Are You REALLY Licensed? The Hidden Danger Of Royalty Free Podcast Music Sites

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Hey, everyone. Welcome to feed you'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard, and along with my co host, Tom Hazzard, we are going to talk about royalty free podcast music today. But we're really gonna talk about the fine print, the legal entanglements you may find yourself in if you don't do this properly. And if you thought you knew what the right way to do it was. What worked yesterday doesn't work today. And we have been doing this for a decade, Tom.

Right, we have. And you know what's kind of funny is at the end of this, it'll be clear we're really coming back to where we started.

I know, isn't that funny?

Which is really ironic because you wouldn't think that would happen.

But you know what, I want to say something about that, Tom, because I think that's really the case here. And we find this happens again and again to people when something's going excitingly well, like podcasting. Ooh, it's the latest thing thing. Join this, like, hop on the bandwagon. And all of these services all of a sudden pop up, focused on podcasters. And we have this happen. A lot of our clients will jump ship and try some new social media tool and some new music tool and some new editing tool and new transcription tool. We get it all the time. 98% of the time, those companies find that podcasters are not their audience and they lose interest and the services go way, way, way, way, way down. And what they promised you, they don't deliver. And in fact, sometimes they really screw you over. And that's what's really happened in the podcast music industry.

There's so many changes that have been happening, and what I've been seeing, and I've been personally involved in the negotiations with this cause. Look, individual podcaster, you can go and get your one license for your piece of music from a number of different places, and we're going to talk about today making sure that license covers you, and that's important. But when you're an agency or somebody like us that's, you know, producing hundreds of podcasts for launch. And we've launched over a thousand shows and we've provided the music for the majority of those shows. There's a few exceptions where someone's a musician and they made their own music or their kids a musician and they made their music. My dad did our music because he's a musician. For our very first podcast of ETF FF3D printing podcast and we added a.

Few of our own sound effects from the machine.

We did. But it was, I mean, at the time and this was my first podcast, right? I'm like, sure, why wouldn't I ask my dad to do it today? I can't wait that long to start a show. I don't ask my dad to do anything. We have to get music from a licensed source. And so we're a high volume user of that stuff. And so we have had a license that extends to our podcasters. When we get the music under our license, we're allowed to use it for clients. And, and there have been all these requirements, restrictions. Now I can already hear some of our listeners, Tracy saying, well, I've never had any problem with music. You know, Apple doesn't say anything about it. I've never had Spotify complain to me. If you only have an audio podcast, you're probably not going to hear much about this. But when you have a video version of your podcast and you know, YouTube is becoming bigger than ever right now, four out of five new podcasts, I feel like the toothpaste commercial. Four out of five dentists agree. Now four out of five podcasters, literally about 80% of our new podcasters are launching the shows with video right from the get go and audio Right. Only 20% don't. So if you just have the, you're just doing the audio. This will be a lesser issue because the podcast listening apps do not police this as much. They will if someone complains, but they're not proactively policing it. YouTube is a whole nother ball game. They are all over it and they've got algorithms automatically when you put up a video, listening to it and seeing if there's any music in it and making an algorithmic software decision. First, is this music, you know, copyright protected? And then if anybody does complain on YouTube, YouTube's all over you and it's up to you to prove you have the license. So if you're doing a podcast that's also put out as video, this is a much more important issue for you.

Yeah, and I, I want to point out that there are, as I was saying, before some people who just didn't understand podcasting. So they said, oh yeah, we're giving you a license to use this on podcasting. But they didn't really understand what that meant. So it's one thing to use something in a video once, but we have intro outros that go across video to video to video. And there are many royalty free sites who say, oh no, no, no, no. You have to relicense for every single video you put out. It's okay on the podcast, but it's not okay on the video. And that's where you start to fall into some of this gray area about what's happening with the understanding of video podcasts versus audio podcasts. And you're not necessarily licensed for both, even though you think you are.

And in fact, what happened to us and what the big change that's been coming for a year, we actually thought we were going to have to deal with this a little more than a year ago. And I'm, I don't think there's no problem with talking about the company we were using, Tracy. We were, had a license, a pro license with Soundstripe is one royalty free music provider.

