Music License resources (other than The Music Bed)

[Jonesy Jones]

2 hours ago, mojo43 said:

I use to use Music Bed all of the time, but this year I had an employee contact me. She was asking me if I could help out by telling her more about the project that I was working on. The musician that wrote the track I used wanted more pieces to show their music with. So I told her about the project. She started investigating into employee counts etc... Anyhow, it turned out that I had the count wrong so I owed another 100 or so dollars. It was my mistake, but I found it very sinister and devious the way she approached the whole thing. It left a bad taste... 

To those who are voicing the starving artist angle, the above is again symptomatic of Music Bed's problem. When they first started, I'd call or email them if I had a question, they'd respond right away with a simple and straightforward answer. Once I needed a license for a monetized video. Their response, "eh, just add $50." Wow, that was easy and super reasonable. But now, anything remotely custom and they want to investigate you and your client and everything you are going to be doing and spending on your campaign in order to squeeze out every last cent they can from you. No straightforward answers. It sucks. They began their service with the intent to help out filmmakers. It doesn't feel that way anymore, in fact, it feels like they are trying to screw us. 

[Davey]

27 minutes ago, Jonesy Jones said:

To those who are voicing the starving artist angle, the above is again symptomatic of Music Bed's problem. When they first started, I'd call or email them if I had a question, they'd respond right away with a simple and straightforward answer. Once I needed a license for a monetized video. Their response, "eh, just add $50." Wow, that was easy and super reasonable. But now, anything remotely custom and they want to investigate you and your client and everything you are going to be doing and spending on your campaign in order to squeeze out every last cent they can from you. No straightforward answers. It sucks. They began their service with the intent to help out filmmakers. It doesn't feel that way anymore, in fact, it feels like they are trying to screw us. 

Yep. I won't be using them again. Their licenses are all over the place. I feel sorry for the artists who are locked into contracts with them - if the site wasn't such a shambling mess (which I now suspect is by design by being deceptively ambiguous) then I would be purchasing lots more music.

 

[ShaunC]

Artlist io ... Been using this site for 6 months now. It's hard to complain about it. They're slowly improving functionality and gradually add more artists. I do wonder how they (and the artists) make any money though.

[Jonesy Jones]

26 minutes ago, ShaunC said:

Artlist io ... Been using this site for 6 months now. It's hard to complain about it. They're slowly improving functionality and gradually add more artists. I do wonder how they (and the artists) make any money though.

I wonder the same thing. Perhaps they're not, and just trying to grow their subscription list. At some point it'll become profitable, and I bet an increase in subscription price is in the works as well.

[hansel]

Hey,

if you are into or looking for classical music I find this is pretty nice. https://musopen.org/music/
If you open an account you can download most of it with a clear CC logo stating what you can do with it. Most of of it is public domain anyway. jippy

[ShaunC]

1 hour ago, Jonesy Jones said:

I wonder the same thing. Perhaps they're not, and just trying to grow their subscription list. At some point it'll become profitable, and I bet an increase in subscription price is in the works as well.

Jeremiah from artlist responds pretty quickly to email queries. I did cheekily suggest to him that beta adopters should be immune to any subscription price hike. I don't think he liked that idea. 

[Lewis Foster]

Hi all, I co-run Music Vine (musicvine.net) which was mentioned above. 

I don't usually intrude in forums but as this thread is asking about new music resources for filmmakers, I thought it apt to introduce myself and our platform!

For those who are interested, we are currently running a survey to better understand the pains and wants of filmmakers when it comes to music (access here) - if you have a moment we'd love to hear your insights! (you also get a 50% discount off your next licence with us once you've completed the survey).  

Hope you enjoy our catalogue :-)

 

[Phil A]

I'm using soundstripe.com which works well for me. It's a rather new platform but selection is growing consistently and the music is good (enough) for what I want to do with it. The community is super friendly and replies from staff are borderline to instant.They seem to get new composers frequently and also add improvements to their website every once in a while. I appreciate the fact that everything about the licensing and cost is transparent in contrast to a bunch of other platforms.

I understand that the artists who make the music want to make money too but when you want to do videos as a hobby you can't afford paying 3 diggit dinero every time you want another track. I make no money with our videos so unfortunately I can't afford spending a lot on soundtracks (maybe that changes one day but I doubt it).

[Davey]

3 hours ago, Phil A said:

I'm using soundstripe.com which works well for me. It's a rather new platform but selection is growing consistently and the music is good (enough) for what I want to do with it. The community is super friendly and replies from staff are borderline to instant.They seem to get new composers frequently and also add improvements to their website every once in a while. I appreciate the fact that everything about the licensing and cost is transparent in contrast to a bunch of other platforms.

I understand that the artists who make the music want to make money too but when you want to do videos as a hobby you can't afford paying 3 diggit dinero every time you want another track. I make no money with our videos so unfortunately I can't afford spending a lot on soundtracks (maybe that changes one day but I doubt it).

Just spent the last two weeks slowly going through Soundstripe's entire catalogue (about 75% there) and have shortlisted 26 tracks so far as music I would definitely want to use. With all these kinds of sites there will be a vast majority of music, whatever your taste, that is no good for you. But to only have to pay a one-off subscription fee of £90 (cancel when the year is up and the licenses you hold for each track you buy are still allegedly valid) seems like an attractive offer to me. Even keeping the subscription going each year isn't going to cost any more than buying two tracks off premiumbeat or one track off musicbed.

