Music, Sound Effects, Tech News, and More — The AudioMicro Blog

The results are in. After a recent poll by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), most Americans are against a proposed royalty rate for radio airplay. The poll was conducted over the summer and published in The Wall Street Journal to emphasize the point that royalty fees are getting a bit out of hand.

The Wall Street Journal article reported that the proposed legislation “would force radio companies to pay royalties [fees] of as much as $500 million a year to record labels and artists whose music they play.” The article also stated, “any additional expenses could send [radio companies] one step closer to financial restructuring.” After being provided with such facts, individuals participating in the poll were then asked whether they would “favor or oppose the performance fee, requiring local radio stations to pay a fee for every song they play.”

The results were quite telling, as 60 percent of the poll participants strongly opposed the royalty fee, 12 percent were probable and 3 percent were leanly opposed. Radio has been a royalty-free haven, because it is known to drive music sales of popular artists. So, essentially music artists are already benefiting financially from radio airplay — the more music is played, the more money they stand to make. It’s been like this for a long, long time. Why do “the powers that be” suddenly want to change it around? Simple. It all comes down to money. With the Internet age and music sharing websites, record sales aren’t what they used to be. As a direct result, numerous recording artists and labels are coming up with every solution they can in order to pad their pockets. It used to be that all you had to do was have one hit record on the radio and your album would rise to the top of the charts. Now, one hit record results in a 99-cent purchase on ITunes instead of boosting whole album sales.

It’s a sticky situation, but the message is quite clear. The public does not agree with radio royalty fees, and firmly believe that many radio stations will end up losing money and going off the air instead. Everyone knows that taxes and fees always end up trickling down until they eventually come out of the public’s pocket. And the public is already financially strapped as it is.

Posted in: copyright, royalty free music

According to a recent press release, CSS Music, a Los Angeles-based royalty free music library, has upgraded its entire collection of music tracks for the film, video, television and digital media industry to a superior quality .mp3 320 kbs file format. The 12,000 tracks are now available for digital download in the new upgraded format.

Michael M. Fuller, president and owner, had this to say about the upgrade, “When you’re talking about compressed files in an .mp3 format, the gold standard without a doubt is 320 kbs. While our 160 kbs files were excellent, taking our royalty free music downloads up to .mp3 320 kbs was a necessary move. Today’s clients are looking for ways to stretch their dollars and at the same time they’re looking for quality. They demand quality. Now because of this upgrade, our mp3 files will sound smoother with a more transparent high frequency response.”

Sounds like a pretty good upgrade, doesn’t it? It’s top-quality royalty free music without higher fees. You can download the new tracks either on a single-track basis or through a bulk download package. When you purchase a download bulk package, you can expect to save anywhere from 30 to 90 percent off. That’s more than an upgrade — that’s a bargain. CSS Music offers three independent search systems. Each track in a search result can be reviewed in its entirety in full 44.1khz sound quality. Site users can also use a “Playlist Tool” to create an unlimited number of playlists for different projects, scenes, etc. Playlists can be e-mailed to clients or associates.

CSS Music was founded in 1982 in Los Angeles, CA and is the oldest US based royalty free music library under original management. CSS has more than 300 CD volumes and 12,000 downloadable music tracks in its 17-library package. CSS Music is intended for use in AV/Video, Film, Television, Multimedia and Internet applications. Delivery formats include CD, Custom CD-R, Single Track Download, Downloadable CD, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and Hard Drive. Popular CSS libraries include Super Themes, Target Trax and Repro-file. For more information, visit www.CSSmusic.com.

Posted in: mp3, music, royalty free music

Ready for some free classic synth samples? MusicRadar.com is celebrating “synth week” and they want you to come along to the party. The powers-that-be at the popular royalty free music website are giving you a selection of classic synth sounds. The sounds come from ARP’s Odyssey and Solina instruments, and Roland’s System 100. As a fun and additional bonus, you can also download single hits from some of the finest drum machines throughout history, including Roland’s TR-909 and 808 beatboxes.

