Have you ever heard a song that reached you at your very core? It fills you with happiness and makes you burst with creativity? Me too! How great would it be to use that song in your video to showcase your work or business? Well, unfortunately, unless you have a very large wallet or play the drums for the Foo Fighters you will need to find an alternative. Unless a video is for personal use only, meaning you will not post it online then you would have to contact the copyright owner. This is no easy task. That’s not to say it can’t be done. There have been odd occasions where a creator has managed to get permissions from an artist, well their management at least. The license fee was pretty low too. But in reality, those occasions are very rare. You are looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars for an actual license.
So as much as you may love a track you will have to find something else. To be fair the more you listen to a song the more it loses its appeal so don’t ruin your favourite song by editing it and watching your video over and over.
There are great resources available online for copyright-free music. Times have changed. The days of basic tunes on an old keyboard that sound like a Nokia 510 ringtone are over. There are websites now that have music created by real artists. From cinematic to classical to electro there is a huge range of choices. A favourite of mine is Artlist. It has thousands of tracks and you can search by mood, length, feel and more. Another great one is PremiumBeat. A track will cost you around $65USD but the quality is extremely high. A lot of the track I have used from that site I have heard on television commercials going out across Australia.
If you are hiring a video production company to produce a video for your business then you won’t have to worry about any of this. A licensed music track should be in the initial quote. Depending on the project, I send out a couple of music options to my clients. This makes the editing process a lot more streamlined. The client is happy with the track and I can cut all the footage to the music. The music plays a huge part in your video’s so it’s so important to get right. If the client doesn’t like the track you chose then you have to go back to the edit, find a new track and re-edit the footage to the new track. This is why it’s so important to have everyone on board before the edit begins.
Some tracks may also claim to be royalty-free. I would tread carefully around these as they do not always come from a reputable source. If you do have a large budget and are looking to use a commercial track then always seek legal advice from a professional before proceeding.
Thanks for reading!
Gareth Carr
Cinematographer & Photographer based in Sydney, Australia
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Exposed Wolf is a video production & photography company based in Sydney, Australia. With over 20 years of industry experience, they can help you with planning, shooting and editing your projects to give you months of powerful content to raise your business and brand.