Introducing the Kusiak Music Library

If you follow Kusiak Music on any social media platforms, you may have seen some fun short videos in the past few months and wondered what they were all about. These were created using tracks from our Kusiak Music Library albums with some sample video clips to give you a sense of each album.

Kusiak Music Library is a newly-public boutique production music library featuring music composed by John Kusiak and several collaborators, including P. Andrew Willis, Kenny Kusiak, Billy Novick, Robert Van, Rob Jaret, and Caleb Sampson. Recently, music from the library has been used in Netflix's Tiger King, NPR's This American Life, and PBS' Poetry In America series, among others. Current projects in progress include Eric Stange’s Pony Boys and the third season of Poetry in America, which we are looking forward to sharing with you all.

Filmmakers, editors, music supervisors—do you have a film, TV series, commercial, or podcast in production that needs a score? We’d love to work with you and can customize existing tracks to suit your needs. Browse all albums—over 1,500 tracks—on the Kusiak Music Library website or get in touch directly if you’d like help with a search from one of our librarians.

To catch up on album videos you may have missed, hop on over to your favorite channel:

• The new KML Instagram feed

• The new KML Twitter feed

• John Kusiak’s YouTube Channel

• Kusiak Music’s Facebook Page

Morally (In)defensible podcast

Morally (In)defensible, the new podcast from the creators of Crimetown and The Jinx, has hit the airwaves — or AirPods — this week.

The podcast is a lead-in companion to the premiere of FX's new five-part docuseries, A Wilderness of Error, based on the best-selling book of the same name by author and documentarian Errol Morris.

Featuring music from both Kenny Kusiak and the Kusiak Music Library, this is another family affair.

Take a listen and let us know what you think!

Flashback Friday: Refuge Media Project

Because John has been writing music for several decades now, not every Kusiak Music client needs to request new pieces of music to complete their project. Often, smaller projects with limited budgets and/or time reach out to ask for some licensing options from the back catalog.

Here's an example – the Refuge Media Project documentary from 2013.

“More than one million refugees have come to the US, fleeing torture and political violence,” begins Refuge: Caring for Survivors of Torture.

The vast numbers are staggering, but what makes a greater impression in this stand-out documentary are the small, individual stories from survivors and those who offer them care and support as they resettle in the US.

Ben Achtenberg, project director at the Refuge Media Project and producer/director of Refuge, says the film – seven years in the making – came about as his general interest in healthcare and mental health issues drew him to organisations and healthcare providers that offer support to survivors in the US. Previously, he was nominated for an Oscar for the film Code Gray: Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing, which he produced and served as cinematographer."  (from WorldWithoutTorture.org, October 2013)

Let us know if you'd like an invitation to browse through the Kusiak Music Library (over 1,400 tracks and growing). 

Notes from the Production Music Conference 2017

I've been going to the Production Music Conference for a few years now, and the attendance seems to grow exponentially each time. This year the foyer was so packed in between sessions that it was sometimes hard to squeeze through!

The quality of the workshops was great, divided into two tracks (creative and business). I was there primarily for the business angle, as there's always more to learn about sub-publishing, metadata, and the direction of the industry in general.

My daughter Jessie (in training to be the Kusiak Music Library manager) met me in L.A. and we navigated the conference together, sometimes splitting up to catch both sessions. The conference was at the Loews Hollywood and we had 10th floor rooms with views of the Hollywood sign in one direction and the pool and enormous Egyptian-themed mall complex on the other.

All of the panels that we attended had information that Jessie and I could use in developing and improving Kusiak Music Library. The session that stuck with me most was "Gratis and Multi-Title Licensing," which revealed an unfortunate practice that is becoming too common – clients wanting music for free or wanting to share or own the publishing. Pretty disheartening, but we composers need to stick together and resist this development.

It was great to reconnect with Nathan DeVore who was moderating the panel on "Valuing Your Performance License in New Media." Nathan interned for me when he was a student at Berklee College of Music and was a great help and always a positive presence. Glad to see him have so much success with Vanacore Music!

Update 2020: Another Berklee graduate has a new article you may find interesting on how to become a film composer. Check it out.

Have you checked out Crimetown Podcast yet?

If you haven't been listening to the Crimetown podcast, you've got a treat in store. Thirteen episodes have wrapped with five more to come...

"Welcome to Crimetown, a new series from Gimlet Media and the creators of HBO’s The Jinx. Every season, we’ll investigate the culture of crime in a different American city. First up: Providence, Rhode Island, where organized crime and corruption infected every aspect of public life. This is a story of alliances and betrayals, of heists and stings, of crooked cops and honest mobsters—a story where it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Hosted by Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier. New episodes out most Sundays at 2 pm." -- from the Crimetown website

Enjoy the podcast and listen for our music -- tracks from the Kusiak Music Library and some new compositions by John, Andy and Kenny are used in each of the episodes.

Wait, what is the Kusiak Music Library, you may ask?

We've been working to get several decades' worth of Kusiak Music compositions online for easy browsing. There's over 1,250 tracks up so far with more to come; as time goes by and the rights to pieces revert to us, and as we have time to add the bajillions of alternate and otherwise never-used pieces of years gone by we will add more. (Did we mention it's several decades' worth?)

The Kusiak Music Library is invitation-only for now, but feel free to get in touch if you have a project that needs music (many lengths, tempos, moods, and genres available).