photo credit: pasotraspaso
Whether you’re recording a podcast or looking for music for your short film or documentary, making your way through the minefield of music licensing can be a right pain in the arse. You’ve got recording/master rights, publishing rights, there’s the whole business of synchronisation and mechanical rights.
Slapping in your favourite tune without getting the rights cleared will see you hit with a hefty bill and the chance that your project will never see the light of day.
You could try to negotiate a good deal with the PRS or get a composer on board but the chances are that your budget won’t stretch to it so it’s good news that the guys behind iStockphoto, one of the best sites for royalty free images, have launched a new royalty free music service.
iStockaudio offers 30,000 royalty free and single production audio tracks. I’ve just been listening to some of the tracks on the site and have to say I’m fairly impressed. I’ve been to other production music libraries in the past and found most of the tracks pretty bland, cheesy and uninspiring but there’s a really good selection on iStockaudio.
Buying your music is dead easy and, depending on how you intend to use the music, pretty inexpensive. Rates start from £2 for stingers for web use (ideal for podcasts) up to £80 for full length tracks by indie artists for unlimited use on a single production (i.e. TV show or movie).
If you can’t find what you’re after there, I heartily recommend giving Audio Network a go. They’re more expensive per track than iStockaudio but you’ve got the option of buying a blanket licence for £195 which covers you for unlimited tracks on a single production so, in theory, you could score your entire movie for a couple of hundred quid.
There are other music libraries out there including an extensive production music directory on the PRS website but, in my experience, Audio Network and the new iStockaudio service look to be the most cost effective.
{ 2 comments }
Thanks for the advice - turns out iStockAudio has serious problems with the way it sets out it’s ability to search, then, when you do find a good track, it’s really very expensive, particularly given that it’s a one-production only licence.
I’ve found stuff at shockwave-sound.com, stockmusic.net and royalty-free.tv which suits my current project. Of course they all have niggles - royalty-tv won’t let you download a preview, which is not much use if you are meeting a client who wants to preview and choose and you are not on an internet connection…
cheers, b
Thanks for the feedback, Ben. I’m surprised that you found iStockAudio expensive. Certainly when I was looking around the site I thought most of the tracks were reasonably priced. What sort of figures were you being quoted?
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