Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated in /home/content/a/m/e/amediaprof/html/content/mambots/content/fbdiscussbot.php on line 355
Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated in /home/content/a/m/e/amediaprof/html/content/mambots/content/fbdiscussbot.php on line 355
Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated in /home/content/a/m/e/amediaprof/html/content/mambots/content/d4j_mosimage_ext.php on line 347
| How can I use music legally in my videos? |
|
|
| Written by Administrator | |
| Sunday, 09 December 2007 | |
|
At Issue:
Digital recording and playback coupled with the global connectivity of the internet have created a growing number of legal and ethical challenges when it comes to music copyright. Disclaimer:
Nothing in this presentation should be considered legal advice. “I am a producer, not a lawyer, Jim.” Most educational institutions and school districts have attorneys and also have intellectual property policies. I encourage every educator and administrator to take the time to become familiar with the policies concerning intellectual property and copyright that their institutions and districts have published. That said; let's look at the issue here.
At Issue:
Digital recording and playback coupled with the global connectivity of the internet have created a growing number of legal and ethical challenges when it comes to music copyright. Rulemaking and law revisions are strained trying to keep pace with the challenges. Balancing the rights of the creators, the advances in technology, and the public good is not a simple task. Copyright rules and laws have therefore have been changing rapidly. Here are a couple of links to articles that I think you will find of interest.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act I am not going to embark on a long explanation of the laws around copyright. Suffice it to say that using someone else’s music/recording in your presentation/video other than within the narrow boundaries of academic fair use or new situations created by the TEACH act is unlawful. Please do not define academic or educational use as “for the benefit of education.” The University of Texas article about the TEACH Act has a nice checklist to help you define the proper use. Every now and then I hear, “No one will prosecute my school for using that song.” I will leave that discussion for you and your attorney, but I do want you to consider this. Your students learn more from what you model than what you say. In this era of illegal downloading at every turn, your students are rightly confused about what is right and wrong when it comes to copyright issues. All the classroom discussion you want to through at it will not erase the lesson that you teach by what you do. Is teaching them that the law does not apply if you do not get caught support the mission of your school? OH MY! What do I do about music for my videos and presentation? You have come to the right place. I am going to present several options that are professional, easy and budget accessible.
Solutions:
You basically have two options. You can license music or you can create your own music. A couple of years ago these two options would strike fear into the heart of almost any budget and time conscience producer, yet alone an educator. The digital age has come to our rescue this time. Licensing quality music is now affordable and creating music has never been easier.
Licensing:
Licensing a current or past popular song can be expensive and time consuming. Occasionally you will get lucky, but the process is filled with pitfalls that this presentation does not have the time to cover. I just want to point out that permission must be granted by the composer, artist, producer and publisher. Any one of those rights may have been sold to someone else. Even if the artist says yes, that does not give you all of the permissions that you need. Most of the time, the artist has sold their rights just to get it published. Consult an attorney before looking at this direction.
Currently there is plenty of music specifically created for presentations and videos available to license. It comes in almost all musical types. There may even be a sound-a-like for that popular song that you were thinking of using. This music is in two broad categories of licensing; needle drop/per use, and buyout/royalty free. With a needle drop library, you pay a fee each time that you use a cut from the library. If you use the song more than one time in a project, you will pay the fee for each use. Needle drop libraries often furnish the recordings to you in the form of libraries so that you can choose the right song when you need it. Per use libraries may charge a fee by the project or by the use. Some will have a fee for a standard 13 week broadcast time period in a specific market after which another fee is charged. The quality of the music and the recordings are normally excellent. It is important that you carefully read the license and the rate card before choosing to use a specific library. While needle drop/per use libraries can be great for commercial productions, the per use fees can be a bit expensive for anything other than the most important projects. For most educational institutions, royalty free libraries are an excellent solution for music. With a royalty free library you pay a one time fee and receive a copy of the recordings. Within the limitations of the specific license, you may use the music in the library in any or all of your projects as you choose. The quality of the music and the recordings vary greatly from poor electronic simulations to acoustic full orchestral productions. There are many high quality, moderately priced royalty free libraries available and more are being released all of the time. Again, read the licenses carefully. There are often requirements to file cue sheets or other simple limitations that you must be aware of. There are some new approaches to royalty free music libraries that help give the music a custom feel for your production. They use layered recordings where you can choose what instrumentation you hear or they use phrase blocks so that you can tailor the arrangement to your length. Check out SmartSound, StackTraxx and AKM’s GoTrax in the products links.
Music Creation:
You could have someone compose and record the music for your projects, but now with loop based music tools, creating your own original music for your presentations and videos has been made easy, even for people with no musical experience. Loop based music is created using a software tool such as Sony’s ACID family, Apple's Logic Pro and similar applications. The application uses small snips of music in the form of beats, single instruments and even large group recordings. Each snip, called a loop is cut so that it can be used as a loop or as a ‘one shot.’ Special metadata is added to the recording so that the computer can match the tempo, key and beat of the loop to the rest of the loops used in the composition. In that way, it is as simple as choosing loops that you like and ordering and layering them to your taste or need. The computer adjusts the tempo, the key, and it even aligns the beats of all of the loops to make it sound like it was all put together by a professional.
Loop based music creation tools come in versions for all musical abilities. Super Duper Music Looper from Sony is for elementary school users, ACID Music Studio is for the inexperienced video music user and ACID Pro is used by Grammy award winners around the world. Again, this is just one companies offerings. Other companies have similar tools that offer midi sequencing and other advanced tools. Apple has Logic Pro and Garage Band for the Mac. Here are two quickies that I put together in a few minutes. One was put together in Acid and the other was just thrown together in my video editor using the loops. The first part of this one is what you might expect from loop based music; an electronic beat. The second part of it is a sound that you might not expect from loop based creation. It is piano and bass. SAMPLE.MP3 The second one is a more acoustic style using piano flute and bassoon loops. QUICKPIANO.MP3 I offer these sample not because they are good, but because I want to point out that loop based music does not have to be hip-hop or techno. I will have to admit that my students enjoy creating their own loop based music, and yes it is mostly if not all rap and hip-hop. At the live presentation, I will be demonstrating the Sony ACID family of products with loops from a number of sources. PRODUCT LINKS This is not a comprehensive list by any meaning of the word. These are just some of the ones mentioned in the FETC presentation. If you use a search engine such as Google and look for Royalty Free Music you will get tons of hits. Just make sure to preview them for quality and read their terms.
Royalty Free Tailored:
Layered:
Special License:
Loop Based creation and Loops:
|
|
| Last Updated ( Sunday, 16 December 2007 ) |
| Next > |
|---|
