Free Music, Not Quite…

In an interesting new article written by Mark Montgomery, he explains the situations of royalty-free music for those of us looking into adding new libraries of music to your array. In “Royalty Free Music Tips” he explains that royalty-free is not free at all. Although the name sounds convincing, the big difference is how you pay! If you were a producer looking to get more music or sound affects to use for your next production, then you would simply make a meeting with a business that makes what is right for you.

Whether that be thrilling music for a horror music, or an orchestra and silly sound affects for a cartoon, the first choice to make is how much money do I have to spend and what genre of music do I need to purchase. Royalty-free music does not run cheap at the start, but pays itself off over time. It works by creating a contract with the music producer of choice, then for the music you have chosen to buy and instead of giving that company a cut of the profit from each DVD or CD that you sell, instead you create an upfront flat rate payment. In doing this, you pay a lump some in order to be able to sell your product more cheaply and faster, while taking in more profit.

Of course when you choose a company to buy from, there are many options you can choose that can augment your works. Some companies layer their sound tracks and music, so that when you need want to draw out the fox horn in a piece of orchestra music, you can do so without messing with every other volume of music and without the use of cumbersome effects. Also in buying large packages, you usually get many sound affects, pieces of music and miscellaneous items. Each of which can be used to help a piece make that step up into greatness.

Finally he important part in royalty-free music is legalese and organization. Keeping to a contract can be important, as many people are sue happy and if you do not follow rules and regulations set down at the beginning of the contract, you can find yourself in a pickle and deep in debt. Lastly Organization is key, as you increase you stock of sound libraries, one should learn to, or hire someone to keep the music and sound effects in an order to allow easy use and transferal of the material, this will make your next editing session run much more smoothly.