by Jack Roberts
The first thing to take note of is that every song has two rights. The individual that wrote the song (publisher rights) and the person that recorded it (master rights). To use a piece of music, you need permission from both entities. For example, five entities have the publishing right to Katy Perry’s song “California Gurls.” As such, if you want to use this music, then you must have gotten permission from the five writers and Katy Perry. A negative reply from anyone of them denies you the right to use the song.
In Australia, the punishment for breaching copyright laws can be very severe. So what do you do since you still want to get a license to use a piece of music for your films and videos? Here are some tips for getting a music license for your films and videos:
- Most songs for film festival rights are cleared at a reduced price
If you can afford to make early payments, you can get clearance on a piece of music for every entity that owns a right in the music at a reduced price for a film festival. The added bonus is that you can get rights for up to two years after the film festival, nice right?
- The duration has no effect on the price
Irrespective of the duration of the video/film, the cost of getting a license to use the music usually remains the same. However, there’s an exception if it’s used over beginning or end credits.
- Rates are negotiable
You can negotiate to pay a lesser price for the movie. And the right owners may ask for a lesser price if the movie addresses a major issue in the society or the storyline is something that they’re passionate about.
- Double check to ascertain that a song is indeed in the public domain
Quite often, people assume a song is in the public domain just because a website says so, or because they just feel like it’s an old song so it should be free to use.
- If you have contacted the masters and publishers but haven’t gotten a reply, it’s not a sign of rejection.
Contacting publishers and masters can be a demanding task, especially if it’s a famous song. In some instances, big firms may hire an agency or a professional negotiator to help secure rights to a track.
If you’ve not gotten a favourable response, you may keep contacting the right owners. However, this might result in the right owners issuing you a ‘cease and desist” letter.
- Get rights to music documentaries beforehand
If the rights owner, either the entities themselves or their estate is not interested in the project, then there’s nothing you can do. If you’ve started or completed the project before seeking those rights, then it has to join the list of unreleased movies—what a waste!
In Summary
Want to make a video or film and you feel that you need a piece of music to spice things up? Unless you wrote and sang the song, then you’ll have to get licensing to make that happen. After reading this article, I’m sure that you must have been educated on some things you should know about music licensing for videos and films.
