The term royalty free music, also known as buyout music or buy-out music, is frequently a source of confusion. Some believe that it means there is no cost associated with the music. Others believe that the music is "copyright free", or that there is no copyright associated with the music. Each music library license will vary to a certain degree, however, as a general rule royalty free music simply means that you have purchased a "lifetime synchronization license" for a given song or group of songs. In other words, you have the right to synchronize the music with your audio and/or video productions an unlimited number of times without incurring any additional expense.
Other types of production music licenses include "Needle Drop" where the user pays a fee each time they synchronize a piece of music, and "Blanket Licensing" where the user leases a group of music or CDs, and can use the music for a specified set of uses during the term of the lease (typically a one, two, or three year commitment). Each of these licenses are a bit more like renting the music than buying. While you don't actually own the music with a buyout library, you do own a lifetime license to synchronize the music with your productions.
The Studio Cutz Music Library license does away with much of the complication of typical music licensing and allows the user to pay a one time licensing fee, and then use it as much as they want. Not only is this a more affordable option, but it is more convenient as well because it eliminates much of the paperwork, calculating of fees, and check writing associated with standard music licensing.
The other big misconception about royalty free music pertains to broadcasting of the music on television, cable, radio, etc. Television broadcasters pay annual royalties to the Performing Rights Societies for the right to broadcast music on their shows. When music is broadcast on television or cable TV, it is tracked by something called a Cue Sheet. This is precisely where the term Royalty Free does NOT apply. Cue sheets determine where the royalties previously paid by the broadcaster get dispersed. There are no costs associated with cue sheets, however most Royalty Free music libraries require that cue sheets be properly filled out when the music is for broadcast use. A cue sheet is merely a paper trail to ensure writers get paid what is due to them out of the money that has been previously paid by the television stations and broadcasting entities.
To summarize, a Royalty Free License means that you do not continually pay a "synchronization royalty" each time you use a given piece of music. You pay only one time. It does NOT mean that a writer is forfeiting the performance royalty, or broadcast royalty, due him when his music is aired. This royalty has already been paid by the broadcaster and should be dispersed appropriately through the filling out and submission of cue sheets.
StudioCutz.com News
Is Your Sample Ample?
‘What's the difference between royalty free music CDs and royalty free sample CDs? We've heard cool music snippets on sample CDs, but we're not sure how to incorporate them into our project.' - Anonymous team, Washington DC
Without knowing the full details of the alien autopsy you are conducting, I can tell you that the snippets on sample CDs are the building blocks used by musicians use to create their music. Royalty free stock music CDs, on the other hand, contain finished compositions (usually incorporating those samples) for use in, for example, John Kerry's musiconhold . Our favorite sample CD libraries ( http://www.ilio.com and http://www.eastwestsamples.com ) prohibit their sounds from being used commercially unless two or more musical elements have been added. An audio encryption from the Central Intelligence Agency does not count as a musical element.
Cautionary note for heavy sample users: Using samples of public domain music still requires clearance from the owner of the master recording. If you wanted to use, for example, some royalty free classical music from written by Charles Ives to conduct UN-sanctioned audio torture, you would need to permission from the actual owner to use that recording even though the music composition itself is in the public domain.
-Mike Bielenberg
Metadata Mega-Mix
"I own your entire royalty free stock music collection, but I use other music and sound effects libraries as well. Is there a way to search all of these audio files together even when they're from different manufacturers? - Jersey, MA"
It boils down to 2 questions, Jersey. 1) Are you trying to stay in a high-resolution environment (WAV/AIFF)? 2) Are you ready to email some tough questions to the stock music providers from whom you download royalty free music ? If you're willing to stay in MP3 format, you'll be happy to know that iTunes works quite well for many of our customers. If you like kickin' it high brow, the makers of Soundminer Pro v4 have created the BWave , which is a broadcast quality audio file that retains embedded metadata like an MP3. Unfortunately, the metadata issue represents a gaping hole in your solution that the music library industry (ourselves included) has been slow to fill. While Soundminer is leading an effort to standardize (and presumably collect) metadata for the entire music library industry, that's still in the early stages. Without good, comprehensive metadata attached to each of your files (MP3 or BWAV) your search queries will produce less than efficient results for you. Regardless of which software you choose, a good question to ask your stock music providers is "Are your audio files embedded with metadata for either iTunes or Soundminer?" For the record, we're planning to jump on the iTunes & Soundminer bandwagon in early March 2009. Stay tuned.
