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What is Royalty Free Music? There are many applications for which music must be licensed but the traditional payment structure in which a royalty is charged for each usage would be cumbersome or more costly. Royalty free music libraries address this by offering music that can be purchased for a one-time fee and then be used by the purchaser as many times as needed.
For example: If a piece of royalty free music was purchased to be used on a multimedia CD project, it would not matter if one CD or 100,000 CDs were produced - the purchase fee would be exactly the same.
Production music is background music used for many media sources, such as television and radio advertisements. They are presented as a less expensive option than commissioning a composer for custom music or paying for the rights to use commercial music, as some organizations may find the cost for either one of the latter two options prohibitive.
Royalty free music is now a popular way of obtaining rights to someone else's music or composition. With the term royalty-free, it can be thought the author or publisher will not claim any royalties to the music. It is true, but there is actually more to that.
The Problem: Too Expensive to License Music
Before the 80s, producers and those who use music and composition of someone else used to pay a hefty amount to obtain rights to use them. The traditional payment scheme required by composers, authors and publishers is for the users to pay royalty each time their music is used. For example, a film producer wants to use the music of a certain composer at the beginning of the film and play it again when it ends. With the traditional scheme, the producer needs to pay twice the royalty fee because the music is to be used twice in the film. Moreover, if the film will be shown for several days, the producer also needs to pay the same amount of royalties for each day the film is shown.
Giving it a thought, it is really overwhelming to realize how much people used to pay before just to use another person's work. It is possible that composers and publishers before are earning a huge amount of money from royalties paid for their own work. However, because of the huge amount that music is contributing to a production's budget, people started protesting and trying to ignore paying royalties. Composers and publishers who choose to seek help from legal authorities also end up spending more from chasing these people. Hence, royalty-free music was born.
The Solution: Royalty Free Music
In essence, royalty-free music refers to a copyrighted music which can be used unlimitedly with only a one-time fee. A peice music is considered royalty-free when the composer, publisher or the copyright-owner of the music offers it as such. Those who obtain royalty-free music and pay the one-time charge are given rights to the use of the music. In the example above, the film producer who chooses to obtain some royalty-free music for the beginning and ending of the film only needs to pay the one-time fee in order to use the music in the film. It doesn't matter if the producer would want to use it twice, thrice or even more, there will be no additional charges. Also, no additional royalties need to be paid for each day the film is shown.
The music is called royalty-free because no recurring royalties need to be paid after the one-time charge. There are a lot of companies now that have a huge royalty-free music library. There is lots of royalty-free music for almost all genres. These are good as background music or for use in productions such as TV and radio shows, films, commercials, public presentation, application, games and many other purposes. Producers and other users definitely find royalty-free music a lot more cheaper way of obtaining rights to others' music than the traditional method.
But Be Careful...
Royalty free music can really entice people because it doesn't strain the budget too much. However, there are times that one will still end up paying a lot of money for the use of the purchased royalty-free music. This happens when the music will be used in a non-dramatic public performance such as in Film, TV and radio broadcasts, commercials, restaurants, bars, stores, etc. If the music will be used for the aforementioned purpose, the license to play it as such needs to be acquired from the performing rights organization to which the composer or the publisher of the royalty-free music is a member of. The license fee is paid annually and can be verry hefty.
Most royalty- ree music companies do not mention this up front, or worse, never mention it at all on their website or in their terms of agreement. Therefore, extra precaution needs to be taken when trying to buy royalty free music for the first time from a certain company. It is best to carefully read the fine print or ask. But the good thing is that there are still some royalty-free music companies offering music which are truly royalty-free. How is this possible? Well, these companies have music in their library that is owned by authors or publishers who are not members of any of the performing rights organizations. Therefore, no license fees need to be acquired in order to use them publicly.
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