What is music
licensing?
When you
buy a song from iTunes you're buying the right to listen to that song for your
own personal use. As soon as you are using that song publicly in your
media (from a home video posted on YouTube to a feature film in theaters), you
have to buy a license. A
“synchronized license” is an upfront fee, paid for the right to use a piece of
music in a video for public exhibition. If you do not properly obtain a license, you risk a
major lawsuit.
License
fees are different from royalties. Artists get royalties from television and
radio play. TV and radio stations pay a yearly fee to the Performance Right
Organizations (PRO’s). When a song is placed in a project and is aired, the
artist receives royalties from their PRO company. Royalties are collected
whether or not there is a license fee paid, and regardless of what that fee is.
Generally, you will never have to worry about this unless you are a TV or radio
station. You (the film maker) is responsible for paying the license fee.
So you want some music in your awesome
video. There are a
couple ways to obtain a license – contact the artist directly, or go through
their representative (usually a record company or a music library) and pay them
to use their music. Sometimes the
fee is negotiated, sometimes it’s a set rate. Usually different rates apply to different uses – a national
TV commercial will command a much higher license fee than a local radio spot.
Sometimes
music libraries charge you “needle drop” fees, which is a fee for every use
within a single video, even if you only use 10 seconds of a 2-minute song at 3
different places in your project. Say it’s $100 for every needle drop, if you
drop the needle 5 times within your project, you will have to pay $500.
With
most companies, the license you buy also has an expiration date. So, if your
project is still public in any way after that license has expired, you have to
renew it.
Most music
libraries offer “blanket licenses” which means using unlimited amounts of music
in one production for a flat fee. As you can see, fee structures can get very
complicated very fast. So make sure you know all of the details before
licensing music from an artist or music library.
What does Royalty free music
library mean? Generally, you
only have to pay one upfront license fee to use their music. In other words,
you pay once for unlimited uses, in as many projects as you wish. “Royalty
free” is actually a misnomer; PRO companies are required by law to pay
royalties to their artists from placements on radio and television. But you as
the user never have to pay those royalties. So “royalty free music library”
should really be something like an unlimited or perpetual license library.
So does that mean you can’t use your favorite Beatles song in your wedding
video? yes! Unless you want to pay $50k to $100k for a license. That
said there are many ways to find great music for your videos. You may not be
able to use the Beatles, but there are a lot of great independent artists out
there who have their music with music libraries.
What
about songs that are in the public domain - I can surely use those, right? No! The song may be in the public
domain, but the recording is considered property of the artist, therefore you
must obtain a license from the artist who has recorded the piece. So you can’t
just use your favorite Mozart concerto unless you obtain a license from the
recording artist or their representative.
What happens if
I use music without a license?
Don’t even risk it, a fine
can be as little as $150,000. Yes, people are getting sued. For example, here's
a story of a wedding videographer being sued because one of his videos went
viral. Eventually he had to settle for tens of thousands of dollars. Link to
the article HERE.
Google
is cracking down on videos posted with unlicensed music, which is a good thing
because it supports artists. SESAC is working on thumb printing, which
digitally tracks every piece of music they have, making it even harder to use
music illegally. What does that mean? Soon, no matter what piece of music you
use (no matter how you cut and alter it), it will be tracked as soon as you
make it public.
Final
note: artists have no money. *The average musician makes 35k per year without
benefits. *In fact the amount of professional musicians have fallen by 25%
since 2000. *Recorded music revenue has fallen 64% since 1999. This is directly
caused from illegally downloaded and licensed music. You want artists to
continue creating great music, right? My advice, just pay the license fee,
you’re supporting artists, which is a good thing.
Need to license
music? Have a tight budget? Want good music?
Check us out: Playtunes Music
