JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Industry Message Forum Question about Licensing your music

Hello. I apologize if this question was covered but I tried to search it and didn't find the answers I was looking for.
Could anyone let me know how people license their music please. I've received a very nice message from a wedding photographer who is interested in using one of my co-written songs in his website. He wanted to find out whether I license my songs and I have no experience with this. Thank you for your advice
Nadia

Hi Nadia:

As the creator of a song or composition... you are at liberty to negotiate the act of granting a license to anyone who wants to use it. It gets a little tricky if you have no experience but you need to find out if the other party wanting a license needs unlimited use... or a specific time-frame or event. (Your laws in the UK may vary from here in the U.S.) If they want unlimited use, then big bucks should be involved. (and possibly Barristers!) This one, as you described it... is probably for a much smaller amount. Sometimes, for publicity's sake... it is better to grant "free license... with restrictions" than to put them though an ordeal. Only you can make that call.

A limited license should define all the particulars of what specifically you are granting the entity licensing the song from you. Time or duration of the license, event specifics, terms of use, price and terms of payment and whether or not you are still free to license, promote or pitch the song/composition in question during their license period.

I'm gonna suggest that you do some research and look up a couple of typical legal agreements of this type. Most of all, do you know and trust the person wishing to license? A signed, written agreement along with a payment received goes a long way toward providing you with protection. Licensing is normally a much faster way to enter the "income stream" without having to jump through hoops to satisfy a producer, publisher or other music oriented entity. (Then there are companies who are actually Music Libraries you could deal with... if you can get your foot in the door... to do the licensing for you.) IMHO, at this stage of your music career... nobody is going to look out for you and your music better than you... if you are comfortable with the process.

Google (I call it Gargoyle) or Ask.com are good places to start your research.

Regards and good luck,

Dave

Respectfully, I have to disagree with Dave. Plenty of musicians and composers licence their music everyday to opportunities just to get "credits". That's how you get on MTV btw.. Many regret this down the road, as it contributes to devalue music, and thereby working against your own intrest as a composer/ songwriter. So working for credits is way overrated IMO, and I've never heard of anyone who's missed an opportunity because he/she didn't have sufficient "credits", if their music was great.

But you can actually licence your song to him through Soundclick, and many other sites. Just upload it and make it available for licensing. Then guide your guy to the link.

Soundclick have some guiding rules http://www.soundclick.com/docs/licenseStandardtext.cfm but eventually you and you alone, determine what terms you find reasonable.

In the example you could say eg that one licence is valid for say a thousand hits on his website at a time, before he has to renew it, or you could give him exclusive rights for a year with a fee estimated by the number of hits on his site in a year. Say he has 10.000 hits in a year, then if you charge him 20$ pr. 1000 hits, a one year license could be 100$.

Alternatively you could PM Andrew Aversa who's posted in here frequently. He has a licensing company (Music Libary), and perhaps request to go though him. It could be a win-win for both of you.. he might be interested in more customers, and you in licensing more songs..

Andrew's library here http://zircontrax.com/

May be worth a shot..

Hi Magne:

Your point is well taken... and this aspect has been discussed often on this and other "boards." As you know, many musicians and entertainers "give away" their music early in their careers to build a "fan-base" or for other reasons. If Nadia were dealing with Sony or a major corporation, I could not agree with you more. Since we have not heard from Nadia yet, I'm assuming that she is dealing with a young photographer with a new website and is not flush with cash. (If it's Elton John's photographer... all bets are off.)

Your additional points will certainly provide her with some alternatives and I appreciate that you provided this for her.

Regards,

Dave

There's nothing wrong in what you say, Dave, and in the end you are free to do what you personally feel comfortable with. I think the "free" marketing argument has been taken way too far, and exploited for the conveniance of others making the buck in stead of the originator.

I don't think any serious person in music business would demand you make your music available free of charge. Some might still request it, though, and then you have to consider the who, when, where, what and why of the situation, and if you are getting anything worthwhile from a deal like that.

Nothing is essentially free, we eventually pay for every choice sooner or later.

That's my opinion.

If it suggests an alternative to give your music away, that's a good thing for me.

Hi Nadia,
Great to hear that you're getting inquiries from potential clients to license your music to promote their business websites!

I've recently set up a licensing service (LicenseQuote.com) which lets you set up your a licensing store on your own website to easily manage your own licensing inquiries, make sales and keep 100% of the revenues which are paid directly into your own free PayPal account. You can learn more here:
http://www.licensequote.com

You can also watch an intro video (on YouTube) to see how this works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66wsoNvdMWw
Andrew Aversa (another JPF member) is using a LicenseQuote powered store on his website:
http://zircontrax.com/catalog/
to promote his ZirconTrax music licensing catalog.

Take care!
Michael

Hi everybody, when I posted my question I'm sure I've clicked on the option of being notified but may be I didn't? I thought I would know when someone replied but I only found your replies by chance today. Thank you everybody for taking time to reply. It's topo late for this particular client as I already unswered to him but I think it's a lot to think about and I will check out soundclick, it sounds as a very good idea since I'm on soundclick almost every day uploading my songs and changing details. Thank you so much. Happy NEw Year!
Nadia

Nadia, you need to set your "watched topics" to notify you in each case. Not sure why, but I always do that, as I otherwise won't get notified either. For some reason it's not enough to mark it in the box when you post.

I mentioned Soundclick, and that would probably work fine in this case, but I definitely would reccommend you try Michael's solution. He is a very reputable guy, and has a great thing set up, with awesome terms, and if you can get your stuff there, I'm sure it's top notch!

I'm going to a lot of licensing web sites. Go to google or any search engine and look for them there.

Sylvia

Sylvia here's a link to a directory of music licensing libraries/catalogs

http://musiclibraryreport.com/




good luck


Tom