Media Music Blog

Running a royalty free music business, I have become somewhat of an authority on the subject of music licensing. Although, having said that, this post is not directly about music licensing, it is an observation on the illegal / inconsiderate use of copyrighted material on the web and how you, as an independent composer / producer, band or artist need to protect your assets and your ability to sell your music.

In brief, I strongly believe that you should use an audio watermark on any of your music that you publish to the web. If you don’t, it could well be used without your consent or knowledge, and you could be losing out on valuable licensing fees, which I am sure would contribute to your continued creativity.

There are numerous ways that people can steal your music on the web and once they have it, they are very likely to spread it on peer-to-peer or social network sites as free to use music. These people may not even understand that you spent many hours composing and producing this music and that you earn an income from it. Other people may understand but have no respect for it. I have experienced this first hand too many times!

An un-watermarked track is easy bait to a thief so protect yourself against it. Not only are there a number ways of recording music from a web browser, there are many scraper sites out there that find mp3s on other people’s websites and use it on their own.

To negate the possibility of this, you can take the very simple measure of getting a voice-over to record a professional sound file as a watermark that you can mix into your music track.

All you need is a couple of lines… something like “This audio is copyright… for more information please contact www.MyWebsite.com”. You can include your own name, band name, company name, telephone number, whatever you like really.

Once you have this sound file, simply use your audio editing software to create a protection track. This is just a silent track with your voiceover sound file repeated every 10 seconds or so. You can then mix it into your music track(s) that you are planning to publish to the web and create a watermarked version. People can now download and share this as much as they like, it will be clear that the track is copyright and the cherished property of a talented artist / producer.

If they really want to use your music without the watermark, they won’t mind contacting you and paying an appropriate fee. And if they use it with the watermark, just see it as free advertising.

You may be thinking that you can’t afford a voice-over and editing software. Well, there is an open source editing software that is free, called Audacity, for mixing your protection track and music and as for a voiceover, my colleague, Anthony Richardson, a talented UK voice-over, can record you a simple two-line sound file for just £12GBP+vat when you mention this blog post or my name, Lee Pritchard.

“A very small price to pay for peace of mind.”

Anthony’s site is www.overvoice.co.uk

Get Audacity Here >

Click here to see a previous post about Audacity

Like this blog? Subscribe to my RSS feed!

PRESS RELEASE

From: Media Music Now
Contact: Lee Pritchard
Tel: +44 (0)845 652 2173
www.mediamusicnow.co.uk

*** For Immediate Release ***

MANCHESTER, UK, 13th May 2008

Media Music Now is about to launch a new service aimed at TV, Film and Digital Media professionals. The new service, known as ‘The Composer Directory’, is a select group of trusted music composers and producers available to be commissioned for custom music projects. The online service is set to open its virtual doors on 26th May 2008 and was inspired by the news of BBC departments heading to Media City, Salford Quays.

With the news of many BBC departments heading for Manchester, Lee Pritchard, a local entrepreneur and founder of Media Music Now, decided that it was the right time to integrate a Composer Directory into their already established music services business.

The directory is purposely designed to comprise of a select number of trusted composers. To maintain the quality and service, all composers are auditioned before inclusion and production projects will be managed by Media Music Now.

“Although the Composer Directory service will be available globally via the web, having a physical base in the city of Manchester makes the prospect of networking exciting, especially with Manchester set to become the home of the BBC in the North. Although still being built, Media City promises to be an excellent venue for media companies and I plan on Media Music Now having a strong presence at Media City.” explains Lee Pritchard.

In a digital online world where there is an abundance of fragmented choice, ‘The Composer Directory’ promises to offer a refined selection of composers & music producers in a variety of genres with a focus on quality & service. Already trading online since 2005, Media Music Now offers high quality Royalty Free Music, Audio Editing Services, a Directory of Voice-over artists and coming soon, ‘The Composer Directory’.

Companies interested in chatting about any aspect of the imminent directory are encouraged to contact Lee Pritchard through the Media Music Now website www.mediamusicnow.co.uk

At this time, there are a few composer places left, for details go to www.mediamusicnow.co.uk and navigate to the Composer Directory.

#

Like this blog? Subscribe to my RSS feed!

To date, we have been busy working behind the scenes creating profiles, adding music, tweaking text and altering layouts. We have also been exceptionally busy with other services on Media Music Now, which is great!

Anyway, we are now committed to a date when the Composer Directory will go live; this date is Monday 26th of May. Although a little later than initially planned, everything will go live smoothly, profiles will be complete and there will be some great page content too. Most importantly the Composer Directory will be an integral section of the Media Music Now website.

Already, we have had a number of enquiries about the directory even though it is not yet live… a good sign!

