Rights Managed And Royalty Free Music Licenses Explained Article

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Rights Managed and Royalty Free Music Licenses Explained

There are two types of music license. This article explains and contrasts them both.

Author: Robin Dewar

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There's two types of licenses commonly used when you buy music for advertisements, dvd themes, internet websites and any other projects.

(i) Royalty-Free (Buyout music):

Practically, you make payment for a single, standard fee, download the song from a website and employ it on your projects: that's it.
Officially, Royalty-Free really means that, for that initial price, the company/artists that wrote and recorded the songs are waiving their rights to get paid royalties each and every time the song is played.
Actually, you really didn't purchase the song itself, instead you paid for that license to use it. You don't possess the copyright to the music, the composer/company does. Despite your license, they'll have made several limits with regards to the use of the background music.
Here's an example: usually you can make use of a royalty-free sound-bed anywhere you would like, forever, on the condition that you're not reselling it. This can be a customary condition in the license agreement of music providers to stop users from starting competing companies with that producer's own music.
Royalty-Free music is going to be license with the least problems. Additionally, it's the most commonly used and cheapest. On the down side, the music is oftentimes for sale to all of us, and is unregulated, which means your competitors might also pick that very same music and then use it within their promotions.
Royalty-Free sound-beds cost from around $20 to a few thousand dollars (for customized, studio music).

(ii) Rights Managed:

In all probability it will come as no real surprise that you would not be free to buy the rights to one minute from Brown Eyed Girl under a Royalty-Free license (as defined above). If it were made available at all, it would be available using a Rights Managed license.
This is often a strongly conditional license, regulated by the copyright owners to make sure that each piece is only used by small number of companies/projects and for specific targets (for instance for local Television advertising in New Jersey, for 6 weeks). The caliber of music will be incredibly good.

With this license, big companies would make a deal for the usage of famous music (for example You Sexy Thing) directly from the record label. For this, they'd pay top fees.
Furthermore, you will discover music studios that create Rights Managed music for the public and although the licenses are much more costly than Royalty-Free, they preserve some degree of exclusivity to the purchaser.

Such licenses end and are also much limited (for instance you can't make use of the sound-bed for a country wide promotion if you only obtained the license for a localized one). They are also closely watched, as air-time adds to the revenue for the copyright owners (however, not from you but from music licensing/broadcasting organisations).
Rights Managed does bring more red tape than Royalty-Free nevertheless, on the plus side, you know you are receiving a unique, top quality product.
Rights Managed sound-beds cost from about $1,500 upwards depending upon the use.

Written on behalf of Stars & Catz School of Music by Robin Dewar.

About Author

Robin Dewar is a team member of Stars & Catz School of Music (an international music school that matches students to teachers for free). He's a seasoned music teacher, performer, writer and recording artist / sound engineer.

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Rights Managed and Royalty Free Music Licenses Explained