work won’t come specifically from L.A. but I’m curious to know what you think about it.
I worked as an assistant at a mastering studio in NYC in 2007/2008 that was bustling with work. And then Ozone Mastering Assistant appeared and i immediately thought that it was only a matter of time before my old boss would have to retire. Luckily he found a job teaching at a school in Mexico but he doesn’t do actual mastering work anymore.
I feel like we've been on the way to, or even in the midst of the next indie wave. Feels like the early 2010s. The big game/film studios were struggling, but there were so many indie games/movies that were on their way into the zeitgeist. The indies eventually were absorbed into bigger studios or they grew into bigger studios themselves. The (now) big studios are crumbling again, and I can see the indie hype train coming back in the next year or two. Projects (especially for freelancers) will be much smaller for a while, but with the smaller scope will come greater quantity as the next generation of these studios is growing. At least that's how it seems to me given the last decade or so.
Hello! So in my experience of (back in the day) a record producer and orchestrator and and jingle writer we also had a community in a way where we could hang out with each other, eat together, share skills and ideas etc.. so my question is this: are there work-from-home-communities that in some ways work a bit like the old office workplaces did?
It’s interesting to see this side of composing. I don’t have much of a niche yet; but ive been getting back into composing exercise using what I know as an educator and multi-instrumentalist. I’d love to write for film, but I’m happy writing for ensembles too, there’s a big market for student ensemble music.
Hey Anne, thanks for sharing your insights - it was interesting to watch. Sad as well.
You mentioned how some activities are accelerated by tech and a technical question came to my mind. It's about stems mixdown for a dub stage of a movie. Do you have a favorite way of batch rendering stems for a dub stage which would preserve all the send reverbs? Or you don't do it at all? I know you've mentioned in a video a few years ago that you are not asked for rendering reverb but maybe that has changed? From my perspective sometimes reverb is a crucial element making a sound of a given instrument. And I want to preserve it the same way as I would preserve the room sound in which the recording took place. Sending a very dry audio file to a dub stage engineer would require him to "make" a sound of that instrument.
I know some people are creating multiple reverb/effects instances for every group (BUS) they want to export. But that creates problems because I would have to multiplicate a lot of effects tracks when wanting to mixdown about 20 stems (reverbs, delays, some other creative effects X number of stems).
Abstract real estate prices have ruined all economies who switched business investment for real estate parasitism, pushing up the price of business and extracting any potential.
This matches my experience. I finally quit a 100% remote job because, although I could easily do the work, I could never completely learn the company's processes. If I had been in an office, it would be simple to ask a colleague. The company admitted their processes were broken, but longtime employees had the advantage, and new (remote) folks were bewildered.
Collaborative work like this, sure... my day job is in accounting at a university and all we need is MS Teams and video chat (which is fine by me lol). I'd love to attend writing sessions with people in the near future, though. I miss jamming out
Yep. Current LACM Film Score Major Bachelor student, came out for the degree 2 years ago and have definitely felt getting a foot in the door of most composer's studios as an uphill battle. Seems like I graduated high school a few years too late. Outside of a referral, getting a hold of composer's direct contact information, (even much less established) in the attempts of looking to help out even on a short term basis feels impossible. At this point I would sit through rush hour traffic on the 101 to knock on a studio door and offer them a coffee if most composers hadn't moved to home studios.
I remember going to studios and have engineers unwilling to learn protools and were out of the job by the mid 90s.
I applied to be a film composer, but ended up being a road sweeper. I’m more likely to have a full blown conversation with my dog “frank” about dog politics than being a film composer…. No idea what I’m on about, but it is a shame 🤷🏻
Removing the need for legwork and assistants is a good thing in principle, as it makes the product (music) cheaper and consumed more, allowing more people to do higher level tasks. But looks like the issue is with the demand for music. A bit worrying how demand is lower even with lower prices.
No. They are just changing. Like jobs always do. Like jobs at any given level of seniority does.
