Music Licensing Companies
Music licensing companies come in three flavors — curated catalogs, sync agencies, and production libraries. Each takes 30-50% of every license fee. DropCue is the platform working composers use to pitch supervisors directly and keep 100% of the deal — alongside (not instead of) the companies they submit to.
Start Free 7-Day Trial →Tonal Chaos Trailers — premium trailer music library. Big blockbuster theatrical movie trailers, major streaming TV promos (Netflix, HBO, Apple), and AAA video game trailers. Epic hybrid orchestral, cinematic action, sci-fi, drama. Highly selective on quality and genre fit.
Outsider Music — production music library focused on television shows and advertising commercials. Broadcast-ready cues across genres for episodic TV, reality, and ad campaigns. Submissions by invitation rather than open form.
Artlist — subscription-based royalty-free catalog. Filmmakers, YouTubers, and content creators get unlimited royalty-free music for one annual fee. For composers, Artlist offers steady (smaller) per-license payouts at high volume.
Epidemic Sound — subscription-based royalty-free catalog (Stockholm). One-stop music for unlimited use. Composers signed to Epidemic earn royalties when their tracks get used in monetized content (especially YouTube). Typically exclusive composer deals.
Musicbed — curated catalog. 40-50% cut. Highly selective. Premium positioning + active sales team pitching for composers. Higher-priced than royalty-free subscriptions.
PremiumBeat — royalty-free curated catalog (owned by Shutterstock). Hand-picked royalty-free music integrated with the Shutterstock stock-footage ecosystem.
Marmoset — boutique sync agency + catalog. 50% cut. Reputation for landing premium ad campaigns and prestige TV cuts (Apple, Nike, HBO). Highly selective intake.
Songtradr — open marketplace + curated. 30-50% cut. Mass-market sync platform. AI-driven matching is hit-or-miss.
Position Music — sync agency, 50% cut. Direct relationships with major shows and trailers.
Pusher — boutique sync agency, 40-50% cut. Reputation for landing prestige TV cuts.
APM Music / Universal Production Music — production music library. High volume of placements, smaller fees per use.
Audiosocket (formerly Pump Audio) — open licensing platform. Indie-friendly non-exclusive licensing.
Both, in sequence. Most working composers start by pitching directly while building a portfolio of placements (this is when DropCue is most useful — you keep 100% of every fee). Once you have 5-10 sync placements under your belt, sync agencies become receptive to signing you, and they bring scale you cannot get on your own. The two-pipeline strategy: submit to 2-3 licensing companies for passive inbound + pitch supervisors directly with DropCue for active outbound.
DropCue is the toolkit composers use to pitch supervisors directly — branded share links, embedded metadata, per-recipient analytics. We do not take a percentage of placements like libraries and agencies do. Use both channels in parallel.
Submit to your 2-3 favorite licensing companies for inbound. Use DropCue to pitch supervisors directly for outbound — and keep 100% of every fee on deals you close yourself.
Start Free 7-Day Trial →