Royalty Free Music: Everything you need to know about it. Learn where to find music that you can use for your videos, presentations, television and films.
What Is It?
Basically, Royalty Free means you pay for the music once, and then use it as per your convenience.
However, when music or films are broadcast, artists receive a collection fees (paid by the various societies).
The main job of these societies is to collect money from public broadcasters such as TV channels or radio stations, and pay it to the creators/composers.
These are the broadcast rights and are very important for the artists.
So please always be fair and always fill the broadcast cue sheet when you buy a royalty free music or a royalty free song to add to your video. This is the only way for artists to be substantially paid for their work. It doesn’t cost you any money.
In Nutshell
If you give the broadcaster all the relevant information of your product (name of the song, name of the author, composer, performers…), they can then inform the collection rights society whenever any money is due to the original artist.
So, to put it in a nutshell:
“If you broadcast locally, the royalty free concept works (you buy once, no extra charges), but if you broadcast nationally or internationally you will have to declare the artist on the cue sheet.”
Non Exclusive Licence
Another thing to keep in mind is that, if you intend to commercially use the audio content of an artist, in most cases you will need a licence that’ll indicate that you’ve bought the rights.
Thirdly, most of the royalty free audio content is sold with a non exclusive licence. That means you will not be the only one who can use the audio content. That’s the main reason why royalty free audio contents are cheap in comparison to dedicated audio material.
Replication Rights
There’s another fee that you may have to pay depending on how many copies of the product your create – known as replication rights.
On every copy of your product, a small percentage is given to the artist. However, most royalty free societies may also charge you if you create more than 1000 copies of the product.
Here’s a video that talks about What is Royalty Free Music and Where to Find it:
KeytarHQ editorial team includes musicians who write and review products for pianists, keyboardists, guitarists & other musicians. KeytarHQ is the best online resource for information on keyboards, pianos, synths, keytars, guitars and music gear for musicians of all abilities, ages and interests.
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