About LoopLibrary.com and NetMusicLibrary.com
Overview:
Loop Library .com and Net Music Library .com have been combined into one consolidated web site, LoopLibrary.com.
LoopLibary.com is your online source for royalty free, license free, buyout, downloadable loops, samples, production music, and sound effects for use in all of your music, video, and multimedia productions! Loop Library offers downloadable loops, samples, production music, and sound effects, from a wide variety of independent producers and composers.
The downloadable loop and sample packages from Loop Library are ready to use with programs like Sony ACID, Steinberg Cubase, Steinberg Nuendo, Cakewalk Sonar, Ableton Live, Apple Garageband, Apple Soundtrack Pro, Logic Audio, Digidesign Pro Tools, Vegas, Wavelab, Sound Forge, Fruity Loops, Reason, and many more popular software packages. Loop Library features very high quality downloadable acoustic drum loops, synth drum loops, acoustic and electric guitar loops, bass loops, synth loops, keyboard loops, brass loops, horn loops, sax loops, and much more.
Loop Library offers downloadable loops, samples, and production music in all musical styles including rock, classical, techno, electronic, rap, hip-hop, pop, country, RnB, jazz, acid, house, trance, reggae, ska, punk, metal and more. All of the downloadable loops from Loop Library are license and royalty free, so you can use them freely in your own music, video, and multimedia productions.
Loop Library is run by Performance Loops producer, and full time professional music producer/engineer, Stephen "Da Brayne" Sherrard. Stephen's Performance Loops products are distributed worldwide by Big Fish Audio, and have received multiple great reviews from many top industry magazines such as Keyboard, EQ, Electronic Musician, Sound on Sound, Future Music, Computer Music, and Music Tech Magazine. The Performance Loops products focus on real instruments, such as acoustic drums, acoustic and electric guitars, brass and woodwinds, and even vocals (new Performance Loops vocal loop and sample product coming in 2007). On LoopLibrary.com you'll find many more Performance Loops style loop and sample packages from Stephen "Da Brayne" Sherrard and other producers, including a wide variety of live acoustic drum loops, guitar loops, and voice samples, plus the "extras" CD-ROMs of loops and samples for two of the Performance Loops products, Acoustic Guitars and Scott Rockenfield's Queensryche Drums. In addition, you'll find a wide variety of production music and sound effects from Stephen "Da Brayne" Sherrard and many other great independent composers and producers.
All of the downloadable material at Loop Library is organized into easy downloadable packages, and you can preview everything first with downloadable MP3 previews. You can immediately purchase any downloadable loop, sample, production music, or sound effects packages from Loop Library using your credit card or bank account through PayPal, and the downloadable files are available immediately after your transaction successfully clears! Your downloadable loops, samples, production music, and/or sound effects, can be downloaded at any time up to 24 hours from your purchase. Loop Library isn't the biggest site of its kind that offers downloadable loops, samples, production music, and sound effects, but we pride ourselves on working with a wide variety of talented producers and composers and offering high-quality, very usable samples, loops, sound effects, and production music at great prices.
Check out some of the free samples to try before you buy!
Background Story
(the web adventures of a professional music producer/engineer with a bit of a geeky background)
LoopLibrary.com and NetMusicLibrary.com were initially two separate web sites designed to sell high quality, cost effective, downloadable loops, samples, production music and sound effects for musicians, composers, and music, video, and multimedia producers. They were started back in 1998 by Performance Loops producer, and full time professional music producer/engineer, Stephen "Da Brayne" Sherrard.
I studied Electrical and Computer Engineering in college, and always enjoyed messing around with computers. As the internet began to take off, I started dabbling in web sites for myself on the side, just for fun. As I was putting the finishing touches on my first Performance Loops Drum loops and samples product, I thought it would be great if there was an easy way to sell downloadable loops and samples online. However, I had been away from programming for almost ten years, and although I could find my way around a server and do some minor software modifications, I wasn't up to the task of programming a complex database driven online shopping cart system that would allow downloadable products. There were already many shopping cart systems at the time, but delivering electronic goods via downloads was not available with any of the systems, nor was there an easy way to set up audio previews of each product. I already had a decent shopping cart system in place for one of my sites, so I hired a programmer to put together a modification to allow downloadable products. I used the built in product link feature to link to the audio preview files for each, and modified some of the database fields for other uses, and I was up and running with the first version of the web sites.
