Eric Harper

I was looking at the weight room etiquette sign at the gym the other day. It’s a classic piece of forced behavior. On one hand, it’s a bit false—a plastic warning trying to police how people act. On the other hand, it’s a necessary marker, a way of telling the room: “This is our culture. This is how we do things here.”

But it got me thinking about where behavior actually comes from.

Years ago, when I was playing in a band with my brother, he used to get incredibly angry with me if I showed up even one minute late. To him, one minute late wasn't a minor detail; it was late. Period.

For a long time, I started showing up right on time. But I wasn't doing it because I valued punctuality. I was doing it out of fear. I was reacting to outside coercion, trying to avoid the friction and his reaction. It was compliance, pure and simple.

But then, something shifted inside me. I grew up a bit. I realized a fundamental truth about existing on this planet: I am not alone in the world.

I realized that my actions have a ripple effect. When I was late, it wasn’t just a number on a clock; it was a choice that directly affected another human being’s life and time. The moment I understood that, my behavior changed. I didn't need the fear anymore. The motivation moved from an outside pressure to an internal reality.

That’s the real trick of the gym sign, or a band rehearsal, or a community.

The signs are there to force compliance from the outside. But the ultimate goal of any culture isn't to make people follow rules because they're afraid of the penalty. It's to wake them up to the fact that we are all sharing the room.

When you wipe down the bench or show up five minutes before practice, it stops being about the rules on the wall. It becomes an act of empathy. It’s realizing that the harmony of the whole song depends on how we treat the people playing next to us.

A man in Paris once wrote:

"If I love you, I need not continually speak of my love—you will know without any words. On the other hand if I love you not, that also will you know—and you would not believe me, were I to tell you in a thousand words, that I loved you."

The same is true of AI music.

You would not believe it, were AI to tell you, in a thousand notes, that it loved you.

Listen closely and you'll know it wasn't made by anyone. No history behind it. No staying up til 3am fighting for that right line. No struggle.

Does that matter? Depends what you're listening for.

If you want sound in the room — something to do the dishes to, something to drown out that pestering negative voice in your head — it works fine. It has its place.

But if you're trying to reach another soul, a thousand perfect notes won't get you there. You'll know. You always know.

Fast-food and soul-food are not the same meal.

The difference between hitting the note and missing it on a guitar can be half a centimeter — how close your finger lands to the fret.

That’s it. Half a centimeter between “yes” and “not quite.”

We do the same thing to ourselves off the fretboard. Miss the mark and we call it failure. But most of the time we’re not far off — we’re half a centimeter away, not a mile.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dean Wolfe on his podcast recently — one of those conversations that wanders from the musical to the metaphysical and back again. Somewhere in the middle of it I said something out loud that I'd been thinking for a while.

I never intended to become a film composer.

I went to Berklee to improve my composition chops. Took the film scoring degree because the other options were more classical music or a performance degree — and I figured I could perform for free. No grand plan. Just process of elimination.

Film scoring found me anyway. A woman from China on a tour bus. Her friend finishing a feature in Beijing. Two scenes. Then his second film. Then his third. Then 6,000 television episodes.

And somewhere in there I looked up and realized: none of this is what I set out to do as a kid.

I wanted to make music that inspired people's hearts. Instead I was writing three songs a day for reality TV. Not bad work. Good money. But math, not art.

So at 48 I'm asking a different question.

Not how do I win the Spotify game or the social media game or the licensing game.

But what is the smallest viable audience I can actually impact? Who are the people who would miss me if I went away?

Turns out they show up every Friday at Fox and Hounds in Ladysmith. They drive from Nanaimo. They bring their friends. They request my own songs and sing along to the lyrics.

That's not a stadium. But it's real. And real compounds.

Live music is about to fetch a premium. AI can generate a track in milliseconds. It cannot walk on stage, look someone in the eye, and play the wrong note at the right moment and have the room forgive you for it because they felt what you meant.

That's not a feature. That's the whole thing.

Watch the full conversation with Dean Wolfe here.

When I first started talking to apps and platforms about original music, I kept running into the same problem. They knew they needed music. They didn't know how to buy it.

The traditional music industry model — commission a track, negotiate a fee, get a license, repeat — is slow, expensive, and inconsistent. Every time you need something new you're starting from scratch. You're negotiating. You're waiting. You're hoping the composer you used last time is available.

There's a better way. It's called a retainer. Here's how it works.

The Basic Idea

A music retainer is a fixed monthly arrangement. You pay a set fee. I deliver a set number of original tracks. Every month, on time, to broadcast standard, fully licensed.

No per-track negotiation. No scrambling when your content calendar changes. No wondering if the music you need will be ready when you need it.

