Music Business/Law Tips - "Music Libraries"

Having your songs in a music library can lead to placements in film, TV, advertisement and other media. Music libraries normally contain tons of music, either full songs (vocal and/or instrumental) and shorter “cues”. The library will need the ability to license both the master and the publishing for the titles it works. The library will license a piece of music to a user for a fee (which varies based on the license type). These days library music is organized digitally online by themes/streaming to make it easy for searching by a potential client (e.g., a music supervisor for a TV show or film) that wants to quickly listen to a piece to see if it fits the purpose. Cues are tagged with meta-data to narrow down searches. Common meta-data tags are: mood, sounds like, beats per minute, genre, instrumental, etc. The issues to consider when placing music into a library are: non-exclusive vs. exclusive, term, how many songs, income split, etc.). Ben McLane Esq. Benmclane.com