For example, take an industry I know very well: private equity. When PE was just starting in the 60s and 70s, all the math had to be done by hand. One if the key job tasks as an entry level PE associate is to run the financial model and see if the deal is worth doing financially. Back then, an entry level employee would spend months doing the math with pen, paper, and calculator. Now it is done in Excel and can be done in one day. So do associates basically no longer exist? No. Their jobs just changed. They went from running numbers all day to managing the lawyers and accountants and bankers. They spend much more time now on communicating what the analysis says instead of merely creating the analysis in the first place.
Jobs change
I hope you are right. We may be seeing unprecedented times with the way technology is becoming more and more efficient at doing slightly more complicated menial tasks. But at the same time it's perfectly possible that jobs will just change in nature or that entirely new jobs will pop up.
@@AnneKathrinDernComposer
I’ll also elaborate (mainly because I like to hear my own voice).
As I see it, and of this I am 99% confident on, there is going to be a major bifurcation that is going to happen. Basically, I think an “entry-level role” is going to be defined by the project you work on, not by the actual job tasks. That with how technology is changing, it will be who your client is that determines what “level” you are for most people.
(1) As you said, the number of assistant/gopher/intern jobs at studios is going to go down. This “passive path,” where you merely have a job and get a bunch of opportunities simply by showing up to do the work (although that doesn’t mean one can necessarily capitalize on that opportunity), is going to become less and less common. The chance to work with Beyonce or the Beatles or Run-DMC early in your career (as some grunt doing work any 10 year old can do) is going to go down.
(2) But, with technology, a new path is opening up. There is an “active path” that I think more and more people are going to go down.
Let’s take, for example, some 18 year old kid who just graduated high school and they want to get into mixing music. Instead of going to some grunt job at a studio, while in college for… marketing they go on to UA-cam and learn some basics of mixing through UA-cam. They then come across Warren Huart’s channel and join his Produce Like A Pro Academy, download a bunch of multitracks, and puts together some actual mixes. Then, after learning some stuff from UA-cam and getting some multitracks to practice on, they start reaching out to local-level artists to mix for using those practice multitracks as samples to show the artists. And you’ll move up in the business through actually doing the work instead of being some grunt that does automatable tasks that aren’t adding any actual value.
And this applies across all music work, not just mixing. Producing, film scoring, game work… with technology making it easier to learn and with technology making it easier for musicians/directors/developers/etc to create their work, there has been and will continue to be an explosion of “entry-level” clients. It is also easy to find these types too thanks to social media and such. We don’t need to be introduced to new music or games or movies by waiting for it to come on the radio or through a trailer.
And this business is fundamentally about relationships. Yes, there is a minimum talent level that’s required. But the bar isn’t really that high. Most people can meet the standard if they want to put in the work. It is as much a relationship game as anything else.
Look at John Williams for example, god king of composers. Before meeting Spielberg, John’s career was indistinguishable from dozens of other composers. His career was nothing special. Before Spielberg, if I anonymized the films, no one would be able to pick out John from dozens of other contemporaries of his. But then he met Spielberg. Through Spielberg, John met George Lucas. How did Spielberg learn about John? Through John’s work. And John did such a good job that Spielberg referred John to George. And that’s how three of the most recognizable pieces of music ever created came to be. By John having actual work product to interest potential clients and by making good relationships.
Which is exactly what this “active path” does. It gets people actually making music and developing relationships. Compared to running errands and putting away cables for years. While there is absolutely value in “being in the room,” I agree with you on how important that is, getting actual experience composing/mixing/etc is way more important. And that’s becoming significantly easier to do as an “entry-level” person
@@jloiben12100 percent agree.
As in many industries where change occurs, the decision to either wait and see, or lead and innovate, is fraught with dangers. Possibly, small groups within the industry with a common concern but positive outlook, could share financial and technical risks to take advantage of the new dawn, whatever it may be.
"Film scoring schools" really don't like to talk about how many people leave LA and will keep telling their graduates to book a one-way ticket to LA
This is so true. I know about the same number of people who went to LA and those who left after a certain amount of time. The attrition rate is insane, and there's definitely a disconnect between schools and the real world in terms of expectations."
@@alvarorodriguezfilmmusic I do not think schools are disconnected from the real world, they know exactly what is wrong, but they want to keep cashing on fake hopes.
@@songandwind72 WOW! That's interesting.
