Royalty Free Background Music Collections?

[gafftaper]

Hey everyone, I'm looking at purchasing a collection of royalty free background music for the new college theater. I'm curious if anyone out there has purchased such a product. I've found several websites with collections... this one looks particularly good to me. But who knows until you actually purchase it. Anybody got positive experiences with this kinds of stuff.

[Thomas]

I've never had anyone rash me for royalties with background music!? DJs don't pay royalties, why should sound companies- especially since we're not re-performing the music...

either way, the easiest background music is always the most obscure stuff. I like to use the Mercedes-Benz Mixed Tapes, http://www3.mercedes-benz.com/mixedtape/mixedtape.html

[Grog12]

DJ's aren't charging admission when they're working weddings ect....

In clubs, that's a whole different story.

Question gaff...does your College have a radio station?

[gafftaper]

We've been down this path before in a license debate thread a year or so back. I believe you'll find that DJ's are required by law to pay ASCAP/BMI fees... but usually don't. If the DJ is personally charging admission or not has nothing to do with it. The DJ is getting paid to play music that someone else wrote and recorded for a public performance. That's way beyond the personal use rights you get when purchasing a CD.

The same is true for a theater using any recorded music as pre or post show or as part of the sound design for the performance itself. Do most theaters actually do it? No. But it's the law and you could get busted with a pretty steep fine if the ASCAP police start enforcing the law.

Oh yeah and your recorded sound effects also are covered by the same laws.

Back to the question. Anyone own any of the various collections?

No Grog. No radio station... and you're right they would be a great source for the stuff.

[Grog12]

Actually gaff where I was going with the radio station question was this...

At my undergrad we were told that our college radio stations liscense to broadcast covered the entire school not just the station itself because of how it was purchased...therefor we were able to play liscensed music during our shows.

Is this a crock? Probably but I don't know I never took the time to truely check into it.

DJ's now are also getting around a lot of the copyright/ASCAP/BMI buisness with the various editing and "smashups" they're doing as "derivitive work." But you're right they should be paying the fees....

We've got a large collection of effects/music here but as for the royalty free I'll have to look around a bit...

[avkid]

Originally Posted by Grog12

Actually gaff where I was going with the radio station question was this...
At my undergrad we were told that our college radio stations liscense to broadcast covered the entire school not just the station itself because of how it was purchased...therefor we were able to play liscensed music during our shows.
Is this a crock?

The organization that runs the school would be the licensee according to the FCC.

[gafftaper]

I'm in a situation... just like with the Sound Effects thread... where I've got some money to spend in my budget and want to start the sound design portion of my curriculum out LEGALLY. Which means buying a good but expensive collection. I'm looking at the www.music2hues.com Flagship Series. It's $900 but it's also 71 CD's of music to work with.

[BenFranske]

An alternative idea might be to get a local band to come in and you could record them yourself for use during pre-show, intermission, etc. In exchange you could give them a copy of the recording which they could sell, use as a demo, etc. or you could buy them all dinner or maybe you could put a tag in the program credits about pre-show music provided by... Just some ideas. Personally, I'd be a lot happier with a local acoustic musician or jazz band doing some custom recordings for me than the canned royalty free stuff which sounds...well...canned to me.

[gafftaper]

Originally Posted by BenFranske

An alternative idea might be to get a local band to come in and you could record them yourself for use during pre-show, intermission, etc. In exchange you could give them a copy of the recording which they could sell, use as a demo, etc. or you could buy them all dinner or maybe you could put a tag in the program credits about pre-show music provided by... Just some ideas. Personally, I'd be a lot happier with a local acoustic musician or jazz band doing some custom recordings for me than the canned royalty free stuff which sounds...well...canned to me.

Yeah live is of course always better. But then you have to pay for the rights to the music itself. Plus you may have to hire the band as well which can get mighty expensive. We also have a digital music program on campus with people who can do custom work for us.

But the point of this is to have have a collection of music on hand that I can use for teaching sound design and also having the ability to legally hassle free use that music in a real show.

[gafftaper]

Originally Posted by charcoaldabs

Gaff, worse comes to worse you can stand on the side with a drum and a harmonica... just sayin' is all.

Thanks Charc... you're starting to sound like one of those Aussies.