Think of it like having a composer on staff — without the overhead of actually having someone on staff.

What's Included

Every track I deliver on retainer includes:

Original composition. Made specifically for your platform and brand. Not pulled from a library. Not recycled from another client. Yours.

Full production. Mixed and mastered to broadcast quality. Ready to use in your app, your marketing, your content — without additional production steps.

Full licensing. You can use the music globally, across all your platforms, in perpetuity. No per-use fees. No clearance headaches.

SOCAN registration. Every track is registered with SOCAN — Canada's performing rights organization, equivalent to ASCAP or BMI in the US. This ensures the music is properly tracked and attributed for royalty purposes. When your app or platform uses the music publicly, I collect performance royalties through SOCAN as the composer. This is standard practice in every professional composer-client relationship and does not affect your license or your cost.

No Content ID claims. I do not register retainer music with Content ID systems. That means when you use the music in your app, your YouTube channel, or your marketing — you won't receive automated copyright claims. Your license agreement confirms your right to use the music across all your platforms without interference.

Revisions. Included. I work until the track is right. In practice, most tracks land close on the first delivery because I spend time understanding your brand and audience before I start composing — not after.

What It Costs

I offer three tiers:

Starter — $1,500/month. One original track per month.

Growth — $2,500/month. Two tracks per month plus brand music consultation.

Partner — $4,000/month. Four tracks per month, priority turnaround, quarterly sonic brand review.

Each track is up to 1:30 with or without vocals depending on what you need. If you need longer music then contact me below to discuss your musical needs.

WhisperWings — a children's sleep app currently being presented at APEX FTE EXP Asia — has been a retainer client for over two years. Their arrangement has evolved over time to include original music, podcast production, and other audio work. That's what happens in a good retainer relationship: it grows with the product.

What You Don't Own

Worth being clear about this because it comes up.

Under the retainer model, you receive a full license to use the music — globally, in perpetuity, across all your platforms. What you don't receive is the underlying copyright.

I retain the copyright and register each track with SOCAN. This allows me to collect performance royalties when the music is broadcast or streamed publicly. It doesn't affect your ability to use the music however you need to. It's standard practice in composer-client relationships and it's how every major production music library works.

If full copyright transfer is important for your situation, that can be discussed on a case-by-case basis at a different rate. It's not a deal-breaker. It just changes the number.

How To Start

I don't require long contracts to begin. The initial arrangement is 90 days. After that it continues month to month and can be cancelled with 30 days notice.

I'd rather earn your continued business by delivering work you love than lock you into something that isn't working. That's the only way a retainer relationship makes sense for either side.

The first step is a 20-minute conversation. Tell me what you're building and what music challenge you're trying to solve. If it's a good fit, we'll know within that call.

I've been composing music for a children's sleep app for over two years now. Before that I scored 6,000 television episodes and award-winning films. The rules are completely different.

Television music is designed to keep you watching. Sleep music is designed to help you stop. That sounds simple. It isn't.

Here's what I've learned about what actually works — and what doesn't.

The Science Part

Start with tempo. Music between 60 and 80 BPM naturally synchronises with a resting heart rate. The nervous system responds to that match and begins to slow down. This isn't subtle — it's measurable. If your app's music is above 90 BPM, it's tricky, you're working against the biology, but not impossible.

Then there's instrumentation. Acoustic guitar, piano, soft strings, and ambient textures create warmth without stimulation. Anything with a strong attack — drums, brass, sharp percussion — activates alertness. For children specifically, the timbres that work are those that resemble the human voice in some way: warm, rounded, slightly imperfect.

Dynamics matter more than most people realise. Music that stays at the same volume and energy level becomes wallpaper — the brain tunes it out. Music that moves gently downward in energy across its runtime — gradually quieter, gradually sparser — actively guides the listener toward sleep. The arc matters as much as the notes.

The Part Nobody Talks About

All of that is the technical foundation. But the thing that actually determines whether music works for a sleep app is harder to quantify.

It has to feel safe.

Parents choosing music for their children are making a trust decision. They're putting their child to sleep with a stranger's composition playing in the room. The music has to feel like it was made by someone who cares about children — not someone who made something technically correct and called it done.

I think about this every time I sit down to compose for WhisperWings. Ora — who narrates the app, and whose voice was used by BMW globally in four languages — sets a standard of warmth and presence that the music has to match and support. The music isn't there to be impressive. It's there to disappear into the background of a child feeling safe enough to close their eyes.

That's a different job than any other composing I've done. And it requires a different part of you to do it well.

