Music Licensing for Content Creators and Distributors
Any popular track that you, as a content creator, might consider using in your own material will have certain copyright limitations. Generally, if you want to use a popular track that’s not yours, you’re going to have to get permission from the owners and administrators of the copyrighted material in that track. This article will help shed some light on what music rights video content creators and distributors must license, who they need to license the rights from, and some key deal terms in the respective license agreement. Since the requirements differ depending on whether you are producing the content or distributing it, these will be addressed separately.
Music Rights Needed for Video Content Creators: Synchronization Licenses and Master Use Licenses
Imagine that you’re putting together a video trailer for your upcoming event and, while searching through your iTunes library, you come across a song that perfectly captures what you had in mind. If you want this track in your video, you’re going to need two different licenses: a synchronization license and a master use license. You’re probably wondering, why do I need two different licenses for a single song? Well, that’s because whenever you listen to recorded music, you’re actually listening to two different copyrighted works: the composition (sometimes referred to as publishing rights) and the sound recording (sometimes referred to as a master recording).
For musical compositions, copyright protects any element of a song that can be written down on sheet music, such as lyrics, melody, rhythm and chords. For sound recordings, copyright protects only the particular recording made in a recording studio (or really anywhere you’re able to record). The musician and songwriter aren’t always one and the same.
A synchronization license, or “sync” license, allows content creators to integrate popular tracks (or less popular tracks for that matter) into video content. These licenses are negotiated directly with the owners of the musical composition. For lesser-known artists, a sync license will generally only set you back a few hundred dollars.
The musical compositions are generally owned by the original songwriter or by the music publishing company that acquires the song from that songwriter. The owners’ contact information typically can be found at the website of any of the three performance-rights organizations (PRO’s): ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. Once there you can search for your desired song and the website will generate a list of all of the song’s owners. With that information in hand, you must individually license each party’s respective share of the song.
After acquiring a sync license, you then need to get a master use license for the sound recording being used in your video content. The sound recordings are almost always owned by record labels, and they will generally license the song to you at the same fee you paid for the sync license. If you’re trying to find the record label for a particular song, Discogs will usually have the information you need to get the master use license. Unlike with sync licenses, with master use licenses you’re most likely only going to have to deal with one party, the record label.
Music Rights Needed for Video Content Distributors: Performance Licenses and Mechanical Licenses
If you are distributing video content over the internet, you will need both a performance license and mechanical license for any compositions contained within that video content. Unlike sync licenses, performance and mechanical licenses only apply to musical compositions, not sound recordings. Digital distribution platforms like YouTube are required to get both performance and mechanical licenses, meaning you don’t have to worry about getting these licenses if you’re distributing video content through them.
Performance licenses are granted by copyright owners to allow others to, you guessed it, “perform” their works to the public. While there are many ways to perform a work, “transmission” is the most prevalent, which includes digital distribution over the internet. While going directly to Cardi B to obtain a performance license for “Bodak Yellow” is technically possible, it is generally easier to get performance licenses from a PRO. PROs provide blanket licenses to licensees, allowing a “music user” (what PROs call their licensees) to use a wide variety of music without having to individually negotiate with the copyright holders. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR are the main PROs in the United States. Each PRO represents different artists, so you should consider getting a license from each PRO in order to cover your bases. Performance license fees are usually calculated on a percentage of revenue basis, with a higher rate charged to services that offer more interactive song-selection features to consumers. So, a non-interactive internet radio app like Pandora pays lower performance license fees than a fully interactive streaming platform like Spotify.
Mechanical licenses allow licensees to “reproduce” copies of musical works. While this traditionally was understood as making copies in the form of CDs, vinyl LPs, and the like, the meaning has broadened to account for modern technological advances. Today, a digital service needs mechanical licenses for “reproducing” musical compositions if (i) the service creates a copy of the song on the user’s hard drive at any point, and (ii) if the service allows users to choose the music to be played in an interactive manner. If your video distribution platform operates like a traditional TV channel, with pre-programmed content not chosen by the viewer, you don’t have to worry about getting a mechanical license. However, if you’re like Spotify or YouTube, and the viewer can choose which videos to play in an interactive manner, you should consider getting mechanical licenses from one of the two main mechanical licensing agencies: Harry Fox Agency or Music Reports.
