Dear fellow forum members,

Can anyone tell me or send me a link that I can read to acquaint myself with music licensing?
I have quite a few question I don't know much about.

1) Is licensing music necessary? What happens if I use copyright music?
2) If I license music, what advantages does it give me vs not licensing it?
3) Licensing music, will it allow me to freely post on Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook my promotional wedding video trailers with no fear?

Why I am confused now is because I purchased a license for one of my songs, posted on Youtube, but now they claim they have the right to run ads on it. I mean I can use almost all songs on Youtube as long as I allow ads to run on it that's what I thought, so if they are still gonna run ads on my licensed music what's the point?
I used Music Bed for licensing.
Here is a capture below of what message I received from youtube.

Have you contacted Music Bed about this and asked how to document to YouTube that the music is indeed licensed?

Andrew

Have you contacted Music Bed about this and asked how to document to YouTube that the music is indeed licensed?

Andrew

Hi Andrew, yes, wrote an e-mail to them yesterday and waiting for their reply!

I know Songfreedom gives you the license contract in a pdf. I use Vimeo & don't encounter this dilemna, but I would think you can send in the pdf or contract to YT for approval. In fact I recall doing this years ago for a Stock20.com song I think. It was the early days & I think YT was just flagging anything with clean music.

To answer your questions as best I can tho:

1) Is licensing music necessary? What happens if I use copyright music? IMHO it is 'necessary'. Personally I hate wedding vids with nonlicensed music, and I know some songs can be obtained legally for cheap at sites like Songfreedom, but its a limited amount. Secondly years ago a video went viral for Tony Romos wedding and the videographer used a Coldplay song & was sued re it. You never know, plus its just good practice. What if in a year or two the music industry changes their mind and pulls ALL videos from YT, you'll have a backlog of trailers requiring a re-edit.

2) If I license music, what advantages does it give me vs not licensing it? Freedom of mind without fear, and you 'should' be able to show on YT without ads (hopefully).

3) Licensing music, will it allow me to freely post on Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook my promotional wedding video trailers with no fear? Vimeo doesn't flag it (I think I read they're allowed to just do a form of revenue share with ASCAP or whoever). Kinda still in that Angel Investors mode. FB & YT flags it, I would think if you did pay for the song you can send in some form of the contract where you bought it from.


As an aside, for anyone who previously used songfreedom.com it seems they switched their format to a monthly subscription service, not a pay per song. Unfortunate, as I don't think I use them enough to justify the price. TBH I was mostly using them for the few hits they had (Gaga, Maroon 5 etc) and had pretty much used most of the songs already, don't wanna repeat them so I'll have to learn to create highlights using songs from TMB & others.

Hi Hakob,

I've researched this thorny issue a little, and in my country (UK), and I'd imagine in most Western countries, the rules appear to be:

1) Is licensing music necessary? What happens if I use copyright music?

You are not allowed to use music which have been composed by other artists without permission, unless it falls under fair use (which is a grey area that includes news-gathering, parody use and some other circumstances).

In regards to wedding videos, it's its not specifically music that specifies free to use then you would need to license it if you want to be totally 100% legal. The second question is a matter of luck. Most record companies wouldn't pursue a small company in using one of their songs due to the time and money it would cost to resolve it; however there is still that risk, especially if you're a bigger deal and not charging relatively small amounts or getting small levels of attention on your videos (if published online).

Having said that, a client's wedding film on disc or USB is VERY unlikely to even be seen by a record company or artist. 99.99% of the risk is from any online uploads.

2) If I license music, what advantages does it give me vs not licensing it?

Well, if you're dealing with other professional business partners then it's always a nice touch to say you're doing things by the book. But a wedding client is most certainly not going to care if their discs are licensed or not. I know I wouldn't. So, it can offer you some protection and peace of mind; but again, the chances of a licensing company or artist going after you based on work only your clients will see is extremely small.

3) Licensing music, will it allow me to freely post on Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook my promotional wedding video trailers with no fear?

Online is a whole different story. I have checked with PPL/PRS licensing and they say they cannot offer licences for online - you must get permission from the artist or you may get away with uploading on YouTube and simply allowing the company to place adverts on your video if they want to. The chances of a records company trying to sue you through YouTube with no prior warning to at least take the video down first is unlikely, but not unheard-of.

