If in doubt, a good starting place is to take advice from the respective PRO organization. Questions to ask include whether the fee covers the master recording, publishing costs, and covering the fees for musicians and record labels. The composers’ fee will cover the actual writing and composition, but it is important to clarify whether the other aspects are covered when planning the sound design for your projects. Litigation is a serious possibility for violations of license, and you want your film to be receiving awards at a festival instead of a court summons. It is, however, critical that a filmmaker ensures they have the correct license for music on the soundtrack. This is excellent for the music makers, whether their music is being used in film, television, on radio or in live performances. The three main organizations are ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and part of their role is to ensure that songwriters are paid for the music that is used. A bit later on, we will get into the specific kinds of licenses.Ĭomposers will often be part of PROs, or Performance Rights Organizations. This innovation removes a big headache and allows you an easy way to get one all-in license, and get on with the production of your film. Composers and creators negotiate directly with these companies, which means that you only have to deal with the company. In the past you had to negotiate with each of those groups in order to use a song, but in recent years there are music licensing companies who have created their own music libraries. There have historically been several stakeholders in a song, which are the songwriters, the recording label, the artists and the publisher. There are different factors involved depending on their level of experience, how much music you need and your working budget, so there is no way of generalizing how much this would cost.
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It can be good to start thinking about this when you are importing your raw footage, or even during pre-production. There are many ways to find a composer, whether it is through ASCAP, filmmakers’ forums, or even Facebook groups, and typically you will pay the composer at the start of the process. Image credit: KAL VISUALS on Unsplash Working with a music composer But which music can an indie filmmaker use, what rights do you need before you do your editing, how do you go about getting those rights, how do you keep your soundtrack legal and avoid getting into trouble, what kinds of licenses are there, how much does it cost, and what can you do for free? Let’s get started!
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There are memorable soundtracks in classic films that immediately evoke emotion, whether it’s hearing John Williams’ Star Wars theme (that immediately gets many grown adults to start miming lightsabers), Dick Dale’s “Misirlou” guitar track at the start of Pulp Fiction, or the “Bohemian Rhapsody” car headbanging scene in Wayne’s World that introduced Queen to a whole new generation.
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The perfect song and choice of sound effects can make or break a scene, and every independent filmmaker needs to know the essentials of music licensing. We’ve all talked about going to see a film and discussing what we’ve watched, but a major part of the movie experience is hearing the score and listening to the soundtrack.
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It is important for every filmmaker to know about music licensing, whether you need music for film festivals, wedding videos, television, commercials or online content.