Movie soundtrack rights?!


Question: this is for people in "The Biz". i have a small library of music on my computer. i'm thinking about making a small independent movie, and editing it together on my computer. i'll probably just end up giving dvd copies to the people i can con into acting in the film, and there's a 99.999% chance that it will never see the inside of a movie theater. if i use some of the music in my library for the soundtrack for the movie do i have to pay any kind of licensing fee, or any fee at all, for the rights to use the music? even if i still own the cd's the music come from?


Answers: this is for people in "The Biz". i have a small library of music on my computer. i'm thinking about making a small independent movie, and editing it together on my computer. i'll probably just end up giving dvd copies to the people i can con into acting in the film, and there's a 99.999% chance that it will never see the inside of a movie theater. if i use some of the music in my library for the soundtrack for the movie do i have to pay any kind of licensing fee, or any fee at all, for the rights to use the music? even if i still own the cd's the music come from?

The rights you're talking about are called "sync" rights or Synchronization rights. Basically, if you think no one will ever see your movie you don't have anything to worry about. But if someone DOES see your movie that owns the rights to one of those songs, then "owning the CD" doesn't help you at all. The only thing that the CD entitles you to is to listen to it. Once you "sync" it to something else, from a slide show to a movie or TV show, you have to track down the owner of the copyright and pay them. This can be WAY more than you would ever imagine.

I worked on a theatrical trailer for a movie and we used a 20 year old fairly well known song and it cost $100,000 in sync rights for the music and performance rights for the band that sang it.

I had a client request that I use a hit song for a video at a trade show. Just for the one-time only use of playing a song at a small trade show, it was going to cost $30,000 for sync and performance rights. We ended up buying sync rights only and having a studio band re-record the song. That only cost about $5,000 for the sync rights and another $7,000 for the no-name band to record a new version.

That said, I just made a highlights reel for my kids' football team banquet and I used all kinds of pop music and didn't bother to pay, because I didn't think anyone would go after me for that.

You can always put the music into your movie and then only worry about paying the sync rights if someone picks up the movie for theatrical release or DVD or broadcast.

I wouldn't submit it to any festivals with music like that, though. Most festivals have contracts forbidding unlicensed music use.

Technically yes you do but as long as you don't enter any film contests or try to broadcast it you should get away with it.

there's a software called Smartsound. it's a scoring software, if you purchase the software, they have royalty free music that you can use for your indie movie without paying additional fees once you buy the software.



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