I need a royalty-free music library...

[Whitecat]

As the title says - on behalf of a client I need a quality royalty-free pay-once-get-a-stack-of-CDs-to-use-forever music library that's good value for money. Any recommendations? What are people out there using?

[asap audio]

On the low end, see if you like Digital Juice. You can pick and choose discs. Some is very good. Nice website.

Bill
ASAP Audio

[Uncle Bob]

Buying entire libraries of music and sound effects can be very pricey. I prefer using sites like Sound Dogs and Sonomic where I can audition songs/sounds online and buy just what I need. It's amazing how quickly the stuff accumulates. BTW, both sites do sell complete libraries.

[TVPostSound]

Check with APM Music.

You can always negotiate a buyout (royalty free) deal with them.
Every piece of their music library is all online to audition.
Downloadable as 16 bit 44.1 or 48K files.

APM MUSIC: Your Source for Production Music On The Internet

















.

[Whitecat]

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys.

We're not averse to buying bit-by-bit online but only if there's absolutely no paperwork to be done - this is the problem we've run into with a lot of "royalty-free" stuff is that you have to submit cue sheets etc. We haven't got time for that, we need a straight buyout.

Keep the ideas coming, will check out what's been noted so far...

[drBill]

Originally Posted by terminal3

We're not averse to buying bit-by-bit online but only if there's absolutely no paperwork to be done - this is the problem we've run into with a lot of "royalty-free" stuff is that you have to submit cue sheets etc. We haven't got time for that, we need a straight buyout.

I could suggest several, but I'm not going to even bother.

Buyout, licensed, non-buyout, stolen, whatever - if it's for broadcast you MUST file a cuesheet. The broadcaster (not to mention ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc.) require it for broadcast.

It's simple, it's free to do, most every library will help you and it helps the composers actually have a fighting chance at making a modest living. What's wrong with that?

You won't find any library that does not care if you don't file cue sheets. Sorry.

[Whitecat]

Originally Posted by drBill

I could suggest several, but I'm not going to even bother.

Buyout, licensed, non-buyout, stolen, whatever - if it's for broadcast you MUST file a cuesheet. The broadcaster (not to mention ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc.) require it for broadcast.

It's simple, it's free to do, most every library will help you and it helps the composers actually have a fighting chance at making a modest living. What's wrong with that?

You won't find any library that does not care if you don't file cue sheets. Sorry.

Really? I worked as an editor at a post house that didn't do cue sheets, they said they didn't have to based on the terms of their library - they made not filing them as a condition of purchase for the library. The buyout price up front was how the library company made money. I don't know what library they were using, though (but they did pay for it!) - maybe they were lying to me, but we did do the odd bit for TV, all filled with library music, and I never heard a word about cue sheets. I'm happy to be wrong here, I'm not trying to dodge any responsibility, I just know that the manpower on the projects we're working on now to do this sort of thing is minimal to none.

Nothing we're doing now is destined for broadcast yet, it's all for YouTube and those ilk. How do we go about filing cue sheets for those? Does YouTube pay ASCAP/BMI etc? If it does ever get picked up to broadcast it would all be repurposed anyway, and at that point I could certainly convince them that cue sheets need to be filed.

[drBill]

Originally Posted by terminal3

Really? I worked as an editor at a post house that didn't do cue sheets, they said they didn't have to based on the terms of their library - they made not filing them as a condition of purchase for the library. The buyout price up front was how the library company made money. I don't know what library they were using, though (but they did pay for it!) - maybe they were lying to me, but we did do the odd bit for TV, all filled with library music, and I never heard a word about cue sheets. I'm happy to be wrong here, I'm not trying to dodge any responsibility, I just know that the manpower on the projects we're working on now to do this sort of thing is minimal to none.

Nothing we're doing now is destined for broadcast yet, it's all for YouTube and those ilk. How do we go about filing cue sheets for those? Does YouTube pay ASCAP/BMI etc? If it does ever get picked up to broadcast it would all be repurposed anyway, and at that point I could certainly convince them that cue sheets need to be filed.

Thanks for your honesty. Cue sheets are how composers get paid. A huge part of a composers income is from performance royalties generated by broadcast and collected via a PRO (performing rights organization - ASCAP, BMI, ETC.). Without a cue sheet there is no way to determine who to pay or collect $$$ for. It would be like working a factory job, and not filling out your timecard and expecting - hope against hope - that you might get paid. It's not gonna happen.

Composers make very little to nothing up front these days for delivering a completed CD. With a buyout library, I do not make a DIME from any CD distributed with ANY of the 5-6 libraries I'm associated with. 100% of that $$ goes to the library - SO, without cue sheets, I might spend 2+ months on a CD and see NOTHING - Ever!!!! With the libraries that charge a license fee, I get between $25-50% of the license fee, so there is some income there in addition to the PRO collected performance royalties. Luckily, most places are more informed (don't mean that as a put down - just a fact) than you are. I suggest you do a little more research and contact a few libraries and get their take on it.

