I had a couple of videos of my Maule that used copyrighted music. I got spanked, so I pulled them off of You Tube. I also contacted the artist to see if I could buy a license to use the music in those 2 videos for non-commercial purposes. I like the music, but I'm not willing to pay an arm and a leg for 4 minutes of music in a video that might be watched by 50 people (my editing skills are definitely not honed). I haven't heard back from the artist, and actually don't expect to get a response since there is little, or no money in it for him for these two small applications.

I would think artists could develop another income stream from micro-licensing their creative content. A sliding scale could be used depending on whether it is for commercial, or non-commercial use and the level of use expected. I'd be willing to pay 50 cents to use music I like for a video I'm proud of. That is assuming I could create a video I was proud of...

In the meantime, how do the rest of the videographers on this site choose music for their productions? Do you find royalty free music and use that, or do you have another approach to creating your soundtracks? .

Use Vimeo or credit the artist in the video

I use Vimeo and always credit the artist. I'm never going to make a dime off of any videos I do and, especially given the limited viewing audience, I don't feel bad about using radio tunes for this little hobby.

Flyhound wrote:I had a couple of videos of my Maule that used copyrighted music. I got spanked, so I pulled them off of You Tube. I also contacted the artist to see if I could buy a license to use the music in those 2 videos for non-commercial purposes.

I kind of reject the "vimeo" advice as you're still using music in a way the artist didn't want you to. For what we do I can understand why some my say "no harm, no foul", but I want people to respect my copyrights so I suppose I am obligated to respect theirs.

Since reaching that decision I've found bandcamp.com to be a great resource. Independent artists are usually hungry for exposure (even if for only 50 people) and if you write them they are usually delighted to let you use their stuff for non-commercial videos.

So now I've got an inventory of 73 tracks that I can use in that fashion. This works particularly well if you are doing documentary style videos with voiceover instead of music videos that happen to have an airplane
droning on for 3.5 minutes.

Tips:

o Create a playlist in itunes (or whatever you use) and put everything you have permission to use in that folder. Unless you are constantly making videos, you'll need some way to keep track of the stuff you have permission to use.

o If you decide to go documentary style with voiceover, you'll want mostly instrumental tracks.

o If you're like me, you'll have a tendency to gravity toward upbeat, exciting music. You can't tell a story with only that kind of music. I have to make a conscious effort to make sure I have a variety of music so that when I need something to transition from the days activities to quieting down for the evening I don't only have tracks like this (http://souleance.bandcamp.com/track/bbq-pimms) that are far more appropriate for the journey itself.

o We aren't making music videos. Music should set the mood, not be the reason for viewing.

Examples (nothing new to the OP, I know you've seen them, but they are illustrative of what I mention above):

What do you mean "you got spanked"?

Youtube used to disable the audio channel on copyright infringing videos but now they just let you know that they've identified a copyrighted song and credit the artist automatically on the video page. Sometimes the copyright holder won't allow their works to be shown on mobile devices (who knows why.) Your video also becomes ineligible for monetization. No spankings.

I personally prefer good natural environmental audio if it's available but often it's blown out by wind noise, making music necessary. I find myself muting videos with music, as I'm sure other people do to mine that have used music.

It depends on the copyright owner. This is almost never the original artist that performed the song. There are usually two copyrights for music, one for the song itself, and one for the recording of the song. Nice. Many of the big labels, Sony, BMI, etc have given YouTube permission to go ahead and leave their audio track in the video but provide links to purchase the music. Some have not and for music from these studios YouTube will either blank the audio track or yank the video altogether. Most of the music I've used has been the former and YouTube would insert a link into my video.

One option you can use is AudioSwap. It will check out the audio track of your video and suggest alternatives that are OK to use. I've never used it myself but it is there as an option.

More info here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/94316?hl=en

Zzz wrote:What do you mean "you got spanked"?

Youtube used to disable the audio channel on copyright infringing videos but now they just let you know that they've identified a copyrighted song and credit the artist automatically on the video page. Sometimes the copyright holder won't allow their works to be shown on mobile devices (who knows why.) Your video also becomes ineligible for monetization. No spankings.

I personally prefer good natural environmental audio if it's available but often it's blown out by wind noise, making music necessary. I find myself muting videos with music, as I'm sure other people do to mine that have used music.

Same here.

I didn't save the note from You Tube, but the gist of their message was that I had 2 strikes for using copyrighted music and upon a 3rd strike they would delete my account. I had provided the name of the band and the name of the song at the end of each video, but that apparently wasn't sufficient. I pulled both videos and went to Freeplay music to pick several tracks that could reasonably accompany my video clips as RW2 suggested. I've replaced the music on 1 video and am still fussing with the second.

I also wrote to David Byrnes from the Talking Heads via his blog. I asked if there was a way I could buy a limited, non-commercial license to use music from one of their ancient albums. I'm not surprised that I never heard back. Oh well - I only wanted music that matched the mood I was in when I made the flights and there are lots of different tunes that can provide that. Maybe I'll mix in the sounds of a V-12 powering a WWII beast around the pylons at Reno and see if that gets my little Maule any more respect. I don't think Rolls Royce copyrighted their sound...

Use Vimeo. No problems with music. (Yet)

I just use the canned stuff for free on You-tube. Some of it is not so bad and some of it is actually fairly good.
My camera just picks up the wind noise so it's pretty boring without music. My Rotax doesn't have that nice throaty rumble that the big heavy Lycomings and Continentals have. I even tried mounting the camera about 2 feet from the exhaust and it still pretty much just picked up the wind noise.