YouTube also employ algorithms to detect copyrighted music and may automatically mute or make your your video private as soon as it has been uploaded. That just depends on the song, and perhaps some luck.

Vimeo seems to currently be the online format of choice as it offers no such algorithm check, plus it is a lot more closed off than YouTube, so only the people you choose to share your video with are most likely to actually see it, and not lots of random people, including copyright enforcers, that you will find on YouTube.

Facebook also can detect copyrighted music, but doesn't appear to be as harsh as YouTube in my experience.

But the bottom line is that you're technically breaking the law by uploading any copyrighted music without permission, even if you have a PRS licence, as this covers physical media playback only. It's your choice whether to do things 100% legal or take your chances.

What was the reply from Music Bed?

Andrew

Hi Hakob,

I've researched this thorny issue a little, and in my country (UK), and I'd imagine in most Western countries, the rules appear to be:

1) Is licensing music necessary? What happens if I use copyright music?

You are not allowed to use music which have been composed by other artists without permission, unless it falls under fair use (which is a grey area that includes news-gathering, parody use and some other circumstances).

In regards to wedding videos, it's its not specifically music that specifies free to use then you would need to license it if you want to be totally 100% legal. The second question is a matter of luck. Most record companies wouldn't pursue a small company in using one of their songs due to the time and money it would cost to resolve it; however there is still that risk, especially if you're a bigger deal and not charging relatively small amounts or getting small levels of attention on your videos (if published online).

Having said that, a client's wedding film on disc or USB is VERY unlikely to even be seen by a record company or artist. 99.99% of the risk is from any online uploads.

2) If I license music, what advantages does it give me vs not licensing it?

Well, if you're dealing with other professional business partners then it's always a nice touch to say you're doing things by the book. But a wedding client is most certainly not going to care if their discs are licensed or not. I know I wouldn't. So, it can offer you some protection and peace of mind; but again, the chances of a licensing company or artist going after you based on work only your clients will see is extremely small.

3) Licensing music, will it allow me to freely post on Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook my promotional wedding video trailers with no fear?

Online is a whole different story. I have checked with PPL/PRS licensing and they say they cannot offer licences for online - you must get permission from the artist or you may get away with uploading on YouTube and simply allowing the company to place adverts on your video if they want to. The chances of a records company trying to sue you through YouTube with no prior warning to at least take the video down first is unlikely, but not unheard-of.

YouTube also employ algorithms to detect copyrighted music and may automatically mute or make your your video private as soon as it has been uploaded. That just depends on the song, and perhaps some luck.

Vimeo seems to currently be the online format of choice as it offers no such algorithm check, plus it is a lot more closed off than YouTube, so only the people you choose to share your video with are most likely to actually see it, and not lots of random people, including copyright enforcers, that you will find on YouTube.

Facebook also can detect copyrighted music, but doesn't appear to be as harsh as YouTube in my experience.

But the bottom line is that you're technically breaking the law by uploading any copyrighted music without permission, even if you have a PRS licence, as this covers physical media playback only. It's your choice whether to do things 100% legal or take your chances.


So, licensing through licensing sites only allows me to use artists song on a physical media copy like Blu-Ray/DVD/USB?
Wait so does this mean I have to contact the artist every time to get their permission even after licencing their song every time I post something on youtube for it to be 100% legit?

https://www.prsformusic.com/licences/releasing-music-products/limited-manufacture

https://www.prsformusic.com/licences/using-music-online/limited-online-music-licence

Paul.

So, licensing through licensing sites only allows me to use artists song on a physical media copy like Blu-Ray/DVD/USB?
Wait so does this mean I have to contact the artist every time to get their permission even after licencing their song every time I post something on youtube for it to be 100% legit?
No. There is some confusion here between blanket licensing for physical media in the UK (Australia has a similar scheme) & licensing a particular track from the likes of SongFreedom. In the former case it's not available for online use whereas in the latter case it is.

