ROYALTY FREE: MUSIC YOU CAN USE

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 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.