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So, what is Royalty-Free Music?
While many of us don’t have a huge need for music in our online or multimedia projects, there will surely come a time when it helps complete a presentation. Whether it be flash or video, music can be extremely efficient in capturing and retaining your audience’s attention.
With that said, where should we go to find such music clips? I don’t think Led Zeppelin would be too happy if they found out we were using “Black Dog” for a flash intro. To get music the legal way, there are an abundance of royalty-free music sites that offer some high-quality music for a very affordable price. Traditionally, one would have to pay a “royalty” every time a song is played in a multimedia production and the artist/record label would receive this percentage. With the presence of the web and video, this would nearly impossible to monitor. Not to mention, the amount of money a business would have to provide in order to use music in a project would be extraordinary.
With royalty-free music, one can purchase a song for a one-time fee. You purchase the song under the agreement that you will be using this for some type of production, whether it is web, video, etc. You can use this song with your project - however you may not resell the song itself. This eliminates the previous way of having to pay a royalty every time the song is played which is cumbersome and costly. This is obviously a more utilized method when it comes to music in video/web productions.
So…where can you find such music selections? Compiled below is a list of some of the better royalty-free music sites:
The Music Bakery
http://www.musicbakery.com/The Music Bakery has some great music selections broken into various genres for an affordable price. You can purchase an entire song for about $40 or purchase clips for a lesser amount. Your $40 purchase will give you the rights to use it forever, which is especially nice when using it for different mediums and projects.
Premium Beat
http://www.premiumbeat.comPremium Beat also has a great variety of music and is very similar to the Music Bakery. They break the genres down a little bit further and tend to offer a more modern sound.
I Am Music
http://www.iammusic.comI Am Music has a large library or songs and loops from various CD's and the ability of custom sounds.
These three sites seem to offer the most in terms of variety, affordability, and quality. For one affordable price, you can purchase a royalty-free song for any project you desire. Hopefully this has helped you in understanding how royalty-free music works and shown you some of the better choices for music on the web.
Also, see:
Wikipedia Definition for Royalty-free Music
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalty_free_music
BeatSuite’s Detailed writings on Royalty-free Music:
http://www.beatsuite.com/pdfs/whatisroyaltyfreemusic.pdf
