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…
—————————-
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.
—————————-
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.
