Obviously this is my opinion and it is a *little* biased, however, if you don’t want to take my word for it I am sure a little research on your part will convince you.
It is common knowledge that royalty free music is cheaper than conventional licensing; this is true. Unfortunately, royalty free music has also got a stigma for being poor in quality and in my experience a number of industry people that I have spoken to have remarked saying it is pan pipe, lift, test card, on-hold, cheesy music etc. You get the idea.
If this is your opinion I urge you to give it another chance but please keep in mind…
Most composers / artists are talented professionals who like to take pride in their work and only produce quality music. Unfortunately, it seems that some royalty free music sellers devalue music by selling it for peanuts with little or no restriction on its use. I believe this dissuades the better composers from wanting to produce it. The result is that there is an abundance of poor to mediocre music out there for hardly any money.
A good rule of thumb is to avoid anything that is supposedly free, extremely cheap or sold by the bucket load. You will tend to find that this music is possibly illegal, poorly produced, dated in sound and basically naff.
If you were a composer, would you spend valuable time producing something of high quality just for somebody to sell it for a couple of dollars or give it away free? No, I thought not!
The bottom line is, there is a value on the work that has gone into a musical production and if you don’t mind paying a fair price for using it, there are reputable royalty free music providers out there that offer quality music.
There is a new wave of fantastic sounding music that does not bear any resemblance to historically “cheesy” royalty free music. I believe this is due to a new wave of music producers who have access to professional production equipment and software that just a few years ago was only accessible to cash rich recording studios and established composers. Furthermore, the development of broadband connections, cheaper bandwidth, social networking and an increased use of media content online has opened up many new markets for new composers and bands.
Remember, quality is out there and it is affordable, but it needs to be worthwhile for the composer and the website hosting and promoting the music.
Hi There,
I agree that royalty free music has a stigma, what sites do you recommend for high quality composition royalty free?
As a memeber of PRS, it caused me teething problems setting up my business not being able to compose music and give this music to clients who did not want to play an y other audio or commercial music yet still had to pay a PRS fee, especially when I would not collect the royalties for this performance anyway, as you said in an earlier blog, this gets paid to the top 100. the robbie’s the elton’s etc, I found this frustrating to me as a business and also frustrating to explain this to the potential client, which often resulted in them deciding not to purchase the audio.
I am also right in believing that any music that is composed by a composer who refuses for what ever reason to be represented by such agencys as PRS/MCPS/PPL, who then later perhaps are given an opertunity to have a commercial lucritive deal would possibley well want to join PRS to collect royalties due, this then make all his music represented by PRS, including all past recordings, there fore this would mean that there would be royaltys due on the music he wrote in the past. Who ever was using this music for Public Broadcast would then be liable for a licence from PRS for public performance of these musicall works which were originally bought copyright free. Is there any garauntee that this music will remain copyright free?
Malcolm.
Hi Malcolm
Thanks for your post, I can recommend our royalty free music as it is hand selected for quality. http://www.mediamusicnow.co.uk/music/
The question you pose is quite difficult for me to answer in full on my blog for two reasons. As the founder of a royalty free music library, I know a lot about the subject and its problems, but feel being too outspoken in writing is not always the best course of action. Also, knowing a lot about the subject does not give me the ability to dispense up-to-date legal advice on music / copyright law. However, this is my opinion.
Skirting around the specific issues a little, I would say that the industry term ‘Royalty Free Music’ is known and quite standard. However, there is no standard license agreement for royalty free music. This is because, as far as I am aware, the mainstream industry did not invent it, composers did.
The result of this is that the Royalty Free Music license that was initially aimed at TV producers has spilled over into the digital age, creating numerous opportunities for independent licensors and composers. Also, the digital age has virtually screwed the conventional industry and they still seem to think old royalty collecting models will work for new media.
In my opinion, the industry is moving towards independents becoming the dominant force in the future, leaving outmoded collecting agencies behind, I think it will be a case of adapt or die. It is already common knowledge that composers only really get performance royalties if works are used on major TV and Radio stations.
Ultimately, if the composer owns all of his own rights, he / she should be able to exploit their works when and how they like. At the end of the day, the performance royalty collectors initially were setup to collect on behalf of the composer so what is the harm in composers using them for their designed purpose whilst still being able to exploit direct licensing opportunities, through new media such as royalty free and other buyout agreements. This seems logical to me, and I hear that the US PRO’s allow this.
At the moment this area is a mess, with contradictions, misunderstanding and much incorrect advice being given from composer, collecting society and music user alike.
To me it seems that most independent composers actually reserve the right to administer use of their own works independently regardless of some of the agreements they are already signed to. Although some collecting societies request assignment of performance royalties it seems that is in many cases they appear to overlook this clause when music is classified as royalty free. This also seems to be the case when a creative Commons license is applied.
I guess logically it would not be wise for a collecting society to penalise a composer for generating revenue from their own licensing efforts when collecting societies were created to help composers collect revenue. This said I do not represent collecting societies or the legal system, I just have an opinion.
Getting definitive answers to these questions often proves more trouble than it is worth. When you see large companies allowing blatant copyright infringement of mainstream music, such as myspace and youtube, also when illegal peer to peer file sharing is rife on the Internet it makes me think the issue of independent composers exploiting their own rights to generate an income from music is an insignificant one in comparison to the troubles that the larger music industry is currently facing. I am currently 36 and was recently chatting to an 18 year old, who said… “CD’s! I don’t own any CD’s, all my music is in mp3’s downloaded from file sharing sites.” He said it like his actions were perfectly normal; after all, all his mates are doing it too!
I know that some of the PRO’s small print says that rights are assigned, however, I don’t know that many composers understand or care too much for this clause. Also, I would think a PRO prosecuting its own members for direct licensing of their own music would be a very interesting and high profile case.