WHAT IS PRODUCTION MUSIC?
You hear production music every day. It’s the background music for blockbuster movies, trailers, advertising, podcasts, radio and Netflix shows as well as YouTube videos and the games you play. Sometimes called stock music, production music is everywhere, and it’s used by creatives around the world to influence attention, emotion, and add rhythm to a production.
Where does this music come from? It often comes from production music libraries like FirstCom Music that have created the music and own the copyright to it. Our tracks are produced specifically for professional use in creative projects. We own 100% of the rights for all our music which means we can help you avoid takedown notices on Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, and YouTube.
WHY DO YOU NEED A MUSIC LICENSE FOR PRODUCTION?
Most importantly, purchasing a license to sync music in your production ensures that the artists and creators of the music are fairly paid for their work. A production music license to use any of the music available from FirstCom Music also ensures you are not at risk of breaking music copyright laws, your production is eligible for broadcast and you do not risk takedown notices on YouTube or social networks due to copyright infringement.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRODUCTION MUSIC, STOCK MUSIC, AND ROYALTY FREE MUSIC?
There are a lot of different names for music that can be licensed for use in your podcast, YouTube video, or even a blockbuster movie. Different music licensing companies describe what they do using varying terms and it can be difficult to work out exactly what you’re getting. Our expert Music Licensing Executives will always make sure your music sync license fully covers you for every use you need. If you’ve ever wondered how to legally use copyrighted music, then read on as we explain some key terms to help you better understand the sync music licensing landscape.
Stock Music is a general name used to describe music created to be used in productions and videos. While a music score is created for use in a specific production, stock music is created to be usable for a range of projects. Sometimes also called background music, stock music tends to be associated with non-mainstream artists and musicians. However, the best stock music licensing companies and production music libraries work with high-end musicians and even GRAMMY winners. The term stock music does not refer to a particular model of music licensing and is used interchangeably across music sync licensing models.
Royalty-Free Music is a type of music license that allows the licensee to use and reuse an audio track multiple times for a one-off fee. Often inaccurately considered a cheap way of music licensing, royalty-free music can vary in cost considerably depending on the company, the intended type of usage, and the quality of the music. The most important distinction of royalty-free music is that there are no royalty payments due by you when a track is reused. However, royalty-free music can only be used for very specific uses. FirstCom Music does not advertise royalty-free music because some territories and uses may incur public performance royalty fees. We always recommend speaking to a licensing expert about music rights to ensure you are covered and to find out if additional fees may be incurred.
Production music libraries offer a different model of music licensing called Single Use or Needle Drop licenses. These sync licenses apply more specific licensing terms and charge a fee every time a music track is used. Often this can be paid upfront, with the music licensing library helping to draft a music sync license that calculates how many times a music track will be used so it exactly meets your needs. Single-Use music licenses will consider what medium the music will be synced with, whether the production is part of a series containing multiple uses like the opening to a podcast, and what territories the production will be available in.
Unlike royalty-free music licenses which cover you for a wide territory and an unlimited amount of uses, Single Use licenses carefully state how the music can be used. This means you only pay for what you use, and with production music licensing providers like FirstCom Music, you ensure you are 100% covered in the details of your license. In fact, by providing a level of certainty to the company offering the production music license, it is possible to achieve considerable savings from this type of sync license.
Pros and Cons of Royalty-Free Music
Free Is a Great Price
It’s hard to beat free, right? While there are some places on the internet that you can find absolutely free tracks to use, they generally aren’t supposed to be used in commercial productions (and often they may not be super high-quality). With most royalty-free stock music, you’ll pay upfront, usually anything from $50 up to thousands of dollars, depending on the composition. This can still be much cheaper than buying a license for access to a full production music library, especially if you only need a basic track or two, but most top-level libraries also offer higher quality tracks for single-use needle-drop licensing. If you’re sourcing audio for a bigger project that will need dozens of tracks, this can add up really quickly. Did you know that royalty-free music is often only cleared for use in very specific ways? Production music licenses allow you to customize how you use the music, so you know you are covered.