Before I take the plunge I have some more questions to ask their team of six because I was not confident that the lady I was speaking to wasn't guessing regarding some of my questions. I shall frame them to somebody else (I keep getting the same person at whatever the day or hour I am on there) in a way that reflects their complicated legal jargon and continue to screenshot the conversation. 

It is the perpetual license conditions that bother me, particularly when I see tracks on there being sold elsewhere by the same artists - and what happens if Soundstripe go bust in the future or get bought out by one of the bigger fish. To me, it doesn't look like Soundstripe have EXCLUSIVE ownership of the licenses.

[Jomalone]

Thank you for your input!  gclub

[pablogrollan]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned audiojungle.net yet... 

They have a large catalog and unlike most sites they allow you to sort search results by sales and rating, which is very useful when you need to find something decent and don't have the time to explore the library...

[Jimbo]

23 hours ago, pablogrollan said:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned audiojungle.net yet... 

They have a large catalog and unlike most sites they allow you to sort search results by sales and rating, which is very useful when you need to find something decent and don't have the time to explore the library...

I'm surprised too! This is my goto for lower budget commercial work. Great quality for the price and I find the search better than other sites.

[JoeK1986]

I had to sign up here just to reply to all of this. It is extremely comforting to see that others are having issues with TMB. I've been a loyal user for 3 years, and have probably given them well close to $5K worth of business during that time, and yeah, they have lost their way. I actually get bad anxiety anytime I go to purchase a license due to their cumbersome parameters. I also recently had a customer service rep email me accusing me of fudging a parameter (number of employees), and upon asking how they were making this assessment, I was told that my client's LinkedIn had been investigated, which hadn't been updated in years. Not cool at all, especially for someone who has been THAT much of a repeat customer. I recently discovered Artlist and MusicVine, both of whom are extremely affordable, very filmmaker friendly, and the music is pretty damn good. There are even artists on MusicVine who are also on Music Bed and the tracks are substantially cheaper. 

[Trek of Joy]

I moved over to Epidemic sound. But Jewelbeat at $2.99/track is also appealing, search is slow if you don't have a really fast connection.

[Jesus Morato]

You can use my music.  It is legal and free.  It is background royalty free music free. 

[MiMaMux]

Hey guys,
really interesting discussion. I am not a filmmaker, but I'm composer, founder of  https://audiocabin.com and make a living with music for almost 10 years now.

I sold my music on various websites until I was frustrated and had the idea of starting my own licensing company. 
But because I represent the point of view of the musicians, I wanted a company with fairer conditions for artists. I started building AudioCabin back in early 2015 and in March 2018 (yep, it's been 3 years) I finally launched the (by the way 100% privately financed) website and even sold a few licenses already.
Of course, there are still years of work ahead of me (us), especially because it takes time until the website is ranked on google.

But here are some basic information about Audio Cabin:

• Artists get 50%
• Artists are free (non-exclusive content)
• Every track is reviewed first (good for you)
• 2 simple Licenses (Private/Commercial), noone is asking for your audience size or anything else.
• The pricing is comparable with those of other libraries but higher for commercial licenses.

A subscription model is worst for a musician IMO. Imagine you should shoot an unlimited number of commercials for 5k/year. When the guys from artlist asked me to participate (they did a few years ago), I calculated my earnings based on their subscription model and the result was that I basically could give them my music for free :( From the entrepreneur's point of view, it would certainly make sense to offer a subscription, but still...

I know everyone wants to pay as little as possible for music. We are all the same.
To justify the prices I try to keep the quality of the catalog very high and hope more and more people are willing to pay a little more for good content.
Of course, the competition is pretty strong, but one year from now, I know more.

Regarding TMB: What you say about it still seems to be the main tenor. Friends of mine (filmmakers) complain about the same things, the lack of transparency and the greed for information they should not care about.
Somehow, I hope I can avoid the mistakes of other libraries. I certainly have ideas enough.

I'd be more than happy if you'd support my endeavour and checkout https://audiocabin.com , still a small but nice & clear library of royalty-free music, I think.
Give it a try, save some tracks to a playlist, maybe you even find a cool track you want to use. If not, come back from time to time as the website constanly improves and grows.

Thanks! 
 

 

[Alex89]

My favorites are https://taketones.com/ and https://musicvine.com/ these are not the cheapest sites, but they are not the most expensive. But you can always find great music for almost any project there

[drdancm]

Free music is very valuable, yet not enough people, make a real effort to fully credit and thank the people who create and generously make Music and Sound Effects available for independent films.

I have found Souncloud to be an absolutely wonderful source for Music, as well as a whole bunch of sites specifically designed for sharing.

Watch the Credits on Catching Broken Glass by Terrel Holden and myself shot on a Panasonic GH3, for how I did the credits to thank the sources -every one of them.

https://youtu.be/pRYmZRWZ51U

[Eric Matthew Anderson]

Interesting thread. I'm always trying to learn about other music companies pain points.  

I am a composer offering some of my own catalog available for licensing. I'm probably not the cheapest, but you can use the music forever.

Feel free to check it out if you want an alternative. https://www.emasongs.com/

No restrictions. Unlimited use.

Later,

-eric

emasongs