All you need to do is download the samples and get to work using and mixing them. According to MusicRadar.com, the samples are split into four different folders. Three folders cover the featured synths, and the fourth folder contains all of the drum machine content. There are riffs, multisamples and single hits available. All the music samples are supplied as WAV files, so they can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice. The best part is that the samples are royalty free music, so you can use them however you like. MusicRadar.com’s only stipulation is that you do not redistribute the music samples. All of the classic synth samples are supplied in a zip file, so you will need to download and remove them before they will show up on your computer. You can listen to some of the synth samples that are available at MusicRadar.com.

MusicRadar.com is part of a consortium of royalty free music websites, and is a subsidy of Future Publishing. Created by musicians for musicians, MusicRadar.com is the number one website for guitarists, drummers and producers. Check out their latest gear updates and artist news through one of their many music-related publications. You can also read expert reviews on the best new kit, play along with their expert video lessons, or try out handy tips and projects suggested on the website. They also offer numerous music-related blogs, podcasts, competitions and a vibrant forum full of hungry royalty free music users. Visit www.musicradar.com to start using their free classic synth samples today. What are you waiting for?

Posted in: classic synth samples, royalty free music

PrimeLoops.com is considered to be the “definitive new supplier of modern, cutting edge sound suites.” Their website promises users a wealth of highly flexible and unique music samples, in all the latest formats. An independent music team based out of the United Kingdom, PrimeLoops.com has brought together talented musicians, experienced sound technicians, DJs and studio engineers in order to create a new dimension in pro-audio development, resulting in crystal clear audio fusion covering the entire spectrum.

The latest sample products offered by PrimeLoops.com, include R&B Progressions and Dubhop Scores. Here’s the information provided by the press release:

R&B Progressions — This is a new addition to the Core Series. It’s 600mb in size, and contains over 180 “distinguished piano progressions, inspirational string arrangements, and sexy synth hooks” tempos ranging from 75-125 bpm, bringing you a selection of luscious instrumental loops in many R&B styles. Some styles include Smooth Ballads, Funky Vibes, Oldskool Classics and Contemporary Pop. Music formats are available as Wav, Acid Loops, Apple Loops, Rex2, Reason Refill, Ableton, Akai MPC and many others. They have all been professionally recorded, mastered, and are completely royalty free. These riffs and chord sequences have been engineered for all producers seeking to capture legendary sounds from the evolving R&B scene, taking influences from Destiny’s Child to Jodeci, Mary J. Blige to Usher, Brandy to Alicia Keys and from Akon to Ne-Yo, Beyoncé, Ciara and Rihanna.

Dubhop Scores — Dub has influenced every dance music genre around, and now Dubhop Scores is here to continue the tradition, providing you with the synths, basses, guitars scores influenced by the likes of legendary engineers such as King Tubby, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Adrian Sherwood, Prince Far-I, Mad Professor, Massive Attack and many more. The Dubhop Scores sample pack is suited to breakbeat, upfront hip hop, drum n’ bass, trip hop, dubstep and other modern forms of electronic music, and has been engineered with authentic analogue warmth from deep within the PrimeLoops.com dub lab. With 80 catchy dubbed out riffs ranging from 70-90 Bpm, over 20 hardware synthesizers and several tape delay units have been used to create this authentic Fusion Series release.

Visit www.primeloops.com for more information on these royalty free music products.