I never made any kind of business plan for the sites, and never planned on making a living from them. I did it for my own fun and learning experience, as well as to provide an alternate source of high quality downloadable loops, samples, and production music for other musicians and production people. I then invited other producers to contribute material for the sites, and signed on several talented producers and composers. However, the basic software I was using did not allow the other producers to upload and manage their own content, so they had to upload their content, or send it to me on CD-ROM, and then I would have to get it all formatted properly and uploaded to the correct directory for the site, and put all the info in the database. This was a very time consuming process, and with my extremely busy recording studio and production schedule, I never had much time to do the work myself. Instead, I ended up farming out the majority of the work to an upcoming producer on the east coast, "Bigg John", who built up the large majority of the content on the original LoopLibrary.com web site, and who still does a lot of editing work for me and the Performance Loops products.
The site barely earned enough money to cover its operating expenses, and I probably lost money since I was giving the other producers a very generous 70% of their online sales. I certainly couldn't afford to hire a programming team to do a complete custom system that would have all the features and appearance I really wanted (that would cost well over $50,000), so I continued to look for ready-made software to improve the site. In 2003, I found a Russian company that had some software very similar to what I needed, except it was designed for photo and video content. I contacted the company about modifying their software for my needs, and they said they could do it for $2000 US. They set up a really nice online interface for me to interact with the programmer and make comments on the progress, as well as submitting any revisions or additions I needed. I gave them $1000 up front as a working deposit, and we got a little over half-way done with the project and then I lost contact with them. The programming site and test site were still up, but no further work was being done and I couldn't get a response from them. After a couple of weeks, the main guy contacted me and said he had been in the hospital. He wanted me to give them an update on the progress so far, and then he started to do a little more work, and then disappeared for good. I never heard back from them, and didn't have access to the source code so that I could have someone else finish it up. I don't think they were out to rip me off or else they would not have done all the work that they put into it (and they never got the remaining $1000).
So, that whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth, and I ended up putting the sites off to the side for the next couple of years. I left them online since they pretty much run themselves and still made some sales once in a while, but I was too busy with some other products I developed, that actually made a decent product, to spend any more time with the sites for quite a while. I even stopped posting the monthly free loops, with the last set going up in July 2004.
Finally, at the start of 2006, after a very successful release of my Performance Loops - Greg Adams' Big Band Brass product, I decided it was time to take another look at LoopLibrary.com and NetMusicLibrary.com. After some more extensive searching, I finally found a software company that had just released a "Digital Mall" add-on for their shopping cart system, which had the key feature I had been searching for -- the ability to allow my outside producers to upload and manage their own content (but also allowing me to review all uploaded products before they go live). The price for the software was reasonable, so I bought a license and started building up the new database and site structure in the little bit of free time I had between studio projects. To help cut the operating costs, I decided to integrate LoopLibrary.com and NetMusicLibrary.com into one big consolidated site.
The new consolidated site with the brand new software finaly went online on October 1, 2006. I'm still doing this mostly for fun, and to help other talented producers and composers to earn some extra money with their work. I have a lot invested in the site, software, the sever, and the monthly operating expenses, but I hope that by concentrating on delivering high quality downloadable content to those customers who manage to find the site, that the site can actually make a decent little profit. Hopefully by the start of 2007 I'll have all the content from the old site converted over to the new site, along with all the new content from myself and other producers that is already in place (with more going up almost every day).
I make good money from my studio and the other products I produce, so I'll continue to keep this site going as a way to give back to the musical community by allowing other talented producers and composers to sell their content online, as well as to provide quality content to other musicians and producers.
I thank all of you that support this site and the independent producers and composers with your purchases!!
Stephen "Da Brayne" Sherrard
