Media Music Blog

Obviously this is my opinion and it is a *little* biased, however, if you don’t want to take my word for it I am sure a little research on your part will convince you.

It is common knowledge that royalty free music is cheaper than conventional licensing; this is true. Unfortunately, royalty free music has also got a stigma for being poor in quality and in my experience a number of industry people that I have spoken to have remarked saying it is pan pipe, lift, test card, on-hold, cheesy music etc. You get the idea.

If this is your opinion I urge you to give it another chance but please keep in mind…

Most composers / artists are talented professionals who like to take pride in their work and only produce quality music. Unfortunately, it seems that some royalty free music sellers devalue music by selling it for peanuts with little or no restriction on its use. I believe this dissuades the better composers from wanting to produce it. The result is that there is an abundance of poor to mediocre music out there for hardly any money.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid anything that is supposedly free, extremely cheap or sold by the bucket load. You will tend to find that this music is possibly illegal, poorly produced, dated in sound and basically naff.

If you were a composer, would you spend valuable time producing something of high quality just for somebody to sell it for a couple of dollars or give it away free? No, I thought not!

The bottom line is, there is a value on the work that has gone into a musical production and if you don’t mind paying a fair price for using it, there are reputable royalty free music providers out there that offer quality music.

There is a new wave of fantastic sounding music that does not bear any resemblance to historically “cheesy” royalty free music. I believe this is due to a new wave of music producers who have access to professional production equipment and software that just a few years ago was only accessible to cash rich recording studios and established composers. Furthermore, the development of broadband connections, cheaper bandwidth, social networking and an increased use of media content online has opened up many new markets for new composers and bands.

Remember, quality is out there and it is affordable, but it needs to be worthwhile for the composer and the website hosting and promoting the music.

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With the growth of online communities like MySpace and the virtual world of Second Life, which has over 1million members and its own economy, it seems that the more sophisticated the online world gets the more complicated the music royalty / copyright situation becomes.

Technology is creating more opportunities for music use and the corporate giants are reacting by suing people and are attempting to apply historical royalty collecting models to technologies that they have little understanding of.

There now seems to be a global epidemic of copyright infringement and we have a generation that think music is free. I personally don’t think the knee jerk reaction of the industry helps; in fact, it further alienates music fans.

It seems that many independent rights owners, composers and artists that use the web are more flexible about when and how their works can be used. I believe movements like Creative Commons may be part of the way forward as this enables the creator to have more control over which rights they reserve, effectively meaning that they can offer limited free usage whilst reserving the right to generate a revenue from their works.

In my opinion, people should be taught the value of music but feel that the heavy handed approach of the mainstream industry is alienating the generation of people that could well be useful in finding a solution. Why did Universal not try and work with MySpace and MySpace users to create a revolutionary new music platform within MySpace?

Furthermore, the myriad of royalty areas and restrictions around music use make it far too complicated for most people to want to understand.

Now that people can play music in Second Life, I do wonder what stance the mainstream industry will take on this. Effectively, you have people playing their own music collection in their virtual houses and bars. There is an obvious performance royalty issue here; people have music playing that other members of the public can hear. What will the industry do? Will they sue every one in Second Life?

You could be playing music privately in your own virtual garden or on the virtual beach and other people could teleport or walk in and be able to hear your music. Technically, you are then hosting a performance.

Is it time yet to rethink copyright and royalty policies on music use?

I am watching this one with interest indeed

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