Many people will hear the music in a trailer for a movie and TV series and believe the music comes from the film or show, but that’s rarely the case. Films and TV series are often advertised long before production is completed and, typically, a composer starts writing the soundtrack once a rough cut of the movie is available.
By this time, future potential viewers of said movie or show have already been shown several teasers and trailers. And, of course, they’ve heard the spectacular music in those. But where does that music come from if the composer hasn't written it yet? That's what we're going to talk about today.
Until about the 1970s, trailers featured music that film studios found in their own libraries. They often borrowed fragments of soundtracks from previously released films for trailers.
One of the first trailers for which original music was written was the one for the movie Skatetown, U.S.A.. Critics and audiences were pretty much in agreement that the movie was terrible. And the music in the trailer does not resemble the style of trailer music we are used to today. It was a pure disco track.
The author of the music was the famous American composer and conductor John Beal. He is considered to be the "father" of world trailer music. Subsequently, he created soundtracks for 2,000 movie trailers, including promos for Titanic, The Matrix, Star Wars and other world-famous hits.
Until the late 1990s, composers wrote music for trailers on request from special marketing agencies. And there was definitely an urgency behind it. Eventually, some advertising music companies realized that trailer music could be created in advance, similar to 'library' music used in TV shows and series.
This is how the first catalogs of specific trailer music began to form, which differs in sound and genre from everything else and resembles film music, but if film music was pumped up with stimulants.
Film studios and marketing agencies appreciated this new ability to select pre-made music tracks. Shortly after, music publishers started to appear on the market and they made the production of music for trailers their main business.
Let's look into the numbers. Between 700 and 800 full-length feature films are produced in the United States alone each year. In 2021, for example, about 806 films were produced, close to the 2019 level of 792 films. These figures include both major studio releases and independent films.
In 2023, 516 original scripted series were released in the United States, which is 14% less than in 2022, when 600 series were released. (The decline is due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, as well as changes in the entertainment industry and rising production costs).
Despite the impact of the strikes and the significant blow suffered by the film industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the total number of titles remains impressive. Considering that every movie and TV series needs at least one trailer, the number of promotional videos created each year — theatrical, television, online — is in the thousands.
On the one hand, specialized music publishers have saturated the market with thousands of pre-prepared and rights-cleared music tracks for trailers. The demand seems to be well satisfied.
For instance, not long ago, many trailers featured music with samples of a ticking clock — often distorted ones and heavily processed. Now, this trend is fading.
Until about 2019, it was common to use the sound of a large epic choir in trailer tracks. In 2020, this became almost taboo. Now, choirs are back in trailer music, and no one can explain why or for how long.
And while the trailer music market is quite saturated, paradoxically there is a constant shortage of new ideas. So what you end up with is music publishers sifting through the heaps of emails with demo tracks from new composers at least once a year (some do it more often) looking for something new.
Some American publishers are aggressively searching for new composers, tracking releases from competitors in European countries.
In short, there is a place for new composers in the trailer music market, but it is not guaranteed. And that's why...
The trailer music industry is considered an elite sector in production music. Unlike the "library" music used on TV and in commercials, trailer composers receive a one-time fee for placing a track in a trailer (instead of royalties).
Most composers in the industry are self-taught. And they don't necessarily live in Los Angeles, as you might think. Trailer music publishers remotely collaborate with composers worldwide. Despite its elitism, it is still a very democratic industry. Publishers don't care what country you live in or if you write them messages in broken English.
Publishers are primarily interested in the quality of your music. And indeed, you can get into the trailer music industry literally from the street. You do not need to engage in the annoying process of networking, you do not need to have important acquaintances, and you do not need to live in the US to do this.
You “just” need to surprise or at least interest the publisher with your demo track.
Film studios commission trailers from specialized agencies known as “Trailer Houses.” Quite often, several agencies will pitch their version of a film’s trailer, competing with each other for the sale.
Trailer Houses do not collaborate directly with composers, with rare exceptions. They turn to catalogs of ready-made tracks that are published by special music publishers. As such, publishers are the business that interacts with composers "face to face."
Trailer houses can and do order trusted publishers to write trailer tracks from scratch. This is called "custom" music. Its creation is a separate, highly competitive business within the industry, and a novice composer probably shouldn’t be worrying about participating in these types of high stakes races at the beginning of their career.