Posted in: Prime Loops, R&B Progressions, royalty free music

We have just added over 13,000 record label owned, production music tracks to AudioMicro. The new offering is being called “The Premium Collection“. Historically, this entire collection has only been available to major television networks and feature film producers in a rights managed licensing format. We are please to offer this material to you and hope that you will enjoy all the great new tracks. All Premium Collection Tracks have a special flag that appears in search and browse results to let you know that you are listening to premium material. Please note that with this great new collection carries a more limited, royalty free music license. The main restriction is that the tracks cannot be used on network / cable television or in any project with a budget over fifty thousand dollars. For full license details, please be sure to check out the Premium Content License Agreement. If you need to use tracks in a manner outside the scope of the Premium Content License Agreement, our standard collection is still available with over 24,000 tracks and suitable for nearly any audio visual production imaginable.

Posted in: Free Sound Effects, license music, Production Music, royalty free music, sound bite, sound clips, Sound Effects, The Premium Collection

Curious to see the AudioMicro sound library in action? Check out a few videos samples that incorporate music and sound effects from our library. Examples include movie scores, professional presentations, promotional videos, and personal slide shows.  Enjoy!

And here are a few links from around the web.

If you like motorcycles, you’ll enjoy this one…

The making of California Balloons, a short film about French spies…

A personal travel video about a trip to the beach…

A Trip to the Beach from Kerri Sheehan on Vimeo.

Support your favorite charity….

and last but not least, from Equal, the makers of LonelyGirl15, one of the most popular YouTube video series’ of all time…

Posted in: audiomicro customers, Eqal, Free Sound Effects, license music, lonelygirl15, pictorvision, promotional, royalty free music, shadylogic, slide show, Sound Effects, soundtrack, stock music, videos, YouTube music

Today was the day.  YouTube finally came around and decided that videos with copyright infringing music need to be taken down.  Instead of removing the videos entirely, they just muted all of the audio.  The story is all over the web, and folks are pretty mad about the “mass muting of millions of videos”.  This issue at hand is that for years now, users have been uploading videos to YouTube that contain major record label music and the video creators have never appropriately secured a synch license to use this music in their productions.  Synch licensing has typically been reserved for feature films and major television production companies and anyone that needed music for a small YouTube production had to choose among the following options:

1.  Make unauthorized use of their music collection,

2.  Pay a hefty synch fees to be used in their unmonetizable productions, or

3.  Turn to royalty free music libraries, like AudioMicro.  

As of today, for the millions of YouTubers, there are now only 2 choices – either purchase stock music (easy, painless, and affordable) or try and legally license a track from a label (nearly impossible).  Copyrights are being protected and despite the chants of “boycott YouTube”, it’s likely that the other online video communities will eventually cave under RIAA pressure if they are to allow videos with record label material to be posted.

The future of music copyright online seems to be unfolding in 2009 – you can listen to music online for free, if you are willing to deal with advertisements; however, you can no longer synch music to your videos without secure a proper synch license.

Posted in: Copyright Infringement, Mashable, RIAA, royalty free music, synch license, TechCrunch, YouTube

Let’s start out by giving credit where credit is due. We’re neither professional writers nor “news breakers” over here at AudioMicro and we reach out to other outlets from time to time for stories. We first read about this “Wallmark DRM-Free Store-y” on TechCrunch.com, a fabulous tech news site that AudioMicro predicts will be acquired within the next 2 years by CBS Interactive or FOX Interactive for $50 million plus. Word on the street is that TechCrunch’s revenues aren’t huge (less than $5 million and we have no idea if that’s accurate or not) but if they can venture more into the tech trade show business on the side, they can get the top line to rise and thereby a better valuation. We certainly hope so.

So anyway, we learned that Wallmart has ditched it’s DRM music store in favor or a DRM Free music store. Now that’s a step in the right direction. The DRM model seems to be dying but Apple is able to hold onto it as they have a stranglehold on the personal use market. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see outlets like WallMart licensing music. Wallmart.com is one of the top 25 most trafficked websites in the world. The site gets over 27 million monthly unique visitors and channeling that traffic to a digital goods store make a lot of business sense.

From time to time, from a few select parties, AudioMicro has been criticized for it’s pricing model. How can you sell a sync license for $1 a minute for general use when other outlets charge $20 a track? Please explain.

