Electronic Music Library’s Blog

Larry Ferlazzo’s article on Royalty Free Music & Sound Effect Sources raised a couple of thoughts on hunting out the best royalty free music I have.

The first is that the term ‘royalty free’ is something that we assume means the same to everyone. But it may not be the case. You need to check the terms to be really sure they meet your needs.

Consider the following:

Do the terms actually say you can use the music in your DVD? OK that’s the easy part. Next is the term; will the agreement last as long as you plan to sell the DVD? or will, say in ten years time your back catalogue of productions require trashing?

Then how about territory? ha.. the tough one. Does your royalty free music agreement allow you to distribute into the counties or regions that you want to or is it just a national agreement?

What about broadcasting rights? will your agreement ensure that you and your broadcasters not need to pay additional performing royalties? odd that it may sound but you need to be sure of this otherwise there will be additional costs. Some royalty free offers actually require cue sheets and payments to the artist’s performing rights society.

In addition, the type of broadcast network may be of interest. Some differ between national broadcasting, free broadcasting, paid / subscription broadcasting and sometimes more. The logic for this is around the value of the piece of music in the market and how much money is usually sloshing around in that market.

My intent here is not to specifically promote blanket licenses. Whilst they may seem to make terms that explicitly list so many uses look complicated, by not explicity listing your use, you may still be 100% clear you are covered and have the rights to use the music.

So! always check the terms! I know it can be boring but once you have seen a few of them you will start to recognize the common areas and also where they differ.

Good luck!!

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