Each album is dedicated to one of the subgenres. Composers receive a brief from the publisher describing the genre. Sometimes composers can also receive reference tracks. To get started, a composer needs to impress a publisher with a few high-quality demos. Usually only two or three of the best tracks are enough.
The tone in the music for trailers is set by several dozen publishers. Most of the highly successful ones are concentrated in the US, but there are some strong companies in the UK and other European countries, too. You can search the web for publisher lists. Here is one example. (The list is incomplete and omits several important publishers).
Generally speaking, these companies are run by very busy people and they may not respond to demo emails for weeks or months. And it's normal for an aspiring composer to wait and wait and hope.
Usually, in the world of trailer music, you’re not going to be met with a lot of harsh criticism for a weak demo. If the publisher is not interested in the composer, they will send them a polite refusal or simply not respond to the message.
Typically, if a beginner sends out a demo, waits, and does not receive answers, then they write new, stronger demos and send them out again. Keep plugging away and one day the door to the industry might just open a crack.
It's a significant achievement when a publisher shows interest in a new composer's demo tracks, even if the composer isn't fully ready for professional work. Some publishers help newcomers improve their skills and guide them toward publishing their first track.
In short, the situation is fairly simple: you identify publishers who post their email addresses for demos, you write some relatively strong tracks, you send demos, you wait and get (or don't get) feedback, you repeat.
You probably have a lot of questions that can’t be answered within the framework of one article, but we’ll point you towards a place that may be able to help. A very friendly and growing community is active on Facebook. It includes many publishers of trailer music and successful composers from around the world. Quite a few of them are open to newbie questions and patiently answer them.
The community is called the "Trailer Music Composers Support Group", and some of the most burning topics have already been discussed many times in it. A beginner looking to get into the industry can start by searching within the group to find community posts using their keywords of interest. The answers to most beginner questions are probably already found in previous posts so try not to come in and start asking questions that have already been answered.
From the moment a publisher accepts a composer's first track, it can take 3 to 10 years to achieve a full-time income. In the trailer music industry, a lot depends on luck, on the perseverance of the composer, and on the patience of an artist, which, let’s be honest, sometimes has to be near limitless.
The most difficult thing is getting to that ever-elusive place where the quality of writing and production for a novice composer reaches a level where they become desirable for publishers.
To get closer to that place, the composer must follow a minimum set of rules:
Several active trailer music composers from the US and Europe produce and sell online trailer music creation courses. Some of them do this not under their own names, but under pseudonyms. Buying or not buying these courses is up to you. They may or may not be useful.
We spoke with Damir Price, composer, music producer and co-founder of trailer music publisher redCola Music (Venice, CA).
We asked Damir: What should a composer study first of all if they want to start writing music for trailers? Here is his answer:
“The simplest, most direct, and probably least obvious answer to this is to study the one thing that does not have anything to do with music. One should study trailers themselves. How they are put together, the requirements, the process of making trailers, learning how an editor thinks - what they are given to work with, what the producers are tasked to do and deliver, these sorts of things. One assumes that if one calls oneself a ‘composer’, one knows everything that is to know about composing music, or most of it. So, that’s less of a concern. The bigger concern is understanding the challenges and tasks that these creatives and executives face, so that one can provide the best tools for them to accomplish it, from the music perspective.
“Trailers always change. I personally find them one of the most creative fields in media these days. Trailers, to me personally, are not an art form - it’s advertising - theatrical motions picture advertising to be precise. For advertising to work, the created product needs to gain attention, for the most part, by the masses. Most movies address rather similar topics, over and over again. But, they express and address those topics in different, new and innovative ways. There are still love stories written and produced and filmed that catch our attention - usually by the way they are made, not by the fact that they are telling a love story, something everyone is familiar with. So, this applies to their advertising as well, the movie trailers, and to one of the essential parts of that advertising, the music and sound. How does one tell a love story in a way that’s new, fresh and modern? Simple, but incredibly challenging task.
“So, in my opinion, and if I were to be considering where to start with in order to enter the highly competitive trailer music scene, this is something I’d be pondering and spending hours, days, weeks and months researching and studying.”
