Music licensing can be a very confusing topic. My intent with this article is to give you enough detail about what music licenses are and what are your rights to use music in advertising and/or video productions.

A few months ago I was contacted by a company that was celebrating 20 years in business. They wanted to put together a radio commercial that would highlight their celebration. His request was to use the Kool and the Gangs song Celebration in his radio ad. I explained to them that to do this they would have to obtain a license which would cost them quite a bit of money. This was not an option for them due to their limited budget and they ultimately told me that they “went in another direction” with their advertising.

If you had agreed to use this song without obtaining a license, you would have put both companies at risk. It wasn’t worth the risk just to make a sale. Be careful that there are unscrupulous producers that are going to do this type of illegal activity, so the best protection you have is knowledge.

Copyright law protects music writers by giving them the exclusive right to their music. Once a piece of music is copyrighted, it is illegal to use it without getting permission from the copyright owner.

There are actually two types of copyright in the United States. One is the actual copyright which is denoted by the familiar C with a circle around it. This protection is for the melody, the lyrics and the arrangement of the music. Copyright is generally owned by the actual artist who wrote the piece or their publisher.

The second form of copyright is the recording itself. This is denoted by a circled P. This protection covers performance of the song recorded on tape or digital media and released on CD or other media. Many times a record company or production company will own this performance right.

If you want to use a song in a production, you must obtain a master use license from the copyright owner and a synchronization license (often referred to as a sync license) from the owner of the song’s performance.

Sync license fees vary widely. Low-end TV use (music playing from the car radio in one scene) can cost up to $2,000. On a movie, the fee can be as high as $10,000. A popular song is worth more, possibly $3,000 for TV and $25,000 for movies. A song used as the theme song for a movie can fetch anywhere from $50,000 to $75,000. Commercials can get even more money. Fees for a popular song can range from $25,000 to $500,000 or more per year. The typical range for a well-known song is $75,000 to $200,000 for a year of domestic use in the United States on television and radio.

I think you’ll agree that that’s a lot of money and usually well over budget for many video and radio productions.

To circumvent these outrageous fees, music production companies sell purchased music. When you buy an outright CD, you don’t need to get a license to use the music. You can use the music without problems and at a much lower cost.

Purchased or royalty-free music, as it applies to my products, means that for the one-time purchase price, you can legally use the music in your productions for the lifetime of the property. All music copyrights belong to Zebra Music LLC. My jingle license agreement allows a protected area of ​​200 miles. By doing this, no other business in a local market will have the same jingle.

Many other production companies offer a similar purchase music license. I would advise you to read the license agreements with other production companies and ask questions if in doubt.

Network broadcasting and international broadcasting of purchased production music is licensed through a performance organization (such as BMI or ASCAP). The revenue these songs produce when they are broadcast is paid directly from the broadcast station’s license, NOT from you as the producer. These performance organizations then, in turn, pay each artist based on how much of their song or songs got airplay on radio or television.

I hope this article has cleared up any confusion or questions you’ve had about copyrights and music licensing.