Repurposing Your Creative Work

Note: I started writing this as part of the Artists House Vault post on Music Libraries, but decided it would work better as a post on its own. As such, some of this post may make sense only in the context of the last!

All of your music has potential. How are you making it available? Do you have songs hiding away in the basement collecting dust? It’s time to brush them off and find new ways to leverage all that creative work!

That is essentially how Opus 1 Music Library originally formed. Alan Ett was writing music for his clients. Sometimes those songs never got used because another song worked better or the creative direction of the project changed. Instead of letting those unused songs sit and collect dust, he made them available to the general public as a “library” of production music. After all, they were still good songs. They were already cinematic because he wrote them for that reason. They happened to just not be right for whatever client turned it down. It could be perfect for someone else’s needs.

Of course, to do something like this, you would need to make sure you retain the rights to your work. But that is a discussion for another time.

Another great example: Jeff Martin, lead singer and frontman of the band Idaho, started writing music for television and film several years ago. In the process, he wrote a ton of material that either wasn’t used or was rejected. What did he do with these songs? Bam. New album from Idaho. Did it sound like a movie score? Sort of. But it also sounded like Idaho. I had been following Jeff’s work for many years and experiencing this as a fan was really exciting for me. Not only was the music a fresh sound for Jeff, but it also made him seem more human to me. This wasn’t some far-off, major label, contrived album. It was a normal guy trying to make a living off music by scoring television shows. Some of it didn’t work out, so he decided to reform some of that material into an album. It wasn’t a turn-off at all for me, because I wasn’t just a passive consumer of Idaho’s music. I was part of the Idaho tribe. Jeff has always been pretty transparent about his work, and I was interested in anything and everything he did. I was glad Jeff released those songs rather than have them sitting in a vault somewhere where no one could enjoy them. It let me experience his creative work more as a person than a consumer.

I think a lot of musicians are scared to repurpose their work because for the last several decades bands would craft their albums over months and months until they created a sacred gem which they could just unleash upon the world and not think about it again. Probably not the greatest idea these days. Thankfully, it’s ok and actually encouraged now to be human with your creative work. You can use your ‘b-material’ to both grow your core community (who will eat this stuff up) and/or to generate new revenue streams.

There are lots of opportunities out there, so it’s time to be a hustler a start working your stuff! All of it!