It costs the post studio, producer, etc. NOTHING to do, and allows the libraries and composers to continue to put out product. It is FAST and EASY to do, and almost any library will assist you to help you understand and get the hang of it. Most have an excell spreadsheet that you can download and quickly fill in. You can even do it while editing. It only takes maybe 15-20 seconds per cue. I suggest that whichever library you contact, you ask them the questions above. The internet, youtube, etc. is a bit of wild, wild west right now. Laws are changing and BMI/ASCAP, etc are trying to figure out ways to collect. They will in fact figure it out, and cue sheets will be required - or maybe metadata tagged to the file, or perhaps digital watermarked. I'm not sure exactly how it will work out, but they will figure it out. There's a huge push towards it.

As for how your previous post house dodged the bullet, I'm not sure, but by law, broadcast programs must file a cue sheet with the broadcaster. It's likely that the producers of the show(s) put themselves down as the writer/publisher. (Fairly common and as low down dirty as it gets.)

So, to make it brief (too late I guess) - ROYALTY free does NOT mean REPORTING/CUE SHEET free.

Good luck.

[TVPostSound]

Buyout, licensed, non-buyout, stolen, whatever - if it's for broadcast you MUST file a cuesheet. The broadcaster (not to mention ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc.) require it for broadcast.

True, even if you compose your own, the networks make it a requirement as part of the deliverables. Someone HAS to do it.

[Whitecat]

Ok, fair enough, I'll simply tell them that SOMEONE's gonna have to do it. No doubt they'll stare right back at me and ask me to add it to the mountainous list of all the other post-production tasks I'm doing for them.

In any case though, back to the other part of my question - can anyone else expand upon details relating to the fact that none of this is going to TV broadcast right now? All the initial films are going to start out life on the internet - maybe YouTube, maybe a custom site, maybe both. Anyone had any firsthand experience with it?

And PS - previous post house is out of business now. So don't worry about them...

[reid]

Originally Posted by terminal3

...I need a quality royalty-free pay-once-get-a-stack-of-CDs-to-use-forever music library that's good value for money.....

My vote for oxymoron of the year.

[Whitecat]

Originally Posted by reid

My vote for oxymoron of the year.

Why?

[reid]

I believe the whole library music business model relies upon the payment of royalties, in order to be attractive for any composer worth their salt to get involved. If there's no back end payment involved for creators, then the up front payment is going to have to be unrealistically high to justify good composers getting involved, I think.

Would be interesting to hear what your clients be willing to pay, terminal 3, for an album of say 20 royalty free tracks (that they wouldn't be embarrassed to put on their work) complete with all cut downs / tune in & out variations, etc.

Royalty free libraries do exist, but veer to the 'pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap' tendency - which doesn't really encourage quality so much as quantity. But who knows - maybe your client will just fall in love with the material offered by these guys. Their demo says it all, I think...

There's a thread over at Sound On Sound Business Forum which piles into the subject (admittedly with daggers drawn), if you're interested.

[paulbankier]

Originally Posted by terminal3

As the title says - on behalf of a client I need a quality royalty-free pay-once-get-a-stack-of-CDs-to-use-forever music library that's good value for money. Any recommendations? What are people out there using?

Maybe try us?
I'm an independent musician (with a team of 3 others at the mo) trying to get a foothold in the production music library. I decided that after not having much joy kicking PM libraries doors along with the 100's of others to offer my music (that music made geared towards 'production music'), paying too much fees for other PM hosting providers, that I maybe needed to utilise my business degree and go 'independent'. So I started a global download portal and will be offering all our handmade PM via a subscription based model. We also do custom soundbanks and sales last week were very good with traffic increasing daily some 48-51%.

Simply, we'll make music all year, and all our subscribers can use as they will for their own productions our 'royalty free' music. There are no other charges nor collections fees.

I need to pay my mortage like everyone else and with an large investment in a purpose built studio needed to think a little 'out of the box' to build the business. The studio cannot survive on local 'hommies' doing a demo once every 2 months.

So maybe you would like to sign up?
It's free at the moment whilst we get things started, but will be around $US300 per annum for unlimited use of all our music library. Subs for access will be monthly via paypal.

We're only focused on contemporary electronic genres (chill/ambient, elektro, elektro-dub, ambi-rock), so don't do C&W, classical, pop or other non electronica genres, but maybe thats' just what you are looking for.