What Doesn't Work

A few things I've learned to avoid:

Melody with too much forward momentum. A great lullaby can be deeply memorable — that's often why it works. What you want to avoid is melodic energy that pulls the listener forward rather than settling them down. The melody should feel like an arrival, not a journey. Resolved. Circular. 

Harmonic tension without resolution. Unresolved chords keep the brain alert, searching for where the music is going. Sleep music should resolve gently and consistently.

Sudden dynamic changes. Even a small crescendo at the wrong moment can jolt a child back to alertness. Every dynamic change should feel inevitable and gentle.

AI-generated music. I'll say this plainly: I've heard it used in this space and the results are consistently flat. There's something the human ear detects in AI music — a quality of having been constructed rather than felt — that keeps a faint alertness running underneath the listening. For sleep, that's the opposite of what you need. Parents feel it even when they can't name it. Not to mention, that current AI music has a sharp and brittle sound it emits around 5000 hertz that awakens the child and keeps them from sleeping.

What This Means For Your App

If you're building in the sleep or wellness space and you're using library music, the question worth asking is: does this music feel like it was made for us?

If the honest answer is no — that it fits, but it doesn't belong — that's worth paying attention to. The music is load-bearing in a sleep app. It's not decoration. It's the product.

I'm happy to talk through what original music could look like for your platform. Twenty minutes, no obligation.

I get asked this more than almost anything else. So let me just answer it directly, the way I'd want someone to answer it for me.

The honest range for original music in a children's app is wide. Here's why, and here's how to think about it.

The Three Ways Apps Get Music

Library music. You pay a licence fee — anywhere from $50 to $500 per track depending on the platform and usage — and you get music someone else made for no one in particular. It's fast. It's cheap upfront. And it will never quite fit your product the way something made for it would. Your competitor can license the same track tomorrow.

One-off commissions. You hire a composer to make one thing. A theme song. An intro. A single lullaby. Depending on the composer's experience and the complexity of the piece, expect to pay between $800 and $5,000 for a single original track for a children's app. This is fine for a one-time need. It's expensive at scale if you need new music regularly.

A monthly retainer. This is the model I use. You pay a fixed monthly fee. I compose, produce, and deliver a set number of original tracks — fully licensed, SOCAN registered, broadcast quality. No surprises, no per-track negotiation, no scrambling when you need something by Friday. It's the model I've been running with WhisperWings for over two years.

What A Retainer Actually Costs

For an Emmy Award-winning composer with 32 years of experience and credits on How I Met Your Mother, The Daily Show, and Heartland Docs — here's what I charge:

Starter — $1,500/month. One original track per month. Up to 1:30, with or without vocals. Full licensing. Revisions included.

Growth — $2,500/month. Two tracks per month. Same terms. Plus brand music consultation.

Partner — $4,000/month. Four tracks per month. Priority turnaround. Quarterly sonic brand review.

WhisperWings — a children's sleep app currently being presented at APEX FTE EXP Asia for placement on international airline entertainment systems — has been a retainer client for over two years. Their arrangement includes original music composition plus podcast production and other audio work. The relationship evolves. The music gets better because I understand the product deeply after two years of working inside it.

Why Original Music Costs More And Why It's Worth It

Library music is licensed to anyone who pays for it. Original music composed for you is licensed exclusively to you — made for your product, matching your brand, available to no one else.

When I compose music for your app, you receive a full licence to use it across every platform, market, and product — in perpetuity, globally. No per-use fees. No risk of the library pulling the track. No competitor licensing the same lullaby.

More importantly — and I say this not as a pitch but as someone who has watched it happen in practice — children and parents respond differently to music made for them. The warmth is different. The fit is different. You can feel when music belongs to a product and when it's visiting.

There's also the AI question. AI-generated music is getting better. But research consistently shows engagement drops when human composition is replaced by AI. The value isn't the technical perfection. It's the shared humanity of an artist who has actually felt something putting it into sound. For a sleep app where trust is the entire product — that difference matters.

What To Ask Before Hiring Anyone

Four questions worth asking any composer you're considering:

Do you retain the copyright or do I own it outright? Make sure you understand what you're buying. A licence and ownership are very different things.

What does the revision process look like? A good composer builds revisions in. You shouldn't be paying extra every time the brief evolves.

Is everything SOCAN or ASCAP registered? Properly registered music protects you from Content ID claims on YouTube and other platforms.

Can I hear something you've made for a similar client? If they can't point you to real work in a similar genre, that's useful information.

If you want to know if we're a good fit — book a 20-minute call. No pitch deck required.

From the outside, a French croissant and an Italian cornetto look identical.

To the experienced taster they are completely different things. One is flaky and shatters when you bite it. The other is soft and yields. Same shape. Different soul.

