Checking Out: ReelCrafter, Demo Reels For Audio Professionals

RealCrafter is our TOP PICK when it comes to showcasing professional demo reels for audio professionals. The superior sound quality, blazing fast and easy to use interface make it the obvious choice for anyone pitching for film, TV, video games or spots.

Review: ReelCrafter – Demo Reel For Audio Professionals

When composer Sam Hulik (Mass Effect/Baldur’s Gate) wasn’t satisfied with the options for pitching demo reels to clients, he coded a little hack that would notify him when the music supers and producers actually listened to them.

Sam’s composer friends heard about this and started asking if they could use the code and I can see why as it served as a great way to know when to follow up with a potential client. A couple years and many lines of code later, ReelCrafter was launched changing the game on how professionals pitch audio demo reels.

ReelCrafter offers three pricing tiers from FREE to $9.95 to $16.95

Thoughts

RealCrafter is the clear winner when it comes to showcasing professional demo reels. The superior sound quality, blazing fast and easy to use interface make it the obvious choice for anyone pitching demos for film, TV, video games or spots.

Before I go into details, I think it is necessary to address the orange elephant in the room: SoundCloud. The first thing you should know is ReelCrafter is not a SoundCloud copy.

Both ReelCrafter and SoundCloud offer entry-level FREE plans to use their audio sharing services, but that is where the comparisons ends.

The first big advantage is that ReelCrafter has no social networking element. Why is that an advantage? Well, first of all, that means using ReelCrafer you won’t be solicited to from fake “hot girl” accounts, scam sites or “collab” seekers.

Another big factor is ReelCrafter keeps potential clients focused. If you’re like me you invest a lot of time and energy into getting potential clients to check out your reels in the first place so the last thing you want is the distractions and “recommended links” competing for attention.

With it’s super slick minimalist design clients are funneled into doing nothing but checking out the reels you send them.

As you can see in the Reel I created below, everything is focused on the message I want to get across to my potential clients. Customizable graphics, headers, bio and “light” and “dark” skin options are available.

The PRO plan also offers unlimited track uploads and unlimited reel creation, options for letting clients download your reels as well as the “Vanity URLs” for customizing your links like this: https://rcrft.co/reel/DonBodin/Obscura.

No other random distractions, links, ads or a push to “discover other artists”

There are a lot of other great features I want to highlight in this review as well. The first is the ability to use non-destructive “trim” feature to showcase only regions of tracks.

Trim feature.

This allows you to keep the full track ready for showcasing in some reels while being able to share the edited versions in others reels for more focus.

Another big factor I found while testing out ReelCrafter is the sound quality is great! The other platforms use their own blanket compression and monkey around with your audio so it almost always has a slight loss in quality. ReelCrafter manages to have smooth, fast playback of your high-res audio files without adding compression or altering the sound quality from what I can tell.

This is the kind of easy to use intuitive design we should be expecting from our web services and apps.

This is the kind of easy to use intuitive design we should be expecting from our web services and apps. I doubt you will need to refer to the guides as the simplicity and well-executed icon based GUI are so easy to work with.

Reelcrafter’s dashboard lets you know exactly when reels are viewed — real-time statistics. The PRO plans get you more details including which parts of the track were listened too, when a track was skipped, download notifications.

Detailed listener stats.

I found that when I recently submitted a reel for a trailer project, the music super only listened to 20 seconds of the entire track, so I knew I needed to follow up with them to get the rest of the tracks in front of them. This alone is worth the cost of entry in my book!

ReelCrafter does have embed code generation so you can easily add your reels into your WordPress or html pages. I would have liked to seen thumbnail and image options for the embed code or og:image (facebook sharing). At the time of posting, there were no option for images with embed code.

In the couple months I have used the service I have been really impressed by the communication and continued development of features. Every couple weeks the development team seems to roll out a new graphic options, improvement of better data insights based on user suggestions.

If you’re use audio in your marketing, I recommend Reelcrafters.

If you’re using audio in your marketing, I recommend Reelcrafters.  But, Don’t take my word for it.
Go set up a free account and test it out.

If you do upgrade, use the SLR ReelCrafter link and get 10% Off your first year or 20% Off your first month.

Fact

ReelCrafter is our TOP PICK for professional demo reels for composers and is recommened. In the spirit of transparency, ReelCrafter is a partner of Sample Library Review. If you make a purchase through our links SLR will receive a small commission that helps us to compensate our hard-working contributors and keep the website going.

ReelCrafter services have three pricing tiers from FREE to $9.95 to $16.95
SLR Readers SAVE 10% Off your first year / 20% Off your first month of service with our link ReelCrafter