What to Look For in a Licensing Software
The Best Pricing
The first thing that hits everyone’s mind is what it will cost them. In the realm of licensing software, you have 2 choices. Generally, the best music licensing sites will offer options for either outright buying the rights for a single track or they will have some sort of subscription option. The lowest general pricing for outright purchasing lands around $50. With subscriptions, it will vary more.
Your Right of Use
The rights and licenses that you get goes almost hand in hand with the price. Depending on how you plan on using the track, you will need to buy more expensive licensing. The most expensive options generally are for large scale motion pictures. But many of these great sites will offer options for custom licensing. If you are planning on using it for a podcast and Youtube channel, you should not pay the extra fees that you would have to use for an indie film that will be entered in festivals or for public use at live events.
In-Depth Creativity
Many of the best music licensing software companies will try to be as involved as they can without interfering with their artist’s creativity. Many do this by providing in-house mastering for the tracks which they do on the highest standard of DAW’s. If you would like to look more into the best music production software that the pros use, we have a list of them available here.
The Best Variety
When you are looking for that one right track, you may not actually know what it is you are looking for. A general theme I have seen across every platform is the ability to sift through genres and styles to pinpoint what it is you are looking for. If you look for an electronic track, they can pinpoint whether you want purely instrumental or any other aspect.
Understandable Clarity
When you have all of these different options and people to choose from, you need to know what you are getting into. The first thing you have to look at with pricing and rights is how long you have the rights, and when you have a subscription, how long do you need to keep the subscription. Many companies will require a minimum length of time to keep the rights for any songs you have used, otherwise, you break the contract and will lose the rights to the tracks you have already used.
MUSIC LICENSE COMPANIES
YouTube Audio Library
Waaay back in 2013, Youtube released the Audio Library as part of the Creator Studio. At launch, the library included a meager 150 songs — although they all cost nothing to use and were royalty-free.
Today, the Audio Library is still going strong. The main way to sort through the extensive library is to use the Genre, Mood, Instrument, and Duration filters.
(You can also sort by Attribution, because some artists require you to mention them when you use their work.)
YouTube has also added sound effects to the Audio Library, which is a really useful resource. You never know when you’re going to need a good zombie snarl in your video. (Yes, that’s a real option.)
The licensing agreements for songs in the Audio Library are also very permissive. YouTube says you can use them for any creative purpose outside of YouTube, forever.
So if you need music that’s absolutely, positively free, Audio Library is your best bet.
BAM Music
BAM Music is an online licensing company founded in 2007. It offers more than 30 000 tracks for professional and amateur content makers. Its license system is made to be easy to use and includes 4 types of packages. Unlike the previous websites, BAM Music does not offer free music (although you can browse the catalog and download any sound for free). But also unlike those sites, the interface is user-friendly and professional, the service is very qualitative. Moreover, you can get diversified catalogs of music and even change a song to your need. A big thanks to the “stems” audio files. It can be worth investing in licenses if you want to step up your creations.
Marmoset
This company is one that pushes the envelope of creativity. They create some of the most unique sounds to match what you are making yourself. You can see here and here on their website some of the custom tracks they have made for companies like Apple, Cadillac, and even Old Spice (we’ve all laughed at an old spice commercial at some point).
Who’s it for?
- High end
- Custom requests
- One time uses
- Larger companies
- Ranges from $49 – $1000 & up
If you’re wondering, a marmoset is a species of monkey in South and Central America. Marmoset also refers to a music licensing company and music agency in Portland, Oregon. Marmoset bills themselves as having a “roster of rare and emerging independent artists,” which means they’re choosy about who they publish in their audio library. The Marmoset Music platform is simultaneously easy to use and detail-oriented. You can search for songs by Vocals, Mood, Arc, and several other unique filters. If you’re feeling spontaneous, you can try your luck with the algorithm gods and see what you find on Marmoset Radio.