Thanks to everyone who has worked hard to send great profile material, it makes all the difference. If you are yet to send your info, please do so asap, we need to get your profile created well before the live date. Speaking of profiles, if you are not yet on board but would like to be, there are still a few places left if you want to be part of it!

Anyway, I will update you all again soon.

Regards
Lee Pritchard
P.S. Places are limited, don’t miss out, get your place here
http://www.mediamusicnow.co.uk/custom_music/register/

Like this blog? Subscribe to my RSS feed!

Recently, a client asked me why our on hold demo contained music and voice-over, with the voice-over repeatedly stating ‘thank you for calling Media Music Now…’ My client suggested that our demo sounded a little bit staged and a little bit false, as our demo was clearly created using our own script and did not contain any examples of previous work.

It has often been said in business, that your clients are your greatest critics. This is very true. In this case, when we conceived the idea of adding an on hold service to Media Music Now, (some 18 months ago) we had not generated any on-hold business prior to creating a demo and therefore our client was correct in their assumption. The demo had indeed been created using our own script.

Since that time, we have done many, many packages for numerous clients in the UK and across Europe. We had been really busy producing audio that we had overlooked the fact that the demo was very much out of date. Although this was not intentional, it does give a very narrow view of what we have actually done in terms of on hold music and on-hold voice-over.

To rectify the situation, and I must thank my client for the heads up on this, we have now compiled an additional demo using excerpts from some of the recent on hold packages we have created for clients. The audio is three minutes long demonstrating a good range of on-hold work that we have done to date.

I have made this available here as a playable and downloadable version so that you can listen and see what we have been doing and can do. You will also find our original demo there too.

Please feel free to download the track and let your friends, colleagues and clients have a listen.

We are happy to work directly with your business to create you a custom on hold package with custom voice-over and music or alternatively, we are happy to work as a supplier to you if you are a telephony hardware provider. We deal purely with audio and do not have any dealings with telephone hardware. If you are interested in finding out more about using us as your on-hold music and voice-over supplier, please contact us through the contact page on Media Music Now. You might be surprised to learn how affordable on-hold music and voice-over is through Media Music Now.

Enjoy the new demo! Your comments are welcome as always.

If you need any further information about our on hold services please visit Media Music Now.

Like this blog? Subscribe to my RSS feed!

As a producer of music, on hold and voice-over packages for telephone, IVR and on hold marketing, I am very aware of the telephone greeting services and on hold music that I hear on other companies phone systems. I know this sounds rather geeky, but I actually like being placed on hold for a short period of time when calling companies. This period of time gives me a chance to analyze the quality of their music, on-hold audio and the quality of their voice-overs.

What I tend to find is that many on hold sections are distorted, too quiet or too loud. Now, you could just blame the supplier of the music on hold package for their lack of quality. However, as a provider of these packages, Media Music Now are experts in audio production and audio quality, but we do not know much about telephony hardware. Likewise, it seems that providers of telephony hardware know little about audio production or audio file formats. The result is that very often we produce high quality on hold packages but are requested to convert them into an audio format that the hardware provider deems suitable. In many cases, this is fine as we can convert to many formats with no problem at all, but occasionally, we are asked to convert the on hold package to a file type that is actually so compressed that it distorts the quality of the music and on hold voice-over, before it is even added to the telephone system. Once added to the system, the audio is further degraded by the bandwidth limitations of the telephone network.

In our experience, it is better to put the highest quality file possible into the system to start with. By doing this, the only degradation that is introduced is the bandwidth limitations of the telephone network. We find that MP3s or 16 bit, 22 kHz wave files provide the best audio quality on the end of the telephone receiver.

Many telephony hardware providers will argue this point and say that the telephone network degrades the quality to four bits, 8kHz anyway and for this reason they don’t need a higher quality audio file. I would have to say I really disagree with this. In my opinion, it is like taping a really old tape on to another really old tape, it doesn’t sound very good at all.

My view is that some of the highly compressed file formats they request make the audio sound very distorted before it even goes on the telephone system. With the added distortion/limitations of the telephone line, the final audio that the listener hears can end up excessively crackly or distorted. In my opinion, if you are spending money to have a bespoke on hold music & voice over package produced professionally, the last thing you want is it to sound distorted and poor quality.

I firmly believe that putting a higher quality file in the telephone system to start with, makes the delivered quality to your caller much higher and much more acceptable to the ear.

In conclusion, start with good quality in your telephone system to avoid distortion, crackle, bad volumes levels and any other audio anomalies that cause a bad listener experience. Granted, the telephone system will limit the quality anyway, but having the sound the best it can be will always present a much more positive image of your company.

For information about Media Music Now’s music & voice-over on hold service go to
http://www.mediamusicnow.co.uk/telephone_audio/

By Lee Pritchard

Like this blog? Subscribe to my RSS feed!