If you are interested visit: www.ilovesynths.com [alpha v1] and select the "Production Music Library" subscription offer on registration. Again it's free at the moment whilst we get started. Read more on the site via the "Production Music" link. You will be contacted later once the PM library starts to be populated.

The site also offers a PAYG eStore, but charges per track. We also looking for more contributors for the eStore with a shared split % on sales.


www.ilovesynths.com [alpha v1]

Hope thats of interest.
(:


Paul B,
Site Op


elektromaticsound.com | Convergent audio for the digital age

[Whitecat]

Thanks Paul, will check it out!

In any case, thanks everyone so far for the info - I'm gonna drive it into their heads that cue sheets will be necessary for TV and virtually necessary for the web even if we just have to sit on them for now. I will assume that the organisation where I was taught evil ways was either in the wrong or was cheating and I vow to not repeat those actions.

Now back to the original topic - any libraries worth looking at?

They still don't want to spend a lot, of course!

[drBill]

Originally Posted by terminal3

Now back to the original topic - any libraries worth looking at?

Here;s a couple for you to check out:

Prolific Arts Music

Production Music Library, GMP MUSIC, Gene Michael Productions


bp

[redharry]

another couple too :

Royalty Free Music - Production Music - StockMusic Library - Buyout Music - Background Music
Gemafreie Musik Online - GEMA freie Hintergrundmusik, Filmmusik, Lizenzfreie Musik

greets
harry

[Etch-A-Sketch]

Originally Posted by terminal3

Ok, fair enough, I'll simply tell them that SOMEONE's gonna have to do it. No doubt they'll stare right back at me and ask me to add it to the mountainous list of all the other post-production tasks I'm doing for them.

In any case though, back to the other part of my question - can anyone else expand upon details relating to the fact that none of this is going to TV broadcast right now? All the initial films are going to start out life on the internet - maybe YouTube, maybe a custom site, maybe both. Anyone had any firsthand experience with it?

And PS - previous post house is out of business now. So don't worry about them...

while Youtube and the like don't pay PRO's right now, that doesn't mean they won't indefinitely. Internet broadcasts are a hot topic right now and one that ASCAP and BMI have been lobbying congress about. I wouldn't be surprised if we see websites like Myspace and Youtube have to pay PRO's in the near future just like radio stations and TV stations do. And when that happens, websites like youtube will NEED the cue sheets.

What's a bigger PITA, going back through all of the old content and trying to figure out cue sheets... or to do them as the company produces content and save them in a file cabinet somewhere so when the time comes that you need them, you've already got them and already have a system in place for creating them?

By the way... most of the "royalty-free" libraries specifically exclude public performance. Royalty free libraries are usually for DVDs, on hold music, etc... In my brief search a few months ago I think I only found one library that would allow you to broadcast their music royalty free. But the money they were asking was pretty large, it was a monthly fee and as soon as you ended the contract you couldn't use their music anymore. AND!!! the music was crap. Everything sounded really lame/fake like it was done on casio keyboards and whatnot.

More and more libraries are doing "buyouts" and/or "blanket licenses" for their entire catalog or sections of their catalog. But you are still required to fill out cue sheets as mentioned before. TV and Radio won't play anything unless there is a cue sheet attached with it. They get fined $$$ if they are caught doing that. And the publishing companies definitely do police that!!! I know we do here at megatrax.

[ergalthema]

Originally Posted by drBill

I could suggest several, but I'm not going to even bother.

Buyout, licensed, non-buyout, stolen, whatever - if it's for broadcast you MUST file a cuesheet. The broadcaster (not to mention ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc.) require it for broadcast.

It's simple, it's free to do, most every library will help you and it helps the composers actually have a fighting chance at making a modest living. What's wrong with that?

You won't find any library that does not care if you don't file cue sheets. Sorry.

Is this true with stock sound effects? Even stuff that comes with iLife?

[ears2thesky]

If you want royalty-free music you must avoid any Elvis songs(The KING), no Aretha Franklin(Queen of soul), forget anything by Prince, King's X? nope. It's a shame you can't use any songs from Kings of Leon, Queens of the Stone Age, no Carol, BB, Ben E., Albert, or Freddie King. Nothing by Queen would be appropriate nor would any King Diamond, Queen Latifah or worst of all: no Michael Jackson (King of Pop).
Bummer...

[ccardell]

For a royalty-free music library, you might also try MusicRevolution.com https://www.musicrevolution.com , an innovative new online marketplace for royalty-free music. The MusicRevolution.com production music library has thousands of tracks of affordable, high-quality royalty-free production music suitable for film, video, TV, radio, website, background music, legal music for YouTube, on hold music and other business music applications. New music is being added every day. MusicRevolution.com offers four purchase options-- Single Tracks, CDs, Subscriptions and an Internet Music Stream for background music. I am the co-founder.