Audio Recording

If you are a singer/songwriter, artist, or producer, there is no other strong asset that can guarantee you long term success except your hit songs.

You have read stories of successful songwriters making a good living out of their hit songs. And even a single hit song can really have a big impact on the songwriter financial lives. The problem is that hit songs do not come naturally and is rare to find. Only a small percentage of released singles could actually become long term hits.

Below are some of the proven techniques for producing hit songs that are observed from the songwriting legends like Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney, as well as many others. If you like to produce hit songs, then you should try the following tips below.

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In film making, variety of elements are needed, the screenplay, actors/actresses, crew and most importantly the music. Big film makers; those with lots of budget can afford to pay high licensing fees to use popular music/songs. These production companies can have its own dedicated licensing departments to arrange agreements with music publishers.

It can be a different scenario for independent film makers or small movie production companies. It is because they do not have its own lawyers or experts in music licensing working for them all the time. It is essential for them to know the music rights for film. Knowing these rights can be helpful for them to legally use the song or music to be used on their film project.

If you are an independent movie/film producer that wants to use copyrighted music in your project; then make sure you know the rights that you need to be cleared before you can start working in your project.

What are the important music rights for film?

1. Right to synchronization – these are popularly called “sync” rights. These are the rights for music to be used and synchronized together with film visual images. In layman’s term; this is synonymous with the film “sound track”. The licensing fee for sync depends on the music publisher and the licensee budget.
It can be as low as $5 to as high as thousands of dollars for popular hit songs.

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Music and songs are legally available in two major forms:

a. Copyrighted
b. Public domain

Naturally, if you use music or songs that belong to the public domain then you will not need to get permission. However things are very different if the music is copyrighted. This is where a lot of confusion can take place. This is a complete tutorial for a beginner in knowing how to get permission to use copyrighted music.

Step1.) Find the music publisher of the copyrighted music

You need to know the music publisher of the song. Music publisher administers copyrighted work that includes the songs/music. This is where you need to obtain permission to use music. In most cases, this is not available so you need to do some research. You can start with the artist or the songwriter of the song. You will know the artist or songwriter by examining the ID3 tags information of the MP3 file (or CD in-lay for CD album).

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