Running into this same issue. In the past I always uploaded my wedding videos to Vimeo, just out of habit from the beginning days of 2010/2012ish era. Never really thought to upload to YT till now so I'm beginning to double up & upload to YT also.

To clarify, I licensed all my music thru Songfreedom.com or The Music Bed. I got hit with a copyright disclaimer right away. All good, I just uploaded my Songfreedom license pdf to Google Drive & linked in in my 'dispute' stated I paid $60 for the songs license, figuring that'll secure it. Well about an hour later I get a generic decline saying the copyright holder 'has decided that their copyright claim is still valid'???


Well the songfreedom license specifically reads I now "have the ability to synchronize and stream this title" and that "5 DVD digital copies and stream on your company's website and social sites related to your company"?

Is Youtube not considered a 'social site'? Just upsetting, hopefully it doesn't incur a strike against my YT account, although admittedly I am not an avid YT creator, was trying to get more into it.

Anyone else encounter musical claims against you when you had SF or TMB clearances? Did you eventually win out or just let the ads run in the end. Maybe at some point they'll review it further within the 30 day window.

Echo what other have said

1. Use Vimeo instead of Youtube. Yt has become a money hungry ad machine with heavy handed copyright policy “ you’re guilty until proven innocent”. It is what it is, they aren’t changing so save yourself the grief.

2. Buying a license or using copyright free music is the right thing to do don’t let YT get you down.

Anyone else encounter musical claims against you when you had SF

I have had issues with songfreedom a few year back, in their database was a song from a known band that I heard playing on the radio, think it was 20 dollar or so I had to pay for unlimited use and I found that a bit hard to believe so I checked with Sabam, the Belgian Association of Authors, Composers and Publishers and they told me "no way" and if I wanted to use that song I had to pay additional licensing cost which would be a lot higher.

Songfreedom kept on saying however I had nothing to worry about until I showed them the reply from sabam and then they said it had to do with GEMA in Germany and restrictions for use on youtube but that had nothing to do with my problem as I was using it on vimeo.

Basically they lied to me and that was the last time I used music from them, now I use artlist.io and strictly stay on vimeo, so far so good.

I don’t like licensing pricing practices and I think there is a lot room for abuse where companies sell you rights they don’t really own. I was looking at musicbed and they ask how much money is the production. This is akin to buying a bottle of water and the price being variable based on your income.

If I put a video on YouTube and use my Smart Sound Royalty Free music You Tube instantly sends me an email and puts ads on the video (or even bans it in some countries) I dispute the claim with them and refer them back to SmartSound and after 30 days or so they send me another email saying the dispute was successful and the ads have been removed. OK, all well and good but my video STILL had to run with annoying ads for 30 days AND the person claiming copyright probably got a bit of income too.

The whole system is badly flawed so you might as well use the latest and greatest music and accept the advertising and income generation. They will nail you one way or another!!

What is really silly is that if publishers charged a simple and reasonable fee to use music they would make a fortune from the millions of videos posted every day!!

If I put a video on YouTube and use my Smart Sound Royalty Free music You Tube instantly sends me an email and puts ads on the video (or even bans it in some countries) I dispute the claim with them and refer them back to SmartSound and after 30 days or so they send me another email saying the dispute was successful and the ads have been removed. OK, all well and good but my video STILL had to run with annoying ads for 30 days AND the person claiming copyright probably got a bit of income too.

That is no longer true, when a claim is disputed the ad income is held by YouTube and assigned retroactively to the party that prevails.

Do they retroactive remove the ads and/or send you compensation putting ads on your video? :p

Do they retroactive remove the ads and/or send you compensation putting ads on your video? :p
They put the proceeds of the ads during the dispute into your account when the dispute is settled in your favor.

Perhaps YouTube should charge for storage and streaming cost :p

What is really silly is that if publishers charged a simple and reasonable fee to use music they would make a fortune from the millions of videos posted every day!!
Well right now on YouTube many charge absolutely nothing for you to use their work, all they want in return is to get income from ads.
Personally I think that is a great model!

I have used jamendo, audiojungle and audionetwork on Youtube and Vimeo with no problems. I always credit the composer and music source as well as list the invoice number with a few digits x out. I am mostly doing non-commercial projects now so the licenses don't cost much.