Marmoset breaks their licenses down into specific use cases, like an independent film, crowdfunding, and small business. Each of these licenses has respective pricing and usage rights.
Jingle Punks
The list of amazingly-named music licensing companies continues. Jingle Punks was founded in NYC in 2008 after the founders meet at a Black Keys show. Like Marmoset, this company began as a music agency before developing their own audio library, The Jingle Player.
On their website, Jingle Punks claims to have over 500,000 songs in their catalog, which is a mammoth amount of music. When I demoed the Jingle Player, it included the standard filters like Mood, Duration, and Instrument, which should help with navigating all those songs.
This organization is particularly adept at licensing music to bigger creative organizations, like TV studios. So if you’re an artist, that might be an incentive to submit your music to this platform. Even with that focus licensing music from the Jingle Player is affordable for all types of creators.
Soundstripe
This is probably one of the best options for all-around purposes, primarily for those who stream. The price point is fair and covers you for everything as long as your business has fewer than 50 employees.
Who’s it for?
- YouTube Creators
- Streamers (Twitch/Mixer)
- Churches
- Small businesses
- Film Scoring
- Standard – $11.25/month
- Premium – $21/month
- Business – $66.25/month
Signing up for a membership gets you unlimited access to all of the songs in our audio library.
We care about quality, so we hire music professionals in-house to ensure that all of the stuff in our catalog is top-notch.
Our licensing is structured to be straightforward. Every time you download a song, you get a single-user license. So you can use it on a project for as long as you want — even after you cancel. The interface for our audio library is also designed for usability so you can find the right music faster. We also release themed playlists every month with our best stuff. We’re also releasing add-ons to our platform that make your life easier. We recently launched plugins with Adobe Premiere and Frame.io.
Pond5
Pond5 made their name as a supplier of royalty-free video footage. More recently, they’ve expanded their offerings to include everything from film footage to motion graphics to stock music.
Pond5 advertises their library as having over 900,000 songs, which is just a staggering number of songs. If you need variety in your life, this is the place.
Pond5 offers an extensive number of songs available for a single purchase. So instead of opening a membership, you can drop in, find what you want, and roll.
The UI offers a couple of unique filters, like Price, Public Domain, and Non-P.R.O. tracks, so you can sidestep tracks that require you to pay performance royalties.
The songs you license from Pond5 come with a lot of usage rights. Essentially, you can use anything you download on an unlimited number of projects in perpetuity. Licenses are priced on the number of seats (creators) that use the work and the amount of indemnification.
PremiumBeat
PremiumBeat is owned by Shutterstock, which means it’s part of a larger marketplace, like Pond5 and AudioJungle.
PremiumBeat’s interface offers the standard filters you’ve come to know and love: Genres, Mood, Duration, and Instruments. What’s interesting is the depth you can explore underneath each of these topline categories.
For example, under the Classical genre you sort tracks by 20th Century, Baroque, Classical Period, Romantic Period, and so on. As a gamer, I was intrigued to see their Gaming genre divided into 8-bit, Adventure, and Fantasy.
The point is you can get specific with this audio library. And that’s a good thing. PremiumBeat also offers single song purchases, so you can choose between setting up a membership or just grabbing new tracks when you need them.
PremiumBeat offers two types of licenses: standard and premium. Standard works for web-based, non-commercially distributed content. Premium is for everything else. These licenses are unlimited usage in perpetuity.
AudioJungle
AudioJungle takes a fundamentally different approach to music licensing to many of the other companies on this list.
AudioJungle eschews the classic iTunes motif — where the navigation is on vertical on the left — and instead opts for an ecommerce-esque grid display.
The initial experience also focuses heavily on the artists and the community. In addition to downloading songs, you can engage with other creators on a forum, view artists profiles, or dive into some free tutorials.
