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production music
Music has value. It connects with us on a variety of levels…sometimes very deeply (either the lyrics, the music or both), whereas other times there’s just a great groove that has us tapping our toes and swaying with the beat. It’s a significant component at parties, as an introduction to various events and is considered by many to be an essential element in “the art of seduction”.
But, for the most part, music comes with a price tag as well. Setting aside the willingness of the current generation to steal music “because they can”, music is also desired and needed for other purposes as well. With the popularity of online video services such as YouTube for both entertainment and commercial promotion, there are lots of people who have never before created a video presentation doing just that…incorporating production music. Companies have been doing this sort of thing for many years, so they may be more well-versed in the legal requirements of music usage than most, but even they sometimes struggle to figure out what they can use, where they can find it, etc.
Years ago, recognizing the power of music, broadcast networks employed entire orchestras to provide music for radio and TV shows. Just imagine the expense of employing, say, 40 live musicians full-time such a purpose. And yet, there weren’t many good options available at the time. Technology has, of course, changed that…to the place where live musicians are only rarely employed by others these days. Most of those that make their living in music either employ themselves and try to manage their careers as bar bands playing cover versions of successful songs by others, or as recording artists who create their own music, and have albums and concert tours as part of their product mix.
Royalty Free Production Music
Royalty free music seems to have appeared in the 1970s-80s. One of the first professional libraries was Network Music, who would place a number of LPs in professional recording studios and would either charge a needledrop fee of $50-300 per use of a specific track from the album (depending on whether the commercial advertisement was local, regional or national…and how long it would run) or a blanket license of several thousand dollars per year to use any of their material.
This system worked fairly well for a number of years, except that as more and more folks got into the broadcast commercial and video production fields, competition over price margins made it hard to lay out as much money for production music. It was at this point that the buyout music library made its entry into the market. These individual albums (and CDs were just entering the market as “an option” as well for those that owned players) were generally available for between $80 and $200 per volume. They functioned in a similar way to the original “blanket license”, except that you only paid one time to purchase them, rather than annually.
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Royalty-free music is an excellent option for those hoping to satisfy professional needs and communicate high standards to clients and audiences without breaking the budget. It differs from commercial music in that, in most cases, a person can use the royalty free music in a production without paying royalty fees to the copyright holder. There are dozens of royalty free music web sites on the Internet, providing access to high quality, downloadable audio files…but “royalty free” does not usually mean “free of all costs”. There’s almost always a cost associated with purchase of tracks or volumes of tracks.
Production music is commonly used by literally every type of business as music-on-hold for telephone systems. Music-on-hold can be called into action throughout the day as phone calls are channeled to the appropriate people in any other business that relies on phone support. Royalty free music is a type of music in which there are no on-going fees or royalties to be paid to the seller of the music or the artists that created it, and, is thus copyright free music. This does not mean that there are no copyright restrictions…rather that individuals pay to satisfy all copyright demands up-front, as part of the purcahse agreement.
Royalty Free Music is by far the easiest and most cost effective means of incorporating copywritten music into any audio/visual project or presentation. It is widely used by webmasters, multimedia developers, corporate and audio/video professionals in many diverse applications.
Royalty free music is more necessary now than ever before. In the past, everyone from educators to independent filmmakers, low-budget commercial producers to power point presenters could get away with using music they hadn’t bought. Royalty free music is a flexible alternative to purchasing the rights to use music from larger mainstream music companies such as BMI and ASCAP because it involves just a one-time fee for unlimited lifetime use of the music purchased, allowing you to build sizable collections of music that you can use in not only current projects but many in the future. But how do you find the right music for components of your business that require very specific or non-traditional accompaniment? Royalty free music is getting better these days as musicians are more open to the idea of composing music for this use. The market for this kind of music will grow very soon as more applications are invented that will require this licensing format.
Royalty-Free Production Music (aka “Buyout Music”)
Buyout music is synonymous with royalty free music, and simply describes a type of music that offers an up-front price for use with no on-going monthly payments; professionals “buy out” the royalty payments all at once for the music selections they want instead of paying each time they use it or on a monthly basis. More of these professionals are choosing to employ royalty free music to use as production music in their many projects to cut costs without compromising the quality they deserve and expect. Buyout music isn’t copyright-free, but by paying a small fee, you gain a royalty-free license to use the music in your production. There’s a lot of buyout music out there, most of it available in bulk: you buy a CD, or set of CDs, and all of the music on it is yours to use.
Buyout music is production music that can be licensed for a one-time, flat fee. This royalty-free production music can be synchronized with any type of production, including broadcast, corporate/internal, or film. Buyout music is an essential tool for multimedia developers and can serve as an affordable solution without compromising on quality. Buyout music is a huge category for the video producer. A quick Google search for the phrase “buyout music” will yield over a million relevant web pages!
Read the other articles on this site for more info about commercial music licensing.
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production music
This lower-profit alternative known as “buyout music”, as it developed, often drew second-class composers and producers…resulting in a rather poor reputation for buyout music. But there were exceptions, and a certain competitive pressure caused many who had previously used traditional “needledrop” and “blanket” libraries to hunt for the better-quality buyout libraries as backup options. Over time, more and more quality composers were drawn to this field, and with the creation of MIDI technology and its ability to automate certain aspects of music production…single composers/producers found that they were able to create complete music scores by themselves…further tightening the margins and allowing profits to be made at lower price points.
Since it has to cover a wider-range of usage than songs composed for other purposes, royalty-free music is generally less complex and less engaging than popular music. And yet, the music is rarely “the star of the show”, as it’s often used underneath a professional narration and location audio. Thus, some producers play on this strength and create separate tracks called “underscores”, which have the lead instruments stripped out of the tracks.
Evolution in the Field of Royalty-Free Production Music
In the 1980s-1990s, synths gave way to samples, as technology allowed more instruments to be “sampled” digitally and recreated on desktop audio workstations. Instead of “faux” instruments such as drums, bass and piano, it became more and more difficult to distinguish live instruments from their sample counterparts. It’s gotten so good now that artists are recording albums featuring single digitally-sampled instruments…even very complex instruments such as pianos.
For small production houses, production music libraries in the form of an in-house CD library or an online library of downloadable tracks are the preferred choice.