Tonal Chaos has been a working music company for over 20 years, with the dedicated trailer catalog now seven years deep. Across that time we've reviewed thousands of submissions, signed a small fraction of them, and learned that the way a composer sends their music tells us almost as much as the music itself. This is the official policy for how to submit, what we're looking for, and what gets your email moved to trash unread.
Who We're Looking For
Tonal Chaos signs established trailer and cinematic composers. That means composers with prior library deals, prior placements, or a body of finished, master-quality work in trailer-adjacent genres. We are not the right home for composers who are still learning the craft, sending student work, or building their first ten tracks. There are libraries for that. We are not one of them.
The sound we sign sits in the world of epic orchestral, hybrid, dramatic underscore, choral, action, horror, tension, and modern cinematic. If your strongest material is pop, lo-fi, ambient meditation, jazz, country, or rock, your music is excellent but it is not for us. Send it to a library that specializes in your genre. You'll have better outcomes and so will we.
We are particularly interested in composers who already write to picture, understand the rhythm of a trailer edit, and deliver hero versions alongside stems and alt mixes without being asked. If "30-second edit, no choir, no percussion" is already part of your workflow, you are speaking our language.
What We Accept
Finished masters only. Mixed, mastered, and ready to ship. If a track is not at the level you would send to a music supervisor at a major agency, it is not at the level we sign. The bar is the bar.
We sign exclusive deals only. If a track is already placed with another library on a non-exclusive basis, it cannot be signed to Tonal Chaos. The exclusivity is not an ego play. It is what allows us to walk into a pitch with a music supervisor and guarantee the cue isn't sitting in five other libraries' catalogs competing against itself. That clearance certainty is what builds trust over years, and it's what gets our roster placed.
Send a curated selection. Five to twelve of your strongest tracks is the right size. Not fifty. Not your full catalog. A small, intentional playlist with your best work tells us you understand how pitching actually works. A 200-track dump tells us you don't.
How To Submit
Send a streaming playlist via DropCue to [email protected]. That is the entire instruction.
DropCue is the music delivery platform we use to pitch our own catalog to music supervisors at agencies like Trailer Park, Mocean, and AV Squad. It opens in any browser, streams immediately, never expires, and gives us per-track playback so we can hear the cue without downloading a file. A DropCue link is what a professional submission looks like in 2026. Free accounts are available, and your first playlist takes five minutes to build.
The submission email itself should be short. Tell us who you are, where else you've placed, and link the playlist. Three sentences is enough. If your music is strong, we will hear it. If your music isn't strong, no amount of cover-letter prose will save it.
What Gets You Ignored
Some patterns guarantee your submission gets passed on before the music is even heard. We mention them not to gatekeep but because every composer doing them is unintentionally signaling that they haven't done this before.
- File attachments. A 200MB email with twelve WAVs is an instant trash. Inboxes get clogged, our IT flags it, and the workflow falls apart.
- WeTransfer or expiring download links. Submissions get reviewed in batches. By the time we open it, the link is dead.
- Public SoundCloud, Spotify artist pages, or YouTube channels with no curation. If we have to scroll through a hundred uploads to find your best three, we won't.
- Demos, works-in-progress, or rough mixes. "I'm still working on the mix, but here's the idea" is not a submission. It's a draft.
- Cover letters longer than the music itself. Save the influences and the journey for after we sign you. Lead with the link.
- Asking for feedback before signing. We are not a music education service. We're a library. Submit when you believe the work is at the level.
- Follow-up emails inside the first week. Reviews happen quickly. Pinging on day two doesn't move you up the queue.
What Happens After You Submit
Every serious submission gets listened to, usually within a few hours of landing. This is a small operation. The inbox doesn't sit for weeks. We try to reply to each submission, and when something stands out we'll often include short feedback or specific suggestions on what's working and what isn't fitting the catalog. We cannot guarantee a reply in every case, but the silence-for-a-month dynamic that exists at larger libraries is not how things work here.
If you haven't heard back within a week, feel free to send one short follow-up. If still nothing after that, consider it a pass for now and feel free to resubmit in six to twelve months with newer work.
If your music is a fit, we'll reach out to discuss exclusive terms, share-of-sync structure, and which tracks we want to bring into the catalog. Tonal Chaos splits are clean, transparent, and competitive. We register every cue with the proper PROs, deliver detailed quarterly statements, and pay on time. The relationship is long-term. The first signing is usually the start of a five-to-ten year conversation.
Why The Bar Is High
Tonal Chaos is a working trailer music library with placements across Marvel, Star Wars, the Hunger Games franchise, and ongoing campaigns with the top theatrical agencies in Los Angeles. When we pitch a cue, our reputation is attached to it. A weak track in the catalog isn't just a sales problem. It is a credibility problem with every supervisor who hears it.
The composers already on our roster have earned their place over multiple years and multiple placements. We owe them the same standard of curation for every new signing. That's why the bar is where it is, and that's why a five-track playlist of your absolute best work outperforms a hundred-track catalog drop every single time.
Ready To Submit
Build a playlist of your five to twelve strongest finished masters on DropCue, send the link to [email protected], and keep the email short. If the music is right, we'll be in touch. The catalog is always open to the right composers.