Of course, that’s not a problem for big companies with big budgets. The music industry often offers ‘per use’, ‘per project’ or ‘per period’ licenses, which limit the user quite considerably – and means that they would have to periodically purchase the license again and again. Some licenses give the user a variety of different rights others can be limited to just a few. Unfortunately, this isn’t usually the case, so you’d have to purchase the license and pay an initial fee (at least) for the right to use the music. If the author is a friend of yours, then you’re in luck – they’ll probably give you this license for free.

Anyone else would always require permission (in the form of a license) from them – or their legal representatives – to use that music.

They are the only people who can do whatever they like with that music. First of all: any piece of music or sound recording has an author or a copyright holder. But wait! It’s not quite as easy as that. When you hear this, you might think ‘Wow! It’s free? That’s so cool – where do I get it from?’ Some people start visiting royalty-free music websites, download music or demos from these websites, and start using the music in their projects – videos or movies, for example. Obviously, it means that the item covered by the term (whether that is music, images, articles or any other copyrighted material) can be used without having to pay any fees or ‘royalties’. So we’d like to clarify the situation.įirst, let’s look at the term ‘royalty-free’. Even different companies who offer ‘royalty-free’ music can mean different things when they use the term. However, this term is used differently across the world. Most people use royalty-free music to avoid the problems associated with copyright. That’s why we use music in our videos and other productions – without music, our creations would seem a bit lifeless. Music is capable of influencing our lives, changing our emotions and motivating us to do things.

Free royalty