What is a commercial? How does one license music for it?

What is a commercial?

The Proud Music Library offers music titles for its use in commercials, such as, for example, in promotional films. A commercial is usually, in a nutshell, a promotional production that advertises a product or service. The target is the end user. This happens generally through media such as TV, radio, websites, and mobile phones, commercial spots on DVD or the like.  Data carriers are rarely found.

Music tracks for commercials
Searchmaschine for music that is perfect for commercial use!

 

commercial music library

In this respect, licensing for the use of music titles from the Proud Music Library is paid in lump sum. This means that the use does not depend on the frequency with which a spot is projected or on its length. There are standardized commercial licenses (for example, for TV or online advertising), which limit the use to one year. The Proud Music Library also offers the so called “buyout” licenses. Just send an individual license request indicating the area of use (worldwide, across Europe, or individual territories), the period of use (one or 2 years), and the degree of dissemination or type of use (TV, Websites, third party site, etc.). License combinations are also possible, which, for example, include only TV/radio, TV/Internet, or Internet/radio.

Proud Music Library
Music tracks for commercials
completely royalty free music means free music for commercial us?

With the use of so called “completely royalty free music” from the Proud Music library there are no charges to pay to any collecting society like ASCAP, BMI, PRS, GEMA, etc.. It means not music for free or gratis music. This is valid also in the case of buyout licenses for royalty-free music! Should the commercial spot be inserted on TV and radio, there would be likewise no charges for the repertoire, as long as the TV or radio station has a flat rate contract with a collecting society.  This also proceeds in the case of cinema advertising, depending on whether the movie theater operator also has, in this case, a flat rate contract with a collecting society.

Royalty-free music and production music for commercials on TV, Radio or Cinema
Royalty-free music for commercials on TV, Radio or Cinema

What means “GEMA-freie Musik”?

The term “GEMA-freie Musik” means completely royalty free music. The composer of  this music is not registered with a collecting society (ASCAP-free, BMI-free, PRS-free, SUISA-free, AKM-free, TONO-free, SIAE-free). The Proud Music Library contains more than 10,000 completely royalty free music for all media: e.g. web, movie, tv, advertising, on hold.

How many production music tracks does the Proud Music Library contain?

The Proud Music Library increases its number of tracks by 40 to 100 on a near daily basis. The current size of the library can be seen by clicking “search” in the navigation bar at the top of the par and then clicking “search” on the menu button. Next, a list of all available tracks in the library is shown, including the numbers of tracks available completely royalty-free and pro-registered. This way, it is possible to get a good idea of which music titles can be licensed completely royalty free.

What about the PRO-registered songs? Does the standard license covers everything for a trailer on a website?

For PRO-registered songs the user has to pay an additional fee to the local collecting society:

– Italia: SIAE
– Germany: GEMA
Read more…

Please contact your local collecting society to get more information how to calculate the fees.

The national copyright collecting societies

Here you can find a list of the different copyright collecting societies of our composers and the corresponding links:

Germany: GEMA “Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte” (musical recordings and performances)

Link to the GEMA

Austria: AKM “Autoren, Komponisten, Musikverleger” (lyricists, composers and music publishers)

Switzerland: SUISA (Swiss Association for composers rights)

UK: MCPS-PRS

MCPS “Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society” , PRS “Performing Right Society”

USA: SESAC “Society of European Stage Authors & Composers”, ASCAP “American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers”, BMI ” Broadcast Music Incorporated”

Canada: SOCAN “Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers”

France: SACEM “Société des auteurs compositeurs et éditeurs de musique”

Norway: TONO (Copyright collective for authors and composers of musical works)

Italy: SIAE “Società Italiani degli Autori ed Editori”

Ireland: IMRO ” Irish Music Rights Organisation”

New Zealand, Australia: APRA “Australasian Performing Right Association “

Poland: ZAIKS “ZwiÄ�zek Autorów i Kompozytorów Scenicznych” (Vereinigung der Bühnenautoren und -komponisten)

Spain: SGAE “Sociedad General de Autores y Editores”

Denmark: KODA (copyrights for composers, songwriters and music publishers)

CELAS

Under the name CELAS the german collecting society GEMA (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte) and the british MCPS-PRS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society – Performing Right Society) Alliance offer since january 2007 a conjointly licensing possibility for music repertoire of the EMI Music Publishing company. The particularity of the CELAS is the unique possibility to acquire a pan-european license for the repertoire of the major EMI Music Publishing. The CELAS shall at this become the main point of contact for transnational online licensing.