In setting out to discover how the music on the Free Music Archive gets put to use, a good place to start seemed to be with Jared C. Balogh. Since he started sharing his music for free online in the mid-aughts, he’s seen it applied in any way you could imagine -- from student films to promotions for a public television series. it can be a challenge to find time to make music and corresponding with people from around the world interested in using his music in their projects, and then keeping track of how it’s used.
When you hear the depth and range of his genre-spanning catalog, it’s no wonder that so many other artists hear things that resonate with their own work. While Jared’s been recording since the 90’s, he started his own label, Altered State Reflections, in 2006 and used it to launch his Trans Atlantic Rage project. He began recording under his own name in 2010, which he discussed with us about a year ago on the blog.
For our new Music for Video interview series, he took some time out to chat with us again, this time about how it feels to see your work used everyplace from motion pictures to podcasts.
What’s it like to have people constantly sharing how they’ve used your music with you? What are those e-mails like to get?
At times it is overwhelming, but I find ways to manage it. More than half of my time now is devoted to answering e-mails, IM sessions, updating websites, posting on social networks etc.... with all the usages of my music. I guess you can say it is a good problem to have. My time for writing music is dramatically cut in half. It is more than a full time job (7 days a week) several hours a day. I want to post everything on my website because I am honored and grateful that all of these people spend all this time creating something with the music I create. I watch all videos, films, documentaries, listen to all podcast, radio, newscast etc.... Then I leave a comments. I don't want to come off as being ungrateful. No ways do I want it to stop. I am enjoying every minute of it. It is fun and exciting!