From the course: Corporate Video

Licensing options

From the course: Corporate Video

Start my 1-month free trial

Licensing options

“

- Hi, my name's Rich Harrington. - And I'm Robbie Carman. - And welcome to this week's episode of Corporate Video Weekly. We're gonna tackle a topic that really affects a lot of folks and that is music. And I think there's really a lot of misperception when it comes to music and what sort of license you need. - What do you mean? You can't just take a song from iTunes and put it on your video-- - Yeah, 'cause you bought it-- - 'Cause you bought it right? Why can't I use anything I have? - We're gonna give you a crash course on intellectual property here, but actually Rob the attitude you took there is one that I've heard from clients many times, where people feel like they bought something, therefore they own it. - Yeah, and this argument of fair use almost all of the time is a fallacy. Fair use, especially with intellectual property is a very extremely limited thing that you're gonna have to really be knowledgeable about if you're going to claim. - I mean, ask yourself are you an educational institution? Probably not. Are you doing social commentary here or parody? Probably not. - Yeah, and this is where to be honest with you, a lot of people get themselves in trouble. They do this and then it's only months later when somebody sees their video or downloads it off the web or whatever, that then they get in trouble. So after all the work is done, it then becomes a headache later down the road. So, the good news is is that there's really no excuse for this any more, given how good royalty free and licensed music search engines and services are on the Internet. - Yeah, and we're gonna start out this week by showing you a few of our favorites, just talking about some of the different options that you have, and it really comes down to how do you want to pay? Some corporations like to have a fixed fee that they can budget for for the entire year. And other people just want to pay based on a per project use. And even in my own company, we've had both styles. We've had annual agreements before, when we're doing a lot of work, it had a music library in house. And now, we tend to pick and choose from different libraries and just pay a fee as we go. - And that's a really good point, is that there's no one size fits all here, while I might like certain libraries, you might like others, having all of these at your disposal for depending on budget, depending on needs, depending on style, and genre is a good thing to have. One of my favorite options for Royalty-Free Music and Licensed Music is Premium Beat. And users might know Premium Beat because they also have a blog side of their business, where they give tips and tricks. But Premium Beat is a pretty cool tool. And as I said, they allow you to search by genre and mood and all that stuff. And we'll talk about that in another movie. But their basic way of working is that they offer you sort of two different licenses. A standard license and kind of a premium license. And you can actually kind of go ahead and check that out right here under the licensing terms, right? So, a standard license is your content web base. Is it gonna knock the commercially distributed? Things like pet projects, things of that nature. - Yeah, but non-commercially distributed, could that also include like, oh we're using this as an internal video? - Sure. - Yes, we're using it for our business, but we're not selling this at a Target, or making this online available for purchase. - Yeah, one of the big things is like, is this going to be an advertisement on TV? That's not this license, right? Instead, they have the premium license for non-web advertisements, revenue generating things, we're gonna put ads out there with that music, that's where you're gonna need that additional license. - So basically if we're selling the content, or using the content to sell something on a television network, we pay about four times as much. - Right, and the thing here is that don't try to skimper out or skirt around the issue. If you're in that gray zone, then give folks like Premium Beat a call. Drop them an email and say hey, this is what I'm doing. Can you advise me on the right license to use? Cause again, you don't want to be caught after the fact, right? - And this is very similar. Another company that has licenses like this is going to be Pond 5. And there are many other companies offering this, but this is basically the pay for what you eat model. - Right, and here is Pond 5. Pond 5 is very popular on image and stock footage searching over the past couple years. They've gotten into music licensing as well. And a very similar approach. - And one of the things that's a little bit different about Pond 5 compared to the other ones is that Pond 5 is really an artist collective. So the individual musicians, as well as footage creators, can set their own prices. Now they get input, but you will see more price variety here on Pond 5 when you go looking for content. - Yeah, and it also depends whether you're subscribing to some of their other services right, that a standard license, it's gonna be no additional fee. Then, you can step up, to where eventually, you'll get to that full on commercial license where you can use the content for whatever. Another one that's similar that I just started using recently is Soundstripe. - And what's different here is that we are switching to more of a flat rate either per month or per year. So this is another model that's very common, and you're gonna see these and it's the hybrid approach. And so as you take a look at their rates, you'll see that they do offer an annual discount if you subscribe for a whole year. Or they have others. And it really comes down to what do you need? So, an enterprise plan is getting into something like a large business. And so here, most of these companies, where you hear the word enterprise, it means please contact us. Because they assume that you have many locations with multiple creators spread across around the world. - And in this case, it also means custom music, right? So interfacing with getting composers and actual musicians to custom do work for you, which is pretty cool, right? - Yeah, but at 135 dollars for a year, it's a pretty generous license. You just need to make sure you are familiar with the terms of what that means. And this is just a wide range. But sometimes, you have to be careful. There are subscription libraries that are out there for specific segments. For example, this one, Song Freedom, and it sounds great. - 60 bucks, right? 60 bucks a month, or the annual membership breaks down to 60 bucks a month. That seems rather cheap for all you can eat approach, but - This one is designed for musicians, photographers, and cinematographers. So it's specifically for non-corporate use, non-broadcast use. It's designed so people that are making slide shows, and event videos. And what's interesting is, is it actually bridges the hybrid in that, when you go into their library, go ahead and click on songs, for example, you'll see that on top of that, there are major artists available. Like, for example, Jason Mraz. And they just charge you an additional fee to use that song, but it's not for a company to use. If you were using it at a video at an event, probably okay. If you were gonna be using it for something that was broadcast, not okay. So you're gonna wanna dig into those terms of service. - Now regardless of which service you use, just remember that all of these companies will send you a license to use. And we're gonna talk more in depth in the last movie this week about those licenses. But don't ignore that part of things. You can kind of get caught up in finding the music and finding a tune that's gonna fit your project well, licensing and saving that license and having it handy for later use is gonna be something that we need to address. - Absolutely. I have seen this happen first-hand, where clients I have worked with get cease and desist notices for music violations. And they go, well I know we paid for this, but they don't have the proof. And so, it comes down to be able to show. Just like you would save the model releases and the location releases, music releases are a good idea. - Yeah, and there's one last thing I think we should mention here too is that don't forget that the options of buyouts with composers and musicians is a possibility. I know in our facility we work with a couple composers all the time. And basically we made a deal with them. A custom deal that said, hey here's 200 songs from you, can we buy that out at a flat fee that we could use on any project? So, that kind of bespoke deal is often something that is possible too. And especially if you work at a larger company, approaching the composer that you like, for a bespoke kind of deal to custom score your stuff is always a possibility. - Yeah, so it just really depends upon the convenience factor you need. I personally like having a large collection of music that I can browse through. But there have actually been many times in life where we're doing a project in custom music. Something that is unique to our project is worth having. In that case, finding a local composer, where you get the rights and you negotiate a deal is good idea. When we come back, we're gonna talk about search strategies, and some ways to make sense of looking for music. It seems like if you don't have a music background, finding what you want can be a bit difficult. And we're gonna share with you some strategies to make it easier to find the right fit.

Contents