The answer comes down to fundamentals of retail pricing. Why does “The Gap” sell clothing made at the same factory, with the same material for $250 at Banana Republic and $10 at Old Navy? Because certain consumers just don’t shop at Banana Republic because they just want a simple T-shirt and not the designer version with the designer price tag. It all comes down to consumer purchasing behavior. We believe strongly that the AudioMicro material is used primarily in online creative audio-visual projects and that they purchasers of the designer material are not turning to AudioMicro to place work on network television.

We closely monitor the sales transactions coming through today they are PayPal receipts from “ABC[at]GMAIL.com” and “ABC[at]HOTMAIL.com” and not George.Lucas[at]LucasFilm.com. Simply put, what we mean is that the high end of the commercial music licensing market is not going anywhere and the traditional production libraries and publishers should view this platform as a positive opportunity. Every micro stock music sale is not a lost customer for a traditional library. We are not making light of the music licensing industry by simply undercutting the larger, established libraries. What we are doing is getting exposure for unknown, unsigned artists by placing their work in creative audiovisual projects that are produced by every day consumers on shoestring budgets.

If consumers do not have an outlet where they can get easy access to affordable, pre-cleared music for creative projects, there are two major implications:

1. the customer will simply not use music for their projects,

2. they will make unauthorized use of the content that they have purchased (or illegally downloaded) for personal use

Micro stock music opens up commercial music licensing to the masses and offers an affordable, easy solution for licensing music for use in audio-visual media. There are approximately 10 videos uploaded to YouTube every second. Everyone with a cell phone is a producer. With so much video content circulating the web today, it’s only natural that a platform for clearing and licensing music, royalty free sound effects, and production elements to accompany these videos (and any video project, not just YouTube) will emerge and thrive.

Posted in: freesoundeffects, opensource, royalty free music, soundeffects, stockmusic, TechCrunch, WallMark, YouTube

AudioMicro read about how the record labels are trying to bring to market an advertising based streaming music service .   It seems that the advertising based content model just won’t die.  What a total racket the ad based model music model it.  Here’s how it works – your content is listened to and becomes a part of the user experience on someone’s website, and ads are slapped all over the site by sponsors using affiliate ad net works.  Of the monies delivered to the website for running the ads in front of their audience, you get just a little portion of the pie – likely less than 5%.  That’s right, a measly 5%.  The website keeps a portion, the affiliate marketing / ad network keeps a portion of it, the record label keeps a portion and you get suck with a nickel on ever dollar instead of 50 cents on the dollar with micro stock music and royalty free music sites like AudioMicro.

What’s an ever bigger killer to the independent musician is that it takes the muscle of these major labels to get you into the proposed, highly speculative, music maffia advertising network, as only artists signed to the majors will make their way into syndication.  It sounds pretty much like it would head straight down the path of the broadcast radio industry (if it ever even makes it’s way to market) – closed doors, payola, and under attack by other digital content delivery networks (in this case, Pandora, Slacker, Last.fm, imeem, iLike and the rest).  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, if the idea has been in development for 4 years already, as these sources suggest, we predict it will never see the light of day; however, it would be nice to see at least one web 2.0 record label sponsored idea make it to market, regardless of its impact.

Posted in: micro stock music, music cues, royalty free music, stock music, TotalMusic

