- Tips - Do I need to get the rights to music used in my film?
- Tuesday, June 03, 2008
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We’ve just added a new category to the Blog - “Tips”. There so much information on the net, that we thought it would be useful to collate some relevant information into short Tips on music making, video creation and mobile devices. The first tip we thought we would deal with is the question of video soundtracks and their usage.
Do I need to get the rights to music used in my film if I’m not charging people to view it?
Often people feel that if you are not a pro-filmmaker or releasing a video commercially that music copyright doesn’t really apply to them. Don’t get us wrong, I think we’ve all used a track we’ve loved on a video and put it online to share. The fact is that this is actually illegal. Although YouTube is often pretty slow to remove videos with copyrighted soundtracks, if you are creating a video to share online, especially if you are representing a company or organisation, you should be using soundtracks that you have the rights to.
Benjamin Craig from filmaking.net has written a very informative article on this issue:
“Copyright law prevents distribution and public performance of protected works, regardless of whether money changes hands or not. It’s the public performance aspect, not the money which causes problems with copyright.
If you do not hold the necessary rights for music (or any other copyright material) used in your film, then you cannot show it to anyone in a public environment. This includes standard types of exhibition (theatrical, television etc), and also includes public performance such as showing your film in festivals, schools, pubs, prisons, the town square, on airplanes, and of course on the Internet.”
I think what really puts people off is the price of stock music and royalty-free music. We’ve recently teamed up with Wavtracks to compile a large selection of royalty-free full-length tracks that can be used anywhere and as often as you like. So whether you are looking for a soundtrack to use commercially in an web/tv/radio advertisement, web soundtrack, podcast intro, company training video etc. or simply for videos to share online, you can find the music type to suit your needs.
We were also very aware that different users need stock music tracks for very different purposes - maybe you just need a short clip for an intro - so each track is available as 30 second edit, 1 minute edit or as a full track. Starting at US$12.99 this is amazing value when you consider that this track is now part of your stock music library and can be used now and anytime in the future, however and whenever necessary.
Any musician is free to contribute to our library - all you need is unique tracks and a willingness to share. Please see the ‘Work with Us’ section for more information.
We currently have full-length tracks in the genres: Country, Modern Pop/Rock, Punk, Hard Rock & Metal, World Music and Classic Rock. We’re always looking to expand our library, so let us know what other genres you’d like to see
Previous Comments
Oops in regards to the post I just made the other programs need to work with TrakAx of course… O,o :p
If you folks could also make or suggest Free or open source sound generation software or software versions (free of course) of mixers, turntables, intraments, orchestras, and the like… I can aussure you combined with this type of thing we could make a ton of music to share for free.
For me being unable to hardly afford being online I can not afford even the low anf fair prices of the music found here… O,o Sad I am…
But, my idea is to make a full sound studio/engineering program all free as high quality as TrakAx to rival the best paid for programs for those if us who just can not afford even $10.00 for things at times… For me being fully disabled means I can not afford buying much. I can afford making original music and sharing it with everyone for free though.