How to use Production Music
"Production Music" is a term often used to describe music that you can use within in your media project such as a film, game, video, or website, but that was not composed especially for your project. Instead, the music already existed and you simply pick a music track that suits your project. This is also commonly refered to as Stock Music or Royalty-Free music.
However, the Royalty-Free term carries a lot of confusion, and actually, most "Royalty-Free Music" that you can find on the internet is not entirely free of all royalty paying obligations. On this site we share with you some information that everybody should know before starting to use Production Music (Library Music, Stock Music, Royalty-Free Music, Buyout music) in your projects.
What are royalty collection societies?
Most composers are members of one or more royalty collection societies, or Performance Rights Organizations (PRO).
Mechanical rights organizations: These are organizations that oversee the mechanical rights in their composers' music. These organizations collect money from people who physically manufacture items such as CD's and DVD's, that contain their composers' music.
Performance rights organizations: These are organizations that oversee the broadcast and public performance rights in their composers' music. These organizations collect money from people who broadcast or play in public music created by their composers.
When you are browsing the net for royalty-free music / stock music, it's important that you keep track of this, and choose the right music, to avoid surprise invoices from organizations you may not even have heard about.
How to choose
Nearly all composers who offer up their music as Stock Music are not members of any mechanical rights organizations. This means that, in 95% of cases, you can freely duplicate their music on CD's and DVD's without paying any organization any fee for that (Other than the one time music license fee you pay to whoever is selling you the music, of course).
On the ther hand, most composers who offer up their music as Stock Music are members of a performance rights organization. This means that if you want to broadcast their music, you need a license from the performance rights organization (typically ASCAP, BMI, SESAC or PRS).
Now, luckily, most broadcasters already have such a license. Whether it's a small local radio station or a nationwide TV network, these broadcasters already pay an annual blanket license to their performance rights organization. So really, it doesn't cost you anything to use their music, and you won't be receiving any surprise invoice from the performance rights organization. The broadcaster has the license already in place, and all you have to do is to file a cue-sheet with details about the music used in your production -- and the composer will receive a micro-payment, taken from the license money already paid by the broadcaster.
The only time you risk actually having to pay a performance rights organization is if you decide to broadcast the music yourself, or play it in some public venue (sales hall, restaurant, etc.) which doesn't already have a license.
And this is why composers can call their music "royalty free" even though the music is not free of all obligations. It's only in extremely rare circumstances that using their music actually costs you anything, beyond the one-time music license fee that you pay when you buy it as stock music.
Click here to proceed to: Composers and their memberships