I have noticed a number of people on Twitter referring to royalty free music as “crappy” and “cheesy” and given Twitter’s 140 characters, it is near impossible to respond in any detail, so here is my response. I hope that you will get involved and add your point of view.
Reason #1 – More demand for music, low cost studio equipment and more websites
Once upon a time royalty free music did not exist, however, with a demand for lower cost music an industry was born. Initially, the industry was made up of a few traders who appeared in the late 90’s. Musical studio equipment was still a little costly as was web development and the barrier to entry was fairly high. Moving on 10 years, equipment is now relatively cheap and web development low cost and even free if you know where to look. This has resulted in a surge of royalty free music sites and wannabe soundtrack composers. With no regulatory body, the quality ranges from fantastic right down to ‘crappy’.
Reason #2 – User-generated content with no quality control
There is a new breed of royalty free music website that utilises user-generated content. This is content uploaded by the composer (well, hopefully it is the composer). Anyone can open an account, agree to the T&C’s and upload as many tracks as they want. Regardless of your opinion on this, I think it is fair to say that this has resulted in more royalty free music being online than ever before in history. Or should I say, more royalty free music that has not been checked for quality, and more music whose origin has not been verified. The result is that you have more music to listen to but much more substandard quality to sift through.
Reason #3 – The demand for cheap and free music devalues talent
As user-generated content does not involve large staffing costs by the website owner, the music sellers can charge much less and still make a profit. The composer is doing all of the work by uploading the music and as there is no quality control in place, it is a huge cost saving for the website owner. Professional ears cost money to have around, whereas the software that enables user-generated content works for free after the initial cost of development. The result is that these low cost websites sell music at such a low price that it is hardly worth any professional composer spending time composing brilliant sounding music for these sites. You end up with many hobbyist composers providing second rate music. There is a lot of this around… as you all keep telling me 
Reason #4 – The best music does not necessarily live on page one of the search results
Now, businesses with staff and overheads who spend time quality-checking music have to charge a little bit more per license and although these types of libraries have a better stock of music they do not necessarily come out top of the search results. Unfortunately, search engine algorithms can not determine the quality of music. For this reason, with the exception of well established quality sites, some of the ‘not-so-good’ stock music websites achieve higher positions based on the pure volume of their user-generated catalogue and their efforts on search engine marketing.
Reason #5 – Users do not realise how much work goes into creating a piece of music
OK, I know some people may disagree with me here, but I don’t think that most people realise how much energy, time and commitment goes into composing and producing music. This type of real talent is more than learning the basic skills; it can be a way of life that takes years to master. Not only do composers write the music from scratch, they spend many hours recording, mixing, editing and mastering. I started out as a musician / composer and for me, a decent track could take anything form 10 days to a month to perfect.
Imagine working that hard and then receiving a small percentage of a small music license fee. The truth is that any royalty free music track needs to be sold many times before a composer even recoups the time involved in creating it.
In conclusion, if you want top quality, vetted, safe royalty free music then you need to support the composers who write good compositions and unfortunately, this often requires paying a little more for your music. Also, you need to support reputable royalty free music libraries who value their composers talents and try to get a reasonable payment for their composers music.
These composers are typically earning a living from their music and not living a luxury lifestyle. Likewise, the reputable music libraries who support their composers are often owned by composers themselves. If the trend for really low cost music continues, I fear that you will continue to spend hours and hours trawling through low quality music.
Reputable royalty free music libraries are the lifeline of the royalty free music industry and the composers it supports. If you are getting your music for free or at a very low cost, then there is a high chance that the composer is not being fairly paid. Independent composers need to be supported just like your village shops, traditional pubs, family run restaurant…you get the picture. If you don’t use them the big low cost hypermarkets will close in and unfortunately, talented independent composers will lose out.
Please support and feel good about…
- A fair price for royalty free music ($25 or more per track)
- A fair percentage to the composer (50% in our case)
- Supporting independent quality royalty free music libraries
- Being loyal to your source and spreading the message
I would like to hear your views and ideas in the comment boxes. Also, please retweet, bookmark or digg this post and let’s get a good cross section of views in the discussion.
Related posts:
- Stock Music at Stock Photography Prices!… What?
- Royalty Free Music – What is it, how does it work & what are its issues?
- Understanding Royalty Free Music: Music in the Ears of the Public
- Royalty Free Music and Quality Issues
- Understanding Royalty Free Music: A Slice of Royalty Pie
© 2010 Media Music Now. For content re-use, please refer to Using Our Blog Content
This Blog is provided by Media Music Now, a supplier of quality Royalty Free Music, Voice Overs and Audio Production Services
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Lee – Thank you for the article.
