The Simple Answer

Royalty Free Music is music that you don’t have to pay royalties on. This is important because often when you buy the rights to use music, you pay an upfront fee and then, in addition, you pay royalties depending on the number of copies made, etc.. Royalty Free Music simply means that you never have to worry about paying any royalty fees.

The Complicated Answer

The reason why I need to give a more complicated answer is that a lot of people mean different things when they say “Royalty Free Music.” Also, the music industry is insane. (You probably already knew that.) Things get complicated and out of hand very quickly.

Here’s a quick run down of how most royalty free music licenses really work:

• First, you pay a Sync Fee. This is a one time fee that you pay license the music so you can use in synchronization with your video, presentation, podcast, app, or whatever. When you pay for royalty free music, this is usually what you are really paying for. It’s important to understand that you are only buying the rights to use the music (not the music itself) and that you can only duplicate/broadcast the music in conjunction with some type of visual or other media program. In other words, you can’t just buy some royalty free music and then re-sell the music on it’s own for other people to use as royalty free music.
• Depending on the type of license you purchase, you might be limited in the number of copies you can make without paying royalties. So for example, one license might allow you to make unlimited copies. But another license might only allow up to 5000 copies of a video, for example. Beyond that, you would need to either pay royalties or buy a different type of license.
• If you use the music as background music and your program broadcast on television or radio then royalties do apply, even with most “royalty free” music. But, the good news here is that you don’t need to pay for them. The music industry has a standard way of dealing with what are called “performance royalties.” Performance royalties are paid whenever music is performed or played on the radio or tv. But it is the broadcaster’s responsibility to pay for these, not the producer’s. The only thing the producer needs to do is send the information about the music that is used in their program to the broadcaster. This is called a “cue sheet.” Broadcasters are accustomed to this, and in fact will most likely require a cue sheet for any program they air.

That’s how most royalty free music licenses work. Of course, there are variations, and the concept of Performance Royalties is complex enough that I will explain it in more detail in another post.

You can take a look at our royalty free license options by clicking here. We’ve tried to keep them simple and straightforward (with language you can actually understand!) If you have any questions, please let us know.