With micro payment, artists may think they are underselling themselves; however, the reality is that with micro payment, you are actually opening up your library to an entirely new group of content purchaser that never before would ever think about paying for a sync license – the YouTube crowd. As video continues to proliferate the internet, as internet video quality continues to improve (we can now watch HD videos and audio on free sites like Pluggedin) and video proliferates every website and blog, it’s obvious that audio becomes increasingly important in the equation. The importance of Audio is easy to overlook, but just try watching a movie without any sound, or try watching a video with only dialogue and no background music, sound effects, or other audio-visual goodness. It’s much less stimulating, if not totally unbearable. Without Audio, Video would be a dull boring and arguably meaningless mess. Licensing your content on AudioMicro opens up your portfolio to an entirely new audience, and and entirely new customer base. The market for online audio is going to continue to grow well into the foreseable future. Even bloggin softwares, including WordPress are incorporating one click audio (and video) insert options into all blog posts. Will bloggers be stealing (pirating) content or legally licensing in through a micro payment desination like AudioMicro. We believe that 90% of folks will “play by the rules” and do the right thing and purchase an AudioMicro subscription or credit package in order to properly secure the sync license required to add the meaningful, important, crucial audio content to their editorial and commercial projects, both online and offline.

Posted in: audio, micro payment, micro stock music, Pluggedin, royalty free music, YouTube

I’m a successful songwriter/composer who recently found out about AudioMicro, and became so enamored with the concept that I now am their Artist Recruiting Manager. In the past few weeks I’ve been talking to a lot of fellow musicians about AudioMicro, and the micro stock platform in general. There seems to be some mixed feelings and some misunderstandings about how artists fit into the whole micro stock picture.

For those who aren’t fully aware of the concept, micro stock simply means that the content (in this case audio/music) is crowd sourced – meaning ANYONE can submit content – and it’s sold for prices starting at $1 (in this case it’s $1 per minute of music). A few of my composer friends who make some decent money selling tracks for $30 or so in the royalty free space feel that micro stocking audio is going to devalue their music. It’s an understandable point of view, but in my humble opinion, a limited perspective.

See, whenever and wherever anything is sold, there is always the option of spending money on the high-end, or brand name version of the product, or the “generic” version of the product. If you use laundry detergent as an example, there is usually a few dollar difference between Tide and the generic brand, even though the ingredients are EXACTLY the same and we actually feel – sometimes better in the case of crowd sourced content.  Both brands make money and flourish because there will always be a market for both. Some people want to spend more money for the flashy brand, and some just want something that works regardless of the name or package. Sure you may make $30 or more by selling your music on a royalty free basis, but can it hurt you to open your “product” up to a consumer base that would rather spend less than that? Not at all in my opinion. People will still pay $30 for your music in that world just as fast people will spend a few bucks for your music in the micro stock world. You’re basically just opening up your customer base (the millions that can’t and won’t license audio for $30 a track) and creating new ways to make money by doing it. Not to mention the “theives” out there who only steal music — they’d also gladly pay $1 or 2 for music — it’s the same principle that has made iTunes so successful and has made people forget about scouring the internet for free music.

And above all, its risk free! At least take a handful of your tracks that haven’t ever earned a penny, and stick it up on this site. If you don’t like the way it works, just request to take em down. The artist has 100% ownership of their content and can remove it at any time.

In addition, AudioMicro offers the best royalty rate i’ve ever seen – 50% of every track sold.  As AudioMicro takes off, artists will be in position to make more money than ever before. When this site becomes the one-stop shop for stock audio, its not far fetched to think that many an artist could easily be making hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month, just in micro stock.

I can see how this will be the wave of the future, and as much as some musicians will resist the change, its the natural progression of things. Check out what has happened in the photography world and you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to find content, and how easy it is to make money from your art. Micro stock opens up opportunities for artists that never existed before, and makes it so much easier for those who need to place music in their visual medium. It’s the perfect give and take for both sides – its about as democratic as it gets. I see it as having your cake and eating it too – continue to sell some of your music for as much as you can. Take advantage of the high end and also upon up your content to an entirely new class of customer with micro stock. But while you’re plcaing tracks directly with high end customers you can put the rest of your stuff here on AudioMicro and make some extra money on the side and get a feel for the ease in which the micro stock concept works – for everyones benefit. We see some folks making over $100k per year in royalties in the micro stock photo realm and there’s no reason why this can’t be the case in the music space, which is actually a larger market than photos. It will just take some time for the concept to take off, but being there ahead of the curve will give you a huge advantage.