And I want you to really understand everyone. Soundstripe was not in the podcast music business when they started this. They came after all of us podcasters and begged us for their business to do business with them. And they created a special account, an enterprise account for us, pro account like. And they made sure that. We made sure that the fine print said that podcasts were included in that.

And not only that, podcast video had could use the broadcast rights to everything. And this was the kicker that when we create a prerecorded intro or outro for a show which is most of the place the music is used, you could also use it as transition sounds if you wanted in editing, you know, in different parts of the show. If you're putting a little ad in your show, you could use it behind that. Those are different elements and there are different rules for using music licenses for some of those things. So make sure you're aware of that. But primary use, intro, prerecorded intro and outro. We made sure our license covered it because if a customer stops working with politics, we're not producing their episodes anymore. They want to keep using that intro and outro on the new episodes going forward. And we made sure that was allowed. That was permissible in the license. And it was until in this last 12 months over 2024, Soundstripe changed their license without notice. They changed it and said Starting at about, actually in. Toward the end of January 2025, that we could no longer renew the kind of license we had if we wanted to continue.

Well, no, no, no, no. Let's be really clear. South Stripe actually was trying to force us in the middle of our contract that we paid for telling us that we weren't going to be allowed to. Because when you said without notice.

Yeah, that's true.

It sounds like that was notice if they gave you till January 2025. But they really didn't. We just forced them to accept what we had signed.

Let me rephrase. Without notice, in the middle of 2024, they changed their license without telling us. Now they did tell us, you're not going to have to pay more. We're going to grandfather you into old licensing through January 2025. Okay, so maybe I misspoke about the timeline and I was negotiating with them saying, wait a second, you want me to pay a new license for per year? That is literally six times the cost of what I've been paying in past years for no greater benefit, no more value. I'm just increasing my costs. And that I'm going to have to pass on to my customers. That doesn't work for me. And then the big kicker was they said, oh, yeah, and by the way, now, in the future, since you're editing the shows for your customers, the license applies. But if a customer leaves you and you're no longer editing it, that customer can no longer use that intro and outro without buying their own license from Soundstrape. And this got to the point where it's like, this is not practical for us as a company. It's not practical for our customers. So we as a company and all of our customers were recommending, all right, change all their music and go get licenses somewhere else.

So now look, if you're stuck in a situation like that, the fastest path is to go to Soundstripe and buy your own license. I just don't trust that they won't screw you over too. And you buy one time license and then they're going to come back and tell you, oh, no, no, no. You have to buy one every year and so be really careful.

Oh, no, but no, no, it's. They don't have a one time license with Soundstrape. It's a subscription. It's either a monthly or an annual subscription. So you're going to keep paying for that music on and on and on. And I believe the lowest price, if I remember right, to cover everything you needed to was $19 a month. Or you could pay an annual and save a little bit. But that's a ridiculous amount of money, even though it's small on its face. But yeah, it's a lot of money to. To pay ongoing, especially for an independent. Or do it yourself. Bootstrapping. Kind of a podcaster. That is unacceptable to me certainly, and I think would be to a lot of podcasters. So these things have been changing on this. And so what we've come back to is finding we've researched everything. We also researched AI music, which, by the way, AI music and I think the threat of AI for royalty, free music, generating music through AI. We've experimented and tried it all and I can tell you it's not ready for prime time, at least not in our business. Okay. If I could have a source where I could create AI generated music that has no copyright, no royalty issues whatsoever, I'd be doing it. It's not available yet. I do believe it's coming. We may have a different discussion, another episode on this within another year as things emerge, and I hope we do.

I don't know. I think we could have one sooner. I think we may have one in the next few weeks. I'm testing one right now. We could have one in a month.

Oh, are you testing one? All right, well, we've been testing this for a full year already and not finding a practical, workable solution. I'll be thrilled if we can come back to you soon.

Well, yeah, but this is what I want you to be aware of, though. Like this is the funny part. So I'm testing this AI and I signed up for an account which was a free account, to just test it because I'm not like doing much more much in it. And I haven't bought anything or done anything with this AI music. But I've only been registered for two weeks and I already got an update.

To the terms and conditions from the AI platform.

