As a Co-Producer you will make the content submitted by Sound Designers more relevant and discoverable by rating the tracks and giving feedback. You will also help Designers to improve their entries in productions, thus enabling contest holders to receive content that better matches the design brief. Co-producing is an important and respectable part of the community development on Audiodraft, so please read the below listed Co-producing Guidelines carefully. You can read instructions about how to co-produce contests here.
With our new strategy services, Co-Producers will receive monthly lump sum payments for their work on these projects. These payouts are a great way to make an active income. Typically Co-Producers will receive 50% - 70% of the cost of the Strategy Service brief. If you are ambitious and looking for more ways to make money on Audiodraft, get a head start and build up your co-production status now!
Currently Co-Producers on private invitations receive 2.5% of the royalties generated by the tracks they co-produce. This may seem like chump change, but after you have co-produced 10+ projects you could start receiving a nice passive monthly income of $100 per month once the Performing Rights Organization makes their payouts.
By co-producing tracks on Audiodraft you will build up your royalty catalogue. This long tail of royalty revenue from various placements can generate a notable amount of income in the future.
Our community managers will endorse you for the work you have taken part in at Audiodraft, to help you grow professionally and build your CV so that it is one of strongest entries for future jobs you look for.
Upon request we will write you a reference letter on company headed paper, confirming and detailing your hard work behind the scenes at Audiodraft, to use as part of your CV.
Being a co-producer is a great way to keep your ears sharp and expose yourself to a variety of production techniques you might not have heard before.
It’s also a great way to get a behind the scenes look at the quality of other community members work so you have a better idea of where your own skill set stands.
Being a co-producer requires a delicate ear and you must be able to identify a range of instruments and sounds in a mix, provide detailed and clear feedback to coworkers and also have the vision and foresight to know what a mix needs to bring it to that next level.
Co-Producer Status, like Sound Designer Status, can be leveled up through the following activities:
For more information check out our co-producer guidelines.
It is important that productions stay active and healthy. The Co-Producers main role is to ensure that new entries are added to the contest shortlist when they meet the requested criteria – high quality entries matching the brief are essential to the health of a production.
Remember that the contest holder can only listen and give feedback to the entries that are shortlisted.
Sometimes productions have a deadline lurking the next day or the day after, so the activity of the Co-Producers can really help the production to close successfully.
As a co-producer it is up to you to react to the following:
Co-producers should provide feedback by:
Please remember that the feedback on the entries is public and visible to everyone. This is to ensure open and honest communication, and also to support all Designers in finding the right direction for their entries and the production. Only Co-Producers, contest holders and the Designer behind each entry can comment on the individual entries. The Designer can see two sets of ratings; one by the Co-Producer(s) and one by the contest holder.
This concerns both the Internal Discussion and the Contest Holder Discussion. The tone can naturally be more casual in the Internal Discussion.
If you need to communicate with the contest holders, please use the contest or project discussions available on Audiodraft. Whenever Designers send questions to the contest holder, these need to be reviewed by the Co-Producers. If you think you can answer the question yourself (or if you think the question contains any inappropriate or irrelevant content), you can return the question with a polite answer or explanation. Only relevant questions related to the brief and the entries should be forwarded to the contest holder.
Please report any possible infringements to the Audiodraft Team immediately. We take copyright seriously and follow the DMCA policy standard. You can learn more about it here.
On Agency Studios the Co-Producers work closely with both the contest holder and the Designers who participate in the contest. The main task of a Co-Producer on an Agency Studio production is to curate content for the contest holder. This means reviewing submitted tracks and adding matching tunes to a shortlist that is presented to the contest holder. The shortlist contains tracks that meet the requirements specified in the design brief of the contest, and demonstrate high quality in composition and production. Co-Producers are compensated by receiving a percentage of the royalties that the winning track ends up generating. Co-producing is a great way to develop your music skills by reviewing the productions of your peers, while also increasing your own monthly income.
Please respect the privacy of the contest holder and do not discuss, upload or reveal any of the information you are trusted with in these challenges. There could be severe personal legal repercussions for your actions which audiodraft can not protect you from.
Before Co-Producers can start their actual work, they need to fully understand the design brief. This entails understanding what kind of music or sound design the contest holder is looking for, and for what purposes. The requirements for the delivery are equally important, including how many entries the contest holder wants on the shortlist, and what the final delivery date is.
