The latest issue of UniqueTracks’ newsletter features an article I wrote that defines Music Clearance - the act of getting the permissions necessary to use music in your production. It also recommends some companies that will handle your music clearance problems when attempting to license a famous or even an obscure recording.
All Clear?
Music Clearance and Music Licensing
Every few weeks or so I’ll get a phone call with an inquiry that goes something like this…
I’d like to use Elvis Presley’s recording of ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ in my film. Can you help me do that?
Regretfully, beyond recommending some other companies to investigate, I am not much help in this regard. Though licensing music is our core business, UniqueTracks only licenses recordings that we have created in-house or that we control the publishing rights to.
What these folks are looking for is a firm that will do “music clearance” work for them. Yes, there are companies you can turn to when you are looking to obtain music licensing rights but have no idea where to turn. These companies will help you acquire the rights to use famous songs but they are even better at finding the rights for obscure songs. Music clearance companies are experts at finding the needle-in-the-haystack information that will eventually track down the song you’re interested in. They will then act as your advocate with the publisher and record company to try and get you the best pricing available.
Target Corporation has been using the Beatles classic Hello Goodbye in its recent TV advertising. One spot aired during last Sunday’s Grammy Awards broadcast. They have changed the word Goodbye to Good Buy morphing the song’s refrain into an ad slogan “Hello Good Buy, Hello Good Buy, Hello Good Buy….” The campaign is “Say Hello to Good Buys at Target”.
Hello Goodbye is a song from the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour album and was a number 1 hit for the Beatles in both the US and UK in 1967.
Licensing classic songs is attractive to advertisers (those with deep enough pockets) because they can then begin to trade on the cultural significance of the song. Hello Goodbye is part of the soundtrack for a whole generation (or more). By licensing the song, advertisers leverage this collective, accumulated experience channelling it to sell merchandise. But does our culture (do we) pay a price for this?
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There are several spots using Hello Goodbye. Each has a different musical style or arrangement. Here is one version taken from YouTube.
Devo re-records their biggest hit “Whip it good” as “Swiff it good” in a TV ad for the floor cleaner Swiffer.
The Beatles song “All you need is love” is licensed by Luvs who use it for their campaign, “All You Need is Luvs”
“Blister In the Sun ” by the Violent Femmes, a seminal punk bank, is used in an ad campaign for Wendy’s hamburgers.
This summer Wilco licenses 6 songs from their new album Blue Sky Blue to Volkswagen who use all 6 songs in ad spots for their latest campaign marking the first time a multitude of songs by one artist/band is used in a single campaign.
Where is today’s cash cow for the music business? It’s the placing of famous or upcoming pop songs in TV commercials. We’ve all heard and seen these ads. Led Zepplin’s “Rock’n Roll” has become the main branding vehicle (no pun) for Cadillac. The ad speaks to those 40-year-olds that can now afford Cadillacs by co-opting an anthem from their youth.
There’s no doubt the trend will continue. Commercial jingles are a thing of the past. Today’s ad strategy is about branding. You put a product, no matter how bland, next to a song that has some “coolness” factor to it, or, in the case of the Beatles “All You Need is Love”, acknowledged cultural value, and voila, the product achieves instant significance or even hipness.
But by glorifying a product, no matter how banal, the song is immediately devalued. If today’s protest song can be tomorrow’s theme for toilet tissue, then the power of a song to effect culture becomes weakened. The power of the song becomes about how much money it commands when it is licensed for commercial use.
The Culture Is the Commercial
Jay Babcock, the publisher of the art and music magazine Arthur makes this point…
“What kind of culture sets up a system where the only way to hear good music is through TV commercials for products you don’t need?” Babcock said. “What little art is out there has to sneak in wherever it can, being stand-ins for jingles. It’s the sign of an unhealthy culture. The culture is eating itself.”
A recent New York Post article reports that the recording artist Fergie recently inked a $4-million deal to sing about Candie’s teen apparel on her next album. “The 32-year-old Black Eyed Peas singer is the first global star to consent to product placement in her songs - agreeing to include the provocative clothing line Candie’s in her lyrics.”
I don’t know that this matters to some bands, they are living in a music business that is sinking into chaos by the day and they are looking for cash, a reward for their work. When Wilco, a major act, licenses 6 songs to Volkswagen saying they are doing it as a way to get their music out there, you know the music business has drastically changed and these artists are looking for the type of payday that used to be available to successful bands through albums/radio play/touring. That old model of success is, apparently, broken.
According to Greg Lane, senior vice president of ad agency GSD&M in Austin, Texas, ad pop it is a mutually beneficial relationship. “It’s a marriage of two brands. It’s the client’s brand, be it AT&T or iPod, as well as the brand of the band itself,” Lane said.
“Part of the deal is, you’re never going to make everyone happy. And there’s no such thing as bad press. Even if fans are upset, it might not affect sales of what’s being advertised — it might increase sales.”