AudioJungle still has filters; they just appear on the top navigation rather than on the side. The price for songs seems to vary from $1 to $60. This is linked to how the artist prices their work.
There are five different types of AudioJungle licenses, each of which relates to a different size audience. They are all single-use licenses.
Musicbed
Musicbed boasts a broader set of options to help provide the easiest choice of subscription. They have built specific plans for weddings, businesses, nonprofits, YouTubers, and even have a custom option where you tell them your plans and make a custom quote on the same day.
Who’s it for?
- Filmmakers
- YouTubers
- Instagram Influencers
- Custom service providers (Example: DJs)
- Everyone
- Personal – $9/month
- Non-Profit – $19/month
- Wedding – $59/month
- Business – $89/month
Musicbed was one of the first music licensing companies to market their commitment to quality and they have a reputation for having one of the best audio libraries around. Musicbed also has a polished user experience for search which lets you exclude types of music from your search. It might sound like a simple feature, but it’s not something everyone offers. There are also a lot of playlists that are umbrella categories like Genres, Vibes, and Filmmakers, which are playlists made by filmmakers who use Musicbed.
Musicbed offers one-off song purchases and a subscription membership. Most of the licenses are perpetual use that allow for either one or five uses. There are certain licenses that are termed, which means they have a set time period for usage.
Artlist
This has to be one of the best options for any sort of filmmaker. Music for film and video is very different from regular listening music. It generally hits emotions in a different way and has to be able to do it without vocals.
Who’s it for?
- Film Makers
- Short Video Producers
- YouTubers
- Instagram Influencers
- SFX Sub – $12.41/month
- Music Sub – $16.60/month
- Music & SFX Xub – $25/month
Music Vine
Music Vine is a London based music licensing company that offers monthly subscriptions for access and use of their library. Currently, they hold just over 4300 tracks to choose from.
Who’s it for?
- Low budget creators
- Creators with a small audience
- TikTok users
- Instagram users
- ProLite – $19.99/month
- ProStandard – $35.99/month
Music Vine they are not tracks made by just anyone or of any quality. They have provided quality tracks for leading companies such as Amazon, H&M, Tesla, and many more.
After redesigning their site in 2018, Music Vine unveiled a couple of unique search options for filmmakers.
The first is their Style categories, which categorize music in a way that’s more helpful to filmmakers. Examples include Production Type, Movie Genre, and Footage Style. The second feature is Weighted Tags, which rank the most important characteristics of songs higher in the search. Filmmakers not only get a more comprehensive view of what each song is like, but also get more relevant results. If designing the most powerful filtering system is an arms race, Music Vine has a pretty impressive arsenal. When you download tracks from Music Vine, you build your own license to get the coverage you need. This isn’t totally ad hoc, because every license falls into a certain type of category, like Promotional, Film, Personal, or Wedding.
SoundCloud
If you don’t know, SoundCloud is one of the largest music websites in the world. It has a library of over 200 million songs. By comparison, Spotify has around 35 million.
Lots of artists upload their music directly to SoundCloud for commercial and royalty free use. So if you want variety, you’re going to get it.
In the past few years, Soundcloud has focused on giving creators a suite of new tools that make the music creation and distribution process simpler. Expect this already massive audio library to keep getting bigger.
When musicians upload their work to SoundCloud, they choose which type of license to apply to each track. These are typically some form of Creative Commons, which range from requiring you to credit the artist to giving you complete freedom to use the song.
To find what you’re looking for, you can search for different types of licenses in SoundCloud’s search functionality.
Epidemic Sound
Epidemic Sound has been around since 2009, so they’re part of the old guard of music licensing companies.
That means they’ve had time to create a huge library of songs. And with a huge library comes lot of variety. Epidemic manages to cover a lot of different genres — even stuff outside of the mainstream.
Epidemic’s user experience is set up to encourage single song purchasing, but they do offer tiered subscription models. Each tier is based on how many plays your Youtube channel gets per month. If you’re just getting started, this is a great deal.
Epidemic also has a sizable library of sound effects, which makes this a great resource for creators of all kinds.