The design brief of the contest should clearly state what type of audio the contest holder is looking for. It can be a 20 second rock jingle for a radio advertisement or a 4 minute long orchestral track for a film. The brief can contain additional information as well. The audio might need to be synced to a video that is included in the contest, the song might need to be composed in a certain key, the track might need to resemble the style of the reference track provided, the Sound Designer might need to provide all instrument stems as separate tracks, or the final product might need to be delivered in multiple lengths in the handover stage. A well-thought-out design brief is the key to a successful contest, and as a Co-Producer it is your responsibility to do your best to understand what kind of audio matches the brief. If you feel that the design brief is lacking some crucial information or is poorly written, you can suggest changes to it by contacting the Audiodraft Team preferably through the platform or on the following email: contact[at]audiodraft.com
Contests are marked with tags (e.g. #rock #aggressive #drums) that are relevant to finding suitable talent and tracks for the contest. As a Co-Producer you can also suggest additional tags to be added to the contest.
All entries are rated with a 1 to 5 star rating. Stars are described as follows:
Co-Producer ratings are marked with AudioDraft icons and contest holder ratings are marked with stars.
A good rule of thumb is to rate the entries according to the following three cornerstones. It is usually a good idea to give each cornerstone a star rating (1-5), and then counting the average.
The three cornerstones for rating the entries:
Does the track meet the requirements of the brief? Is it a potential match to what the contest holder is looking for? If your answer is yes, the entry is on the right track.
The quality of the production (including sounds, mixing and mastering) should be very high for all the entries that make it to the shortlist. Monitoring this aspect of the competing tracks requires trained ears and good monitoring gear. The production should meet current standards of commercial music. The mix should be clear, it should not sound muddy, and the levels should be correct. Some design briefs have very specific level requirements. Please make yourself familiar with the concept of audio levels, including broadcast standards, to be able to give reasoned technical ratings to the entries. There should not be any critically weak links in the production, and usually it's quite easy to spot these (for example, when an electronic drum kit isn't in time, or when an acoustic instrument like violin sounds cheap and unrealistic).
The arrangement and structure of the piece should be something that works within the context of the genre specified in the design brief. Most music genres follow certain stylistic patterns and rules, and it's usually good to have some knowledge of those before co-producing a contest. It is strongly advised that you do your homework and listen to music of the genre in question before rating the entries.
It is a good habit to write feedback to the Designers about all the entries they submit. Providing feedback gives you a chance to explain and motivate your rating. It is advisable to always start with something positive about the track. As a Co-Producer one of your tasks is to help the Designers improve their productions by providing constructive feedback coming from another professional working in the business. If the entry is lacking in production quality (e.g. the drum track is too quiet and sounds muddy), arrangement (e.g. sloppy transitions from part A to part B) or the entry fails to meet the requirements mentioned in the brief (e.g. the entry is not in the correct key and tempo), you should definitely mention this to the Designer. If the entry can be improved and has the potential to get a higher rating after some adjustments, it is advisable to ask for an updated version if there's still enough time left in the contest to work on the modifications.
Remember to always be polite, constructive and helpful. It is good to keep in mind that not everyone has the same kind of studio, latest monitors, orchestral sound libraries or production history as you do.
One of the main responsibilities of the Co-Producers is to create a shortlist of entries for the contest holder. The shortlisted entries have to meet the quality standards (remember the three cornerstones; 1) matching the brief, 2) production quality, 3) composition and arrangement). The importance of the entry matching the brief cannot be emphasized enough, as the track needs to be usable for the client. Even if the track sounds amazing and is the most stunning production you've heard in awhile, it will most likely be useless to the contest holder and should not be shortlisted if it doesn't match the design brief.
A healthy contest will generate such an amount of entries on the shortlist as the contest holder has requested, by the delivery date. This is something that Co-Producers need to monitor, and there are notification tools on your studio page and on the contest page that will let you know if the contest requires attention. For example, if the delivery date is closing in and there are not enough entries, it is important to contact the Audiodraft team so that they can invite more Designers to the contest. You can also kindly remind the Designers to send in their drafts as soon as possible if the deadline is getting near.
Co-producing contests on Audiodraft can really help you to learn about music production and provide additional inspiration, as you listen to a lot of different music made by different people and get involved in the creative process. Co-producing is active learning and helping at the same time: Designers get your valuable opinion and feedback while you learn from the productions and get insight into how other Designers work. Co-producing is a great way to challenge your own mindset regarding audio production, and a way to understand and practice giving constructive feedback. If your Co-Producer status isn't at Junior Level yet, you should co-produce more challenges and always keep your ear fresh by using the Quality Control Tool. Once your Co-Producer level reaches Junior Level, you can expect to start getting invitations to co-produce contests on Agency Studios.
If you ever feel unsure about a situation or don't know how to act, please don't hesitate to contact the Audiodraft Team and ask for advice (contact[at]audiodraft.com). You can also drop a message to 'Audiodraft Ltd' in the internal messaging tool.