They put the proceeds of the ads during the dispute into your account when the dispute is settled in your favor.

Perhaps YouTube should charge for storage and streaming cost :p
I understand both sides but I can’t help feel the rights of individuals and small business get trampled on by corporate entities.

Do you really think if you were paying a subscription fee to youtube they would act any different? Look at tv. The rational was to support free broadcast tv there would need to be ads. Then you had cable tv that you had to pay for the content so no ads right??? Youtube has changed. It used to be an interesting place but now it has become filled with people shilling products or trying to monetize something. It’s rampant with ads.

Thanks everyone, sorry for venting, was in the midst of it. Against a behemoth like YT "it is what it is".

Yeah, I use Vimeo for my highlights & when sending to brides. I do purchase the songs from SF & TMB as precaution, and I like to emphasize that I do things right. Not sure brides have ever cared, but it also helps me sway them away from the typical "Uptown Funks" and Coldplay/The Chainsmokers "I Want Something Just Like This". I'm just trying to expand my web presence a bit, and you never know if couples now are searching YT for 'Philadelphia Wedding Videographers" a bit as opposed to Google. Just upsetting to do things the right way, and have it blow up. But otoh I suppose every other video has ads so theres that.


Yeah Chris Harding, I had something similar happen, an old video of mine I converted or maybe a friends video of playing at a bar or something I uploaded was flagged. I know they're music wasn't 'licensed' but it was just sorta 'auto flagged' for being music. ( I can't remember the specifics right now).

Not the end of the world as I do use Vimeo, but I'll send an email off to Songfreedom to see what they say as I'm sure others have encountered it. Interesting thought about not sure who these websites are 'claiming' to offer licenses, I never thought of that, although I'm fairly sure they're legit (I hope).

Never use YT for professional work. Fills your space with ads and will often autoplay another video which could be by a competitor. Also the use of copyright music for a business such as yourself isnt allowed. They run ads but that doesnt mean its ok to do it. Thats for the common folk.

Also Vimeo DO have an audio listening algorithm that automatically flags copyright work. This only runs on public videos and not private ones as Vimeo us used by big studios to share films for approval and pre-production which features copyright music before they gain clearance. They have said that it is coming though for all videos, they just need to work out that little kink.

So licence all your work. They will only sue you if you go viral (lucky us hey!) but what happens when the day comes where Vimeo and all the other hosting sites refuse to let you use copyright music and take down all your demos?

Thats for the common folk.

Oh dear!

And the irony, and monetized!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwYJDEihWqTF1hwJwE3ahCA/videos

When did i say I do as I say?

Plus they are licenced. Didnt even notice there were copyright disputes so thanks for the heads up. I get to file my dispute and clear my account :)

So licence all your work. They will only sue you if you go viral

You mean they sue you when you don't license your work? All my films that are publicly avialable on vimeo contain licensed music that I buy from artlist.io, for all the years I have uploaded to vimeo I never had an issue and I don't expect any in the future.

Eventhough I know that videos placed on YouTube would give me better visibility through a google search compared to vimeo I never will use it, with vimeo I have controll over my films, with YouTube I don't, I watched the first film on your YouTube channel and at the end of the film I got to see a weddingfilm from another weddingvideographer, not something you want if it would be a competitor.

Our youtube is a little neglected. Today is a cleanup day which will probably mean shutting down the youtube as its a pain uploading to multiple places and having to dispute copyright both times.

HOLY CRAP we had some outdated stuff out there. Didn't even want to bother updating yt so trashed that and did a spring clean on the video stuff. Loads of new features I didn't know they had like you can add a call to action at the end now and not just select a few vids or a line of text.

Also decided to watch our very first vimeo upload. Oh boy!