I definitely think a lot of schools need to be more honest about how many jobs there actually are, what the success rate of the job is, and also what the expected pay is going to be. They prey on people's dreams and charge a fortune for it. It's really predatory, considering there are only a few thousand people doing this full-time successfully.
@AnneKathrinDernComposer Yes! It's ok to dream and set goals but in an honest and realistic way.
Love the opening shots of Vienna (I believe)!
Wow, it is hard to imagine this career being harder in an already centralized environment. Best of luck to everyone.
Well, that's a but disheartening to hear. As someone who's been trying and failing to get a foot in the door by 2018, it makes me reasses my priorities and consider dying out as a school teacher, as I probably won't be able to make a living out of it in the short term and more likely never will.
But idk... Giving up without putting up a fight was never my thing. Probably it's just a matter of how longer I can get knocked down before I can no longer stand 😅
Do you have any resources you can share that will help us keep our finger on the pulse of where things are trending?
Is there a direct correlation between the drop in work opportunities and a drop in content created?
I feel like if you really wanna be a new film composer today, you have to become a content creator and entrepreneur… these are the times.
imagine one click AI music producers after 5 years 💀
The problem with AI is it's actually much easier to make an AI that generates complete final product than it is to make one that helps individual steps of making a product. This is because the components of a film/video game/music album are not available to the companies building AI in any quantity (does the public ever see those stems?), but complete product is. Generative AI in its current form is entirely dependent on the training set and can learn how everything fits together and come up with completely new finished products. Rather than "a long way off from being able to write music to picture," complete video with audio and music has been demonstrated already, while currently primitive due to the enormity of information involved in a complete film or game, remember photo AI was fairly primitive just a couple years ago.
So the pattern of technology just assisting and automating steps of a human process is what is being replaced by AI, not helped by AI. It's not the producer or director that will hire a composer, it will be the film studios evaluating product completed by one or two people with no human assistance at all. And that's only a transition to the studio also being disintermediated and the consumer working directly with the AI on being entertained in any way they want, created in real time for their individual preferences.
The bright side of this is that we have a hobby to keep us entertained, rather than most people who will just veg out to the AI's latest concepts. Ironically, people who had success in the industry will be more distraught about this change than people who never did and remain enthusiastic even though the audience has all gone home long ago. They never had an audience or a paycheck for it and only have intrinsic motivation.
If there are no entry level jobs, no new people can get into that industry, the people currently in it will age out and die, and the industry will die with those people. So there will always be entry level jobs as long as that industry remains alive.
I suppose my main worry is that there will be fewer positions and that those will be mostly given to people who already have connections into the industry. The film and TV industry is already rife with nepotism and it's certainly favoring those who have a lot of wealth to wait things out. That might intensify in the short-term. I hope not though.
Thank you for being honest,
1st. I think there’s only a few songs that that are good.
2nd. The good musician get ripped off and there’s so much more to them.
3rd. I feel that when composing it can be spied on (a bit too far) but that’s how I feel.
Also good topic.
Eventually this gatekeeping will cause a severe shortage of composers for major blockbuster films John Williams is in his 90s Hans Zimmer in his 60s to 70s one day they will pass away whether people like it or not and if their is no one to replace them that was mentored the composer shortage will happen there should be a ton of composers in thier 30s and 40s scoring films but thier isn't because of the gatekeeping
Sigh…sometimes I think about giving up. Yet some stupid part of me keeps on going lol
This has got to be one of the least toxic comment threads I've seen. Gives me hope for the world.
I think better, maturing AR and VR workspaces will help somewhat, maybe even in some ways accentuate real-time remote collaboration.
aspring composers just look locally or for small projects. ive been able to network in Va and find some decent gigs it isnt hans zimmer level of course but im doing what i love. if something AAA comes my way that will be awesome if not im still chugging along
Just my luck to change careers at the beginning of the pandemic!
I thought about what you discussed. I think your going to be okay
Anne, you like many other are asking the same question, is the 4th Industrial Revolution, the mature of artificial intelligence. Everything is changing
I would think that if so many of these jobs are going away, then movies could be made for far less money...
For your intro videos, could you get Ken Burns to do voice over?
it's time to start studying music for paid streaming services Spotify, Apple Music just in case