The same is true of a Flamenco guitar and a Classical guitar. Side by side in a shop window they are nearly indistinguishable. But play them both and the difference is immediate — one is bright and percussive with bite, the other is warm and mid-range and round. Same lineage. Different character.

To hear the difference between Vicente Amigo and Paco de Lucía — not just notice it, but truly hear it — you need something that cannot be taught in a classroom or absorbed from a blog post. You need acuity. And acuity only comes from one place.

Experience.

Not information about experience. Not someone else's description of experience. The thing itself.

These differences aren't accidents. The cornetto is soft because Italian mornings are unhurried. The Flamenco guitar bites because duende necessitates a kind of musical immediacy. Culture encodes itself into objects. And you can only read that encoding with your hands and your mouth and your ears — never with your eyes alone.

So close the laptop. Go find a real croissant. Then find a cornetto. Then tell me they're the same.

There’s a news channel always on at my gym. Every segment is Breaking News.

Every. Single. One.

After a while I stopped looking up.

Not all news is breaking. And when everything breaks, nothing does. The word loses its meaning. The trust dissolves. Now when something actually matters — when there’s a real reason to look up — I’ve already tuned out.

The same is true in music.

If your dynamic is always at 100% you have nowhere to go. Loud only means something when quiet came before it. Tension only pays off when there’s been release. The chorus only lands when the verse held back.

Create dynamic. Create tension. Create relief.

Because if every song is Breaking — you’ll eventually break your audience.

Ingrid Michaelson wrote a beautiful line.

"You take me the way I am."

Musicians love this line. Romantics love this line. People put it in their wedding vows and tattoo it on their forearms and play it at the moment they first realize they might be falling in love.

And they're not wrong to love it. It's true. Eventually.

But here's what the song doesn't tell you: eventually is doing an enormous amount of work in that sentence.

The first phase of marriage — call it the Romantic phase — lasts somewhere between nine months to two years. During this phase you are not seeing each other clearly. You are seeing each other through a very particular and very beautiful kind of distortion. You mirror each other. You finish each other's sentences. Everything they do is either charming and completely forgivable. The toilet seat, the dishes, the way they load the dishwasher wrong — none of it registers. You are too busy discovering that someone else exists in the world who feels the way you feel.

This is the announcement of love. Fragile. Sudden. The teaser before the film.

The second phase is the Separation phase and where most couples decide the love is gone.

It isn't. But it has changed form, and the new form is much less comfortable than the old one.

This is the phase where you start noticing that you married an actual person. Not a mirror. Not a projection of your best hopes. A person who leaves dishes in the living room. Who sets seven alarms and sleeps through all of them. Who speaks a love language you need a translator for. Who is, beneath every shared value and interest and physical attraction, fundamentally other.

This is also the phase where most divorces happen. Because we've been sold a story that love should feel like phase one. Forever. And when phase two arrives we conclude that something has gone wrong. That we chose badly. That the love has run out.

But the love hasn't run out. The love is just being asked to grow up.

The third phase is the one Ingrid is singing about, the Unity phase.

This is where you arrive — if you stay, if you do the work, if you resist the fantasy that there is someone else out there who will never drive you slightly crazy — at actual acceptance. Not tolerance. Not resignation. Sober acceptance.

He always leaves the toilet seat up. I know this about him. I love him anyway.

This is a completely different thing from the romantic phase where the toilet seat didn't register. In phase one you didn't accept the toilet seat — you didn't see it. In phase three you see it clearly, you've said something about it probably a thousand times, you know it will never change, and you love him anyway. That is acceptance. That is the thing Ingrid is singing about.

And it is earned. Slowly. Over years. Through the arguments and the silences and the nights when you wonder if you're too different and the mornings when you're grateful you stayed.

I wrote a song once about what that looks like from the other side of a lifetime.

This is true of bands too.

The mythology of great bands is that they found each other and everything clicked. That the magic was immediate. That they just knew.

But talk to anyone who has been in a long creative partnership and they'll tell you the same thing. The early years were electric and also terrifying. Everyone was performing their best version of themselves. The real work — the accepting of each other's limitations, the learning to write around each other's blind spots, the choosing to stay in the room when someone plays the wrong chord for the hundredth time — that came later.

Rush lasted forty years. Forty years of three people in a room making something together. You don't do that on romantic phase energy. You do that on phase three.

So, love the song. Put it in your wedding vows if you want.

But know what you're actually promising when you sing it.

You're not promising to take someone as they are on the day you meet them. That's easy. That's the trailer.

You're promising to keep taking them as they are on the day they forget to call, and the day they say the wrong thing, and the day they are so completely themselves that it exhausts you.

And then the day after that.

That's the whole song.

Most couples make it through phase two when they know there’s a phase three.