Thats my two cents. I’ve looked at other stock music sites, and AudioMicro is by far the most artist friendly, easiest to navigate, and the music upload process is a breeze. Not to mention that other sites offer only a measly 20% royalty rate or the ones that want you to “share your content for free” under a creative commons license or some other format. I applaud AudioMicro for seeing the future and trying to make sure that artists out there are well aware of the new market shift ahead of the curve and we encourage artists to jump on board and take advantage of the revolution rather than being resistant and scared of it.

Sincerely,

Gideon Black, Artist Recruiting Manager
www.audiomicro.com
Los Angeles, CA
Phone:  (818) 849-6396 
Fax: (320) 451-3838

Posted in: AudioMicro, micro stock audio, micro stock music, royalty free music, Sound Effects, sound fx, stock music

We learned of this information from an interview for a former US Performing Rights Organization (PRO) employee. Although we cannot prove it’s actually true at this point in time (our internal audit staff is busy tying down the numbers), we are confident that it’s at least directionally correct (i.e. 70% to 90% really).   Let’s be clear about one thing – we love PRO and we think they should have even greater authorities in the digital era, which we can address in later posts.  But the point of this post is that most PRO artist pay dies and never receive royalties.  Artists should be aware that by becoming a member of a PRO, you are not going to magically (or automatically) receive a broadcast royalty check in your mail box.  In a world where anyone with a computer can create and record and distribute their own content, becoming an accepted member of these organizations is not such a big deal.  Actually, being rejected is pretty much impossibe.  There are no prerequisits to joining a PRO (other than being alive and living on planet earth) so be careful to note that just because they will accept your annual membership dues does not mean you will automatically become a part of the broadcast royalty gravy train – you need to get your content placed, in order to kickstart that process, and AudioMicro is the perfect outlet for making that happen.  AudioMicro would like to turn you onto the idea of licensing your content through our uniform pricing model, meaning “all customers are created equally”.  The model is coined “democratic” because it treats all customers and artists the equally, regardless of the size of the outlet and the content itself.  We do not discriminate but rather facilitate your content licensing needs.  In addition, we pay the highest royalty rate in the micro stock music industry here at audiomicro so we hope you will feel welcome and trust that we have your best interests in mind – both artists and customers alike.   

Posted in: ASCAP, BMI, micro stock music, Performing Rights Organizations, PRO, royalty free music

Rights Managed Licensing is on the decline. Royalty Free Licensing is stabilizing (aka “not growing”). Ad supported Licensing models (aka the YouTube way) are proving unmonetizable / unprofitable as well as distracting to viewers in addition to not providing royalties to the content creators / providers among other copyright infringement issues. A new buzz is around CPM / Pay Per Use Licensing. We like to call this new form of licensing “same product, different packaging, everybody gets screwed”. With CPM licensing, a user of content (let’s say a photography, video, or audio clips) pays a fee every time the content is viewed/heard. What ends up happening is that the publisher pays more for the content, the content creator gets a smaller royalty for their work (as the CPM facilitator takes a hefty cut of the action) and the customer is “eternally billed” and tracked for their usage of the content. The truth is that Micro Stock is the future of content licensing. Micro Stock creates entirely new content from new artists, the content is nearly identical to the high end “professional” rights managed content, it gives customers a simple, easy to understand, general use commercial license with no additional billings, and it pays a nice, healthy royalty to it’s content creators. Micro Stock is powerful, it’s taken down an entire $6 billion public company and made it into a $2 billion company. Micro stock is on pace to double in terms of it’s popularity / growth / quantity of content licensed in this manner, over the next 5 years. Micro Stock is here to stay!

Posted in: content licensing, micro payment, micro stock, micro stock music, music cues, production elemenets, royalty free music, Sound Effects