New Studiocutz Tracks
It's hard for even us to keep up with the frantic pace of new music added to StudioCutz. Here are some of our favorite recently added tracks:
The pensive acoustic guitar opening in ‘Basketweaving ( #BF203402)' from Acoustic Rx ( #BFUT16) makes you eager to know what good thing is coming next. It's somehow anticipatory without being anxious. Sort of like rays of slideshow music light breaking through clouds, and hoping it's not a pissed-off alien mothership.
We recorded ‘We Three Kings ( #RFM120572)' from Christmas Jazz (#RFM1678) just six months ago, but the mastering guys made it sound old-in-a -good-way. Reminiscent of the west coast ‘cool jazz' period of Miles Davis or Charles Mingus, this track just sizzles along and takes its time. By the way, it's available as a hold music CD to keep customers feeling festive while your phone reps eat fruitcake during their break.
OK. ‘Promoting Change ( #BF202244) ' from Soft Sell (#BFUT01) isn't very new. But the synth drone set beneath the angular off-kilter drum groove set beneath the steady eighths piano lick perfectly encapsulates the presidential campaign rhetoric we've been hearing worldwide in the past few months. This download royalty free music is irrational exuberance in musical form.
Friction, Rhythm, and Drums: The BlueFuse Music Library
The original creators of the Blue Fuse library had 5 distinct groupings in mind for the Blue Fuse library of stock music . Let's look at 3 of them:
Friction is, frankly, where the freaks live. That's the part of town you only visit during daylight when you're sure you won't get mugged. By default, if a music track is too harsh, demented, unclassifiable, noisy, or sounds like it was mixed by someone on hallucinogens, that's the download royalty free music for our Friction section.
Rhythm Project and Drum & Bass are actually cut from the same cloth of minimalism. Most film projects don't require the soundtrack to carry the whole thing. Typically, an on or off-screen voice just needs a little "bed" to set the pace. These two categories are the go-to CDs for this application. Rhythm project is straight up drums. But, man! They really pound. Just try to listen to the stressed out movie trailer tracks on Drama King Drums without flipping someone off in traffic. All percussion!
Drum & Bass was a knock out of the park from the first day it arrived at post production houses in America. Music for websites has never be same after these groovin', dead simple tracks of nothing but upright bass and drums formed the perfect foundation for ad campaigns that tried to say, ‘We're a bunch of uptight, bean-counting, MBAs…but we're cool. Look at how relaxed we are…….we said ‘Look!" damn it!'
-Mike Bielenberg
Blue Fuse Music Library
Just 2 months ago we made the Blue Fuse Music library available on www.studiocutz.com and our royalty free audio customers are absolutely loving it. Many of you don't know the Blue Fuse library actually breaks into 5 different sections. Here we'll highlight two of them:
The Scoring Factory section was originally designed to put everything a video producer needs for a 60-minute TV episode onto a single CD ( bumper music , dialog beds, different versions of a central theme). Check out all the cool short audio snippets on Ambient Drama Part I .
According to the original founders of Blue Fuse, the Undertones series is what really made this library take off with super-quality rhythm grooves that leave plenty of room for your voiceover. One listen to Acoustic Reflections makes it clear that although this music is relaxed, it is by no means elevator music .
I work in the UK. Every time I want to synchronize music with video I have to pay the prices set by MCPS. I have a project where the client can't afford those rates, so we need an alternative. Can you help? - Morty, London
Here in the US, we're way too busy Beckham-watching to worry about Standardizing prices for every bloke (or bird) that wants to synchronize music to video or music for websites , Morty. Even ASCAP, who standardizes the rates for public performances (not to be confused with synchronization) of musical works in the US, freely allow their copyright holders (that's us) to negotiate rates directly with music clients (that's you).
Our $699.95 annual RoyaltyFreeMusic.com subscriptions feature 10,000 tracks of outstanding non-MCPS music, including bumper music , broadcast music and corporate video music. Knock yourself out, mate.