Hello. I'm a music rights consultant, former VP of Licensing and Business Affairs at Sony/ATV, and currently working with the newly launched music licensing platform www.tracksmusic.com. Several years ago, I was part of a committee to help find a vendor to build and develop a “micro sync” licensing platform where creators of all types could license popular music for a reasonable fee and share the resulting productions on social media. Tracks has become that company, partnering with the music industry to offer thousands of hit songs from every genre and era for use in professionally produce life event videos, with thousands more to come. The license allows for the posting of licensed videos on social media including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Pricing begins at $59 per track for videos and $10 for slideshows, with discounts for bundled credits of 5, 10 and 20 tracks. During Open Beta, all credits are priced at $39 regardless of the number of credits purchased. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Hi Sean,

From VP to consultant? I'm almost too scared to ask what happened. :D

I'm finding it interesting just sampling the songs in your collection (excellent source for 1980s music, BTW) as your audio would have a much closer path to the masters than other services would. It's neat to hear the difference / quality.

Andrew

I noticed in the FAQ for Tracks that licensing is US only. Not sure how this works for uploading to social media.

Nothing "happened". I left SATV to work with companies like Tracks to develop broader solutions for music licensing. Only so much you can do when working in house for one company. With Tracks, I have the opportunity to help make some big changes by developing new products / solutions for creators.

Also, the U.S. territory restriction only applies to where the videographers are based. Social media posts can be shared worldwide.

Hey Sean, welcome along. You'll soon get used to the sense of humour we have 'round these parts. :-)

Andrew

Also, the U.S. territory restriction only applies to where the videographers are based. Social media posts can be shared worldwide.
I'm still not sure of the implications. Does this mean that only US residents can purchase a licence from Tracks?

In line with Nigel's query, as a UK based videographer, can I buy a track for use on a video hosted on vimeo and embeded on my website?

Also, the U.S. territory restriction only applies to where the videographers are based. Social media posts can be shared worldwide.

I wouldn't touch that music with a stick, it reminds me a bit of Songfreedom who also had some popular commercial songs in their database and promised me I was covered, but I wasn't and that was confirmed by Sabam, the Belgian association of authors, composers and publishers.

Hi Noa
I've seen you mention in other posts that you provide a 5 min film for online sharing. Where do you source music for that (assuming you are using copyrighted material)? Currently, all of my online videos have royalty free music on which is quite limiting.

All my music comes from artlist.io

Hello. I'm a music rights consultant, former VP of Licensing and Business Affairs at Sony/ATV, and currently working with the newly launched music licensing platform www.tracksmusic.com. Pricing begins at $59 per track for videos and $10 for slideshows, with discounts for bundled credits of 5, 10 and 20 tracks. During Open Beta, all credits are priced at $39 regardless of the number of credits purchased. Please let me know if you have any questions.

If you say you are working with Trackmusic and being paid by them, is your post intended as advertisement to get us to sign up? As far as I know this is not allowed here unless you are a sponsor. But I could be wrong so it's best to let Chris decide.

I understand the skepticism and can't comment on Song Freedom or their practices. I'm posting to let folks know that there's a new resource in Tracks that was launched in partnership with the music business. To do this, agreements have been reached with dozens of labels and music publishers large and small and there will be more deals to come. Right now, the service is limited to U.S. based videographers. This is not a posting limitation for social media, it only affects where a business is based. Tracks is working with the industry to expand this territory, as well as allow for streamlined licensing of additional types of uses such as small business marketing, short films, non-profit and charitable promotions, etc. For some background on where this all started please see https://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/record-labels/1566550/riaa-nmpa-eyeing-simplified-music-licensing-system-could

My background can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-melia-984360b/. Any questions about music licensing in general, please feel free to reach out on the forum or at sean@rightsandcommerce.com

Getting music properly licensed is like opening a can of worms, there are so many exceptions per country and you have to read the fine print or even better, let a lawyer read it for you. Everyone should be very cautious when using commercial music, as long as you stay under the radar nobody might bother you but all it takes is a jealous videographer or your film going viral and drawing attention that you might end up loosing your business if you find out that your music is not licensed properly after all.

A few years back I was asked to use 15 seconds from "start me up" from the Rolling stones for a short animation that I had to provide to be used at a business event where it only was shown once for 500 businessmen on a cinemascreen. Those 15 seconds did cost 13000euro (15500dollar) acc to EMI so the organisation decided to use a more simple unknown song with a 50euro license :). This is just to give you an idea on what kind of invoice you could be expecting if you ever get noticed by such a organisation and when it appears that the license you use does not exactly cover you like you where told.