From the AI platform. And this is what I want you all to hear very carefully as you keep trying these new sources. They are not sure of their business models yet. And that means that you could get yourself into something where you do not have the continued rights to something that you've now fallen in love with. You don't want to change anything, to fix anything. So be very, very cautious. And that is why we've made some of the choices and the recommendations we're going to make for you today is because we don't trust any of these sources at this point to not keep changing the Game on you because of how AI is coming into the model because their business models are shifting. I mean soundstripe, I think they were trying to go public. Right. Or try to get bought or something.

Maybe I don't remember that. I think you may be thinking of another business that we're working with but.

There'S some kind of business reason. They needed to increase their subscription model and make more money or they're not going to be able to be viable. And that's what they decided and they just decided they were going to do it. Now they've lost our business. Like we just didn't renew. So we're done.

Yeah. That our annual with them has now ended and we're. We're going to share with you what we're doing right now. But it is true, I think that all these royalty free music companies are feeling that they're business viability is threatened by AI and that's why a lot of this is happening. So at least you can understand there's a reason why, even if you don't think it's a good reason why there's a reason why a lot of these things are shifting. And so what we've done is come back to in the very beginning one of the platforms we used from the start which right now currently we're using premium beat.com and the reason is now it's a little more costly than it used to be for us having this agency license where we could use as many songs as we wanted to for this annual fee and we were paying less than this per show, I'm telling you. But they have a license that covers audio use an audio video broadcast rights.

For single purchase license. So I want to be really clear. You buy once, not a subscription?

No, just once. You're buying license to a song and you can listen to all these other songs, find the one you want, choose it and you license that song for $59 one time and you get a certificate, a license that's a certificate. Actual thing you have and can hold that has a code. So if YouTube ever comes, somebody ever complains to YouTube or anything like this, you can provide YouTube. Here's my license code. They will accept it and they will go away. So that's what we're doing. We were doing that in the beginning and we were launching so many shows because we've launched over a thousand shows. It's a lot of money doing that music for every show. The difference is today because of this license on Premium Beat, even when we're doing it Done for you. Set up and launch of a show. Now we have the customer go buy that Premium Beat license. And the good reason why the license is in their name. They are free to use it as long as they want. What all bail the terms of that license now, in the future, whatever.

And because there's no way for us to transfer a license to someone just.

Because they change what producer they're using or who's helping them supporting their podcast. I don't think any podcast really wants to be forced to then change the music or to pay for another license. So we're just having our customers buy it so they own it. I wish I could buy it for them, but the rights really don't allow us to.

Yeah, we can't transfer a license. And that's what I was saying. So it's really is. But this isn't the only kind of call unscrupulous attitude and issues that we've had in the past. We've had the issue with musicians and producers who claim that they created the music for you and now you can't transport it and move it. And we've had some come out of the woodwork because the show started to get popular and they wanted more money. They said, oh no, I didn't license it for commercial use and you have ads now. So now you have to pay me again. So these are things. When you come up against these, my answer is dump the music and start again. Because it is not that big a deal in the system of things. Well, especially if you're using our service because we can change intro and outros through the entire show catalog if needed. So like it's just like instantly fixed and can be updated in YouTube. You can't do that. But YouTube rarely goes back to old music unless there's a complete royalty legal dispute. And then they give you the option to just mute the music so like you don't have to lose your video. So there's a bunch of opportunities to rectify it over there when it's not. It had nothing to do with you. I mean, that has happened when big musician lost their royalty rights to music or a, you know, whole music label lost royalty rights to something. So that's happened before, but they'll just allow you to mute it and you're done and you're fixed. So they rarely go back. But it's your new videos that you're loading in that you'll have problems with on YouTube.

And that's true of most music licenses. Even if you did have a music license from a subscription service like Soundstrape and you were paying them monthly. Your videos and podcast audios that have already been published in the past. And I'm not going to. Of course, this is where Tom has to say, I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Okay? Be clear about that. But in my experience, most of the music licenses you're free to have, episodes you've published in the past on YouTube and in all the podcast apps remain there. You don't have to take them down because your subscription on that license ended because you had the subscription when you created and published that episode. It's the future episodes in that condition also that you may need to change.

