Themusicase.com invites film composer Michael Kakhiani to an interview regarding his experience so far in production music and trends on global music licensing.
Hello Michael. I would like to start this discussion by asking you how and when you got involved in the production music industry.
I got involved in the production music industry in 2008, though I’ve been writing and performing music from my childhood. Coming from a Classical Piano background, I have never really heard about library music, until I enrolled to Berklee College of Music, where I had a Songwriting / Jingle Writing class with an accomplished Production Music composer. That’s when I started to think about getting into this side of composing, luckily, I’ve found one royalty-free music site, where I uploaded several tracks, and I was extremely happy that they started to sell, after that I did a research to find many more libraries and things started to grow from here.
Where are you based and where has your music been placed so far?
I currently live in my hometown, which is Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. Though I have lived in the USA for some time, as well as in London, U.K.
As far as placements, I mostly have a lot from royalty-free sites and don’t really know where they end up getting used, but I had some major placements too, like Advertising spots for Castrol (North America), Nissan, Braden Group and some others. I also did some film music for several local filmmakers as well as Solar Light Films (USA).
Do you do custom music (by request) or you are active only in the stock music library market?
Yes, I definitely work on custom music, and I try to get more involved in this kind of activities, especially in film music.
Is there any particular style of music that sells more for you in the royalty free music library market?
I would say that it’s Corporate and Motivational tracks, though I have several Cinematic tracks that sell quite well.
How did you decide to participate as an active composer in royalty free music libraries?
I’ve just tried once, and got stuck for years 
It’s like gambling, but a lot better, because here you never lose, just gain. I really love the feeling you get when you see your music has been sold, and it’s great that in today’s era it’s possible to be on the other side of the planet and make your music heard and used worldwide and also to see your sales and statistics real time. It gets you motivated to do more and better than before.
As last question I would like to ask for your opinion about the future of music production. Do you see that composers will become more active in the global market offering their music through digital platforms in even lower prices or they will try to develop their “brand” in local markets charging a lot more than representatives as royalty free music companies do?
I guess in the future, the quality will decide everything, there are a lot of composers today that are writing quality production music and selling through digital platforms, but also there are many mediocre ones, but as the number of libraries grows and the number of contributors and their music tracks grows too, I guess it will eventually filter down. I think there will always be a market for “low-priced” music, which is used by people and organizations mainly for online videos, ads, and websites (youtube etc.), and who can’t afford to pay more for better quality. But there will also always be a market for large productions, who will always pay more for the best quality they can get.
Michael Kakhiani Music is available at themusicase.com for global licensing here:
http://www.themusicase.com/search/Royalty-Free-Music/Michael_Kakhiani/
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