Reader Response: Royalty Free Music

This blog entry highlights the challenges of using music for media production without finding yourself in copyright or licensing trouble. It first points out that many producers may be confused or mislead about what is allowable use of licensed music or sound effects in a media production. When it comes to music licenses there rarely is a free lunch. This post provides links to a few sites that can provide royalty free/creative commons music and sound effects.

At the radio station music licenses make it very difficult to use what I produce on other mediums. The music we have is licensed to us for one purpose, airplay, and if i want to make a podcast of one of my shows I have to edit out all the stations music and replace it with unlicensed music. but this changes the character of my show as I must avoid fade ins/outs and instrumental music beds. but this process is what has made me familiar with using the IODA promonet system, the network that allowed me to place a downloadable MP3 on my blog. This licensed music is made available to me with the provision that i place a "buy this album" link on my blog.

I sincerely wish I had put more effort into finding non-licensed music for my video projects. if the professor didn't specify i simply used whatever music i liked. but now if I ever want to make a reel I will have to re-edit with new music, or be embarrassed at my unprofessional disregard of music licensing. but there is one problem with using unlicensed music when attempting to create an artistic piece, it is hard to find an unlicensed piece of music that can elicit the same response as a well known billboard track. But if I want to be able to screen my piece outside of my living room then thems are the breaks.