Royalty Free Music - Empowering Individual Earnings

The benefits of using royalty free music in a media production run far and wide. There is no necessity to report to a Performance Rights agency, the licenses are generally more straightforward, less costly, and more expeditious to procure. So why hasn’t royalty free music taken a stronger grasp in the advertising realm? While the current system in place seeks to keep price structures delineated by usage type – ie a big company pays big company, a smaller one pays smaller money for the same track and similar types of usage. However more and more royalty free music libraries and composers are bridging the gap between small and big budget media productions.

In this regard, more individuals are winning out, while major labels and publishers are absorbing the loss. While there are myriad employees at major labels and publishing houses, one could easily argue that breaking down the price structure and having the revenue flow more directly to the individual is a more efficient system. I tend to agree. Massive corporations and bureaucracies have had their day, and it is time for the little people, and the little companies, to rise up and take a hold of our country's economic future. Nowhere is this ideology more prevalent and active than in the royalty free music market.

Composers can upload their tracks directly to multiple library companies online non exclusively. Many libraries have the option to fill in performance rights organization information for each track, so while the music is technically “royalty free” they might still benefit from a larger scale user filling out the necessary cue sheets on a commercial production. But for the most part, royalty free is exactly that- the user pays a flat fee, and can use the track in a single use case as outlined by that libraries standard license.

What this means is that a savvy advertising agency music supervisor could find the tracks they need for mere fractions of their normal supervision costs. On top of that, consider how much time this music supervisor will save by not having to make endless calls and emails back and forth trying to negotiate a decent rate on the major label work they want to use? The increased efficiencies abound, there is hardly any reason to not be using royalty free music if you work in media production.

So what are the rare cases where royalty free music simply can’t do the job? There is really only one- and that is when a client will settle for nothing but an existing hit song that they already have in mind. But otherwise, there are songs of all genres, with and without vocal content, and about every subject matter imaginable available somewhere in a royalty free music catalog. You should try it out next time you are supervising music for your project, and save your self tons of time, money and headache. There are plenty of great libraries and resources online. Just use your favorite search engine to find some suitable libraries for your needs.