Huh? Royalty-free? What does THAT mean?

I recently had someone ask what the big deal was about "royalty-free" music, and exactly what that meant.

In this post, a bit of background (disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, so this isn't legal advice). This may sound a bit idealistic, but here goes anyway:

Copyright law basically says that the creator of a work owns it - and he can then rent it out, sell it outright, give it away, etc - but only the OWNER of a work can do that. (I know - lots of people out there who believe otherwise, but they are wrong). The advantage is that creators of works (music, art, etc) potentially benefit financially. The more money you make in your art, the more motivated you are to create more - it's the basis of capitalism.

Another right granted by the lawmakers is something called "public performance" - i.e. the writer has the right to be paid everytime there is a public performance of their work. A public performance takes place anytime the work is played at all - whether streamed off the internet, played off a CD, played on the radio or satellite radio, etc. So officially anytime you use a piece of music you owe somebody some money.

There are several types of library music available, in terms of licenses:

• A "needle drop" license means you fill out a form and send some money everytime you use a track. This can obviously be a real hassle when you run a government access or cable access channel and need background music 24x7.


• "Royalty Free" music means that you buy a permanent license to play the music whenever and wherever you need it (depending on the license you agree to when purchasing the music. Some of the licenses restrict what you can do). Note that you can't do absolutely anything with that music - you just don't have to pay a usage fee everytime you use the track. This type of license can about in reaction to the "needle drop" licenses. Traditionally,royalty-free tracks were of a lower quality (in terms of the music and/or the audio quality). This is not as true anymore.


• There are some hybrid licenses out there. For example, some companies make their music royalty free for certain uses, but require a different license if the track will be used in broadcast media. This is not an evil thing - just a business decision. It is something you need to watch for when purchasing library music.

Website news

We are getting closer to launching the site. Behind the scenes a shopping cart has been installed and wea re working on making it fully functional. At the start we'll be using PayPal to process payments, and the files will be available for immediate download.

Later we'll be adding the ability to order CDs with custom designed playlists - the idea being you just pop the CD into your player and you've got a well designed set of music to go behind your cable access/government access cable channel.

More details as they become available.

Also coming "real soon now" - a free demo track of some of the music that will be available.