Few additional points about Reason #2 – User-generated content with no quality control.
You say “The result is that you have more music to listen to but much more substandard quality to sift through.”
Royalty Free Music buyers are starting to find out it does not always pay to look for cheaper music. User generated photos websites are very popular and several websites are now using this same user generated model to market music.
There is a problem with this – a piece of music is not perceived as pixels. It goes back to our basic physiology. I can look at 50 pictures on my screen in less than 20 seconds. I can go through 100 pictures in less than one minute. Photography is for the eyes and we perceive images in Space – not in Time. But if I need to go through 100 “substandard” music tracks to find a really good one it takes a lot more time. Music is for the ears and we perceive sounds linearly one sound after the other. It happens in Time – not Space. When music is pre-filtered the quality of the music is higher and the customer can find several options for high quality music much more rapidly. Personally – and our clients seem to agree with us – I would rather take 15 minutes and find a great track for $30. Time is money. Sifting through music does take time.
You say “There is a new breed of royalty free music website that utilizes user-generated content. This is content uploaded by the composer (well, hopefully it is the composer).”
We had someone who uploaded some of our own music to one of those user generated sites pretending to be the composer of these tracks. That person illegally added the music for sale at a lower price on that website. This is a serious problem. Many of these new websites have no control whatsoever on the quality of the music or the veracity of the composer’s account information. Fortunately and in all fairness to the website owner, one of the website operators recognized one of our music tracks and alerted us to this problem. We are grateful of course but this shouldn’t have happened at all.
Buyer beware! Getting music from one of the many well established Royalty Free Music companies is both a great way to rapidly find quality music at a very reasonable price and a way to make sure the license you are getting is perfectly 100% legal.
Hi Gilles
Many thanks for adding your input. I completely agree, browsing numerous pictures is far easier than listening to a large number of music tracks.
Also, I think the low prices of user generated stock photography should not be comparable to music licensing. Although skill is involved with both activities, it takes seconds and minutes to take pictures compared to hours and days for creating quality music tracks. I think the difference in price has got to represent this.
I am grateful that you shared the story about your music being uploaded by someone else and glad you got it sorted. That is a nightmare situation and highlights issues that all buyers should be aware of.
Lee
Hi Lee – this is a direct response to your last comments.
Talking about photography versus music you say “Although skill is involved with both activities, it takes seconds and minutes to take pictures compared to hours and days for creating quality music tracks. I think the difference in price has got to represent this.”
I cannot agree with this entirely. After years of training, professional photographers need to spend a lot of money on equipment, studio space and then lots of time with models etc. It is not just about the “click time”. Even as an amateur (but dedicated!) photographer myself I have traveled in remote areas of every Central America countries to take some pictures – mostly on behalf of a humanitarian group in Nicaragua. Yes the click happens in a fraction of a second but it may take years of preparation to get that click happening. And just like for music it takes years of training to get the perfect composition – not to mention nowadays the costly Photoshop application and the time spent learning how to use it.
I was paid $5,000 once for a picture. I had traveled 3,000 miles and spend 2 weeks in one area to take that particular picture which was used for advertising in a popular US magazine. That amount barely paid for the trip including the 30 rolls of photos I shot to get that one picture right. But that was in the last Century before the Internet took off. Maybe I could get $2 for it now J
I do not think we need to devalue photography and the skills required to be a quality photographer to put music in a better light. It is just not necessary or accurate. This would be equivalent to someone saying all you have to do to make good music in few minutes is to get some free drum loops and GarageBand.
Just my perspective.
Based on your last comment I seem to have under estimated the amount of time and energy involved to create quality photographs… just my lack of knowledge in the subject but I happily accept your more informed view.
I just feel that stock photography prices would devalue royalty free music beyond the point of it being worthwhile, however, may be photographers would say certain stock photography websites have already devalued photographers?
Great comments, Lee. I would also like to pitch in with a word of warning. I’m not involved in royalty-free music, but I have licensed into video games and TV etc. The role of the middle-man, whether it be an agent or a website, is to ensure everything goes smoothly for the creator and the client. Having seen a number of deals go sour, I really wonder just how much a royalty-free website that is open to the world can check either the incoming music or the outgoing usage. Using music without authorisation is treated very seriously by the Ascaps and in particular the Sacems of the world. You do not want them to find that the music you paid $25 for is actually administered by them. Expect no pity. You really do need to work with a bona-fide music house, one that can guarantee the source of the music.
Your last comment about the devaluing of photographers is already true, as far as I can see.