As the respected musician Tom Waits says “By turning a great song into a jingle, advertisers have achieved the ultimate: a meaningless product has now been injected with your meaningful memory of a song,” he said. “The songs and the artists who have created them have power and cultural value, that’s why advertisers pay out millions for them. Once you have taken the cash, you, your song and your audience are forever married to the product.”
Wilco song in Volkswagen commercial
Of Montreal song “Wraith Pinned To The Mist And Other Games” re-recorded with the words changed to “Let’s go Outback tonight” for Outback Steakhouse
Seth Godin, author of Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and a ton of really great books on successful marketing, wrongly recommends that presenters should include music from their personal CD collections in their public PowerPoint presentations.
The blog post entitled Really Bad PowerPoint, offers five rules to create amazing PowerPoint presentations. Rule number four states…
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Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
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You will breaking copyright law if you give a PowerPoint presentation following Seth’s advice here. Unfortunately, you cannot just rip your personal CD collection and attach those tracks to your slides. When you purchase a CD you are not licensed to use the music for anything other than your personal enjoyment. To use music in a commercial vein, you need to obtain permission from the music’s publisher and the recording company (more about the music licensing process).
This shows that even a savvy guy like Seth Godin can be fuzzy about copyright laws. It makes me wonder how often this practice goes on in corporate America. How often have you seen a PowerPoint presentation accompanied by music that the presenter ripped from his/her CD library?
Royalty Free Music companies like UniqueTracks offer fast and easy music licensing to media producers who in turn, integrate the music into their DVDs, videos, podcasts, radio and TV advertising, Flash and Powerpoint presentations and music-on-hold programming.
I’ve been watching with great interest how YouTube handles accusations that it knowingly hosts and broadcasts copyrighted material. It now seems that Google, which acquired YouTube in November of 2006, is close to releasing technology that will help eliminate video uploads which violate intellectual property laws. Claim Your Content is Google’s name for filtering technology that will give content providers and publishers an easy way to alert YouTube that copyrighted material has been uploaded to its site.
I don’t think there’s any question that YouTube built its vast community, and its brand, while knowingly broadcasting copyrighted material. Now, under Google’s dominion, the site is rapidly making attempts to satisfy copyright regulations.
Going forward with revenue sharing seems like the smartest way out of the copyright problem. However, will major media companies like Viacom seek compensation for past broadcasting of their content - broadcasting which made YouTube one of the top destinations on the Internet and that led Google to purchase the company for 1 billion dollars?
By October of 2006, before Google acquired it, an estimated 90 percent of the more than 100 million videos watched daily on YouTube violated copyright laws, according to Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research.
I’m sure Google/YouTube will work out revenue sharing with its major content providers going forward. The questions to me are:
Will they compensate (or be forced, through the courts, to compensate) for that initial decision to broadcast copyrighted material in the first place?
How will they compensate for that initial decision to broadcast copyrighted material?
Can you create a business that essentially gives everyone else’s products away, and then sell it to a megacorp for $1 billion, and not pay some legal penalty?
Follow Up: This article from the Washington Post, published on March 24, 2007 Our Case Against YouTube outlines Viacom’s case against YouTube. It was written by Michael Fricklas, general council for Viacom.
I’ve written an article for our September newsletter describing the reasons why I dislike the term “royalty free music” even though this is the main search phrase that brings new visitors to our site. My reasons mostly have to do with the general confusion about what this term means and the fact that in some cases, TV broadcast being one of them, “royalty free” usage is not at all accurate.
The UniqueTracks license agreement gives very wide usage rights. This article attempts to provide a more accurate description of what production music libraries like UniqueTracks actually provide, namely, quick and easy, one-stop music licensing.
Often when you finally arrive at the manufacturing/replicating stage of your DVD project, the replication company will request a copy of your license(s) showing that you have obtained the necessary legal permissions needed to use the material in your DVD that was not specifically created by you (or your company).
Remember…
If you’re using someone else’s copyrighted material, you must get permission to use it from the copyright owner.
The manufacturer/replicator wants to see that you are not violating any copyright laws and they, therefore, are not duplicating something that is illegal.
When you purchase music from UniqueTracks, you receive a copy of our license agreement with your master tracks. This is the legal permission the DVD Replication company wants to see. Just show the license agreement and if they request it, a copy of your UniqueTracks invoice, and that should suffice.
Please note: We also will fax or email any additional documents a DVD manufacturer/replicator may need to proceed with your job. Best to contact us in advance of your replication so that any problems can be avoided.
I found this description and discussion of podcast music licensing very informative. If you do any type of internet broadcasting, you may be interested in how Performing Rights Organizations are looking at this latest internet broadcasting technology.
Should Podcasters have to pay a fee for the right to play copyrighted songs during a Podcast? Yes, says ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. There’s also a good discussion of how much that licensing will cost.
ascap, bmi, filmmaking, filmmaking+resource, licensing music, music clearance companies, music licensing, publishing rights, royalty+free+music, royalty free music, uniquetracks 
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