Royalty Free Music: How It Works

    

 

 

Buyout music is synonymous with royalty free music, and simply describes a type of music that offers an up-front price for use with no on-going monthly payments; professionals “buy out” the royalty payments all at once for the music selections they want instead of paying each time they use it or on a monthly basis. More of these professionals are choosing to employ royalty free music to use as production music in their many projects to cut costs without compromising the quality they deserve and expect. Buyout music isn’t copyright-free, but by paying a small fee, you gain a royalty-free license to use the music in your production.

Royalty-Free Production Music (aka “Buyout Music”)

Buyout music is production music that can be licensed for a one-time, flat fee. This royalty-free production music can be synchronized with any type of production, including broadcast, corporate/internal, or film. Buyout music is an essential tool for multimedia developers and can serve as an affordable solution without compromising on quality. Buyout music is a huge category for the video producer. A quick Google search for the phrase “buyout music” will yield over a million relevant web pages!

The “Knock” on Royalty-Free Production Music

 This lower-profit alternative known as “buyout music”, as it developed, often drew second-class composers and producers…resulting in a rather poor reputation for buyout music. But there were exceptions, and a certain competitive pressure caused many who had previously used traditional “needledrop” and “blanket” libraries to hunt for the better-quality buyout libraries as backup options. Over time, more and more quality composers were drawn to this field, and with the creation of MIDI technology and its ability to automate certain aspects of music production…single composers/producers found that they were able to create complete music scores by themselves…further tightening the margins and allowing profits to be made at lower price points.

Since it has to cover a wider-range of usage than songs composed for other purposes, royalty-free music is generally less complex and less engaging than popular music. And yet, the music is rarely “the star of the show”, as it’s often used underneath a professional narration and location audio. Thus, some producers play on this strength and create separate tracks called “underscores”, which have the lead instruments stripped out of the tracks.

Evolution in the Field of Royalty-Free Production Music

In the 1980s-1990s, synths gave way to samples, as technology allowed more instruments to be “sampled” digitally and recreated on desktop audio workstations. Instead of “faux” instruments such as drums, bass and piano, it became more and more difficult to distinguish live instruments from their sample counterparts. It’s gotten so good now that artists are recording albums featuring single digitally-sampled instruments…even very complex instruments such as pianos.