MUSIC FOR TV PRODUCTION & SHOWS

In this article, we will describe in a simple way the whole legal issue that involves music for television and I will show you how to easily get it legally without having to pay large amounts of money.

From the beginning we will forget free royalty-free music since it has certain disadvantages in the television medium:

Therefore we have three realistic options left:

1. The first option –royalty-free music– is suitable for any type of budget and can be easily obtained by acquiring the license through the Internet.
2. The second one –music under managed or protected rights– is adequate if we want to use a famous song, which will increase the cost and difficulty to obtain the permission and together with the…
3. Third option –custom-tailored music– are more suitable for premium TV networks and major programs or commercials of well-known brands, since providing a custom solution and having a team behind increases the prices and timings.

Let see them one by one:

1. Royalty-Free Music for Television

Royalty-Free music refers to a type of music license that allows the buyer to pay the music license only once and use the music for as long as they wish, as opposed to “protected rights” licensing, for which the buyer pays a royalty according to the number of times that the song is played or used.

Where can we find this kind of music?

There are some marketplaces on the Internet, but the biggest of them is Audiojungle.

In addition to offering nearly half a million songs and sound effects classified by musical genres, duration, and tempo, it includes a very effective search engine that saves us time and offers several different licenses depending on the size of the audience estimated for our TV show.

Let’s see below different samples for different purposes in television:

This one is often a more serious type of music, corporate type. It is usually used a lot in openings when the program starts, as an introduction for the viewer.

In this video we’ll see a compilation of several musical curtains from different European television programs:

As you can see they are short and fast songs, conveying expectation about what is to come. If you are interested, you can listen and get the license for them here.

We wrote an entire article specifically for this type of television advertising: music for commercials.

We explored the use of famous songs for advertising purposes and its cost.

As any TV show Producer knows, it is essential to use good background music and sound effects to entertain and maintain the constant attention of the viewer.

If this is our case, we must have a more or less clear idea of the genre or at least the type of song we are looking for, so we can narrow our search on the music marketplace.

We can always spend a good time listening to several songs, downloading the previews and deciding later.

Once the song or songs have been decided, we have to understand what kind of license we should acquire so that we do not have any subsequent problems about copyrights later on.

The different musical licenses

The prices of the licenses according to the audience of our television program are:

They are ridiculous prices for the budgets that usually run the television channels, since, in recent years and thanks to the Internet, many musicians have come to create this kind of music, causing the cost to be standardized.

So, which one of them we should choose?

To help you we have created this small form:

Having seen all the assumptions in which to use royalty free music, let’s move on to the next option that we have.

2. Music under Managed Rights

Yeah, that famous song you want to use or the version of it, it’s under Protected or Managed Rights.

Suppose we are interested in using Enrique Iglesias’ latest success for our insurance advertisement.

What we cannot do, obviously, is to buy the song and add it without giving it a second thought. We will have to ask permission from the record company that owns the rights and agree with them a payment of royalties, which is a certain amount of money each time our commercial appears.

And what’s the cost of those royalties?

It depends.

Many famous singers refuse to cede their rights to use their songs in advertisements because they don’t want to associate their name with a particular brand or product, others give away their songs for free and others claim large amounts of money.

Therefore, in this case, it is best to contact not directly with the artist, since he will have neither voice nor vote, but with the record company or its manager/representative and be willing to negotiate.

Custom-tailored music for Television

As a last option, we can also create custom music, with the advantage of having a 100% customized and adequate product and the disadvantage of higher costs than royalty-free music and to wait longer for its creation.

Our methodology of work is the following one:

To contact us about it, send us an email to [email protected] or simply write us on our contact page.

Ready! Through the article we have gone through all the options available when it comes to getting music for television, the next step is simply to decide which of those options best fits your project idea and take action.