I would be cautious with private musicians and producers because they're very unscrupulous and they can say, this wasn't in our contract, it wasn't explicitly stated, and because of that, you have to pay me royalties for all the past. Every time it plays, every time there's a play, I want an. I want money. So you have to be really careful. And that's where the subscription services were somewhat safer. What you would call royalty free music. Royalty free podcast music was much safer. But now I'm not feeling so good about. I'm definitely not feeling good and I never have about the private musicians and the producers, unless you really know what you're doing from a legal standpoint.

And then you do have to be careful. And you know, we experienced this as well. And I know a lot of you independent podcasters listening to this are like, well, that only applies to an agency. That may not apply to me, and that may be true, but these are still really good lessons to be aware of and to make sure you're covering yourself and that you don't have a problem, you know, within the history of your podcast. Because if you're like us, if you go on long enough, you really get set in your ways and you don't want to have to change something unless you really want to change it. Because I want to freshen up my podcast and create new intro and outro this year. And that's great too. But to be forced to is no fun endeavor. But let me tell you, we did have this happen. We had one in the very early years of Politize, we had an employee who was a audio editor who also had an affinity for music. He was a decent musician and he would create music for a lot of our shows and we did pay him a specific fee for the rights to that music. But I can tell you now in hindsight, the contract was not very clear and he, you know, left and moved on and hadn't been with us for years. And he came back to us a couple years later and said, hey, why are you guys still using my music on these 10 podcasts? And I was like, are you kidding me? We paid you for that? And he's like, well, no, you didn't. And so this got into an argument and our solution at that time, rather than continue to argue it was, okay, we're going to change the music and stop using music because I am not going to be held hostage.

And he didn't think we'd do it, which we.

He didn't think we would do it.

Because he didn't think we could do it.

We would more easily pay the fee rather than have to change the music.

Right. But he also thought we couldn't change it on the past, which we did. And see, that's where you get into trouble is because every time it continues to be played, if you've got a dispute, he has a case in court. But because our potato system allows us to remove all the past audios and replace them with the new audios, we don't have that problem.

The intros and outros, you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so that's one of the reasons we actually developed this, so that you didn't have outdated intro and outros. But the side benefit of updating your music is tremendously powerful and could save you the liability and problems in the future.

So, yeah, we weren't even going to let this one get to the point of a lawsuit, which is like, no, forget it, we're going to move on.

He just thought he could blackmail us into doing it and didn't work.

It was really shocking. But these are the kinds of things that can happen.

Yeah.

And music is such an important part.

The other point I want you to make is the fine print. We're talking here about the fine print of royalty free podcast music. And when we look at that, sometimes the fine print says that you're not allowed to use the music for any commercial use. And that means adapting and adding that music, any amount of it, to your ads. So be very cautious that you bought the right type of license and that that use is allowed.

And you also have to make sure that language, because it can be tricky if the music is used in a podcast that has ads put within it. It doesn't have to be music used for the ad either in some of these licenses. So you're right. Trace the fine Print is important, but there are licenses that you can get and they're not expensive. Just make sure you're getting the right one that will cover you in case that ever happens in the future.

Right. So there's two things that were. There are two things that I want to say about Premium Beat, and that's where we've gone back to is going to Premium Beat is that Premium Beat does specifically reference podcasts as being their $59 is allowed to be used in podcasts. However, if your podcast is first aired on broadcast, radio or television, broadcast TV or radio first. So it's a radio show first, that you then turn it into a podcast, make that radio station, deal with the music, because it has a totally different ballpark, totally different game. There's a different license that you have to buy and it's 199 on premium beat where it's broadcast right to the music for.

That's for old traditional over air broadcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Not if you take your podcast and then an online radio station replays it. That doesn't count. That's not the same thing. That's still digital. That's still covered under the podcast model because they're saying it's radio, but it's really a podcast. So it's not different. But be really careful about where its first source is and if its first source is at a radio station. Mostly the radio stations usually put their own music on. Like, it's very rare that they don't, but sometimes they give you the right to republish it as a podcast and you cannot reuse their music without permission. So you may have to put your own intro outro on it in the secondary step. So these are also some nuances and things. Look, if you're confused or you think you have a complex situation, I'm going to tell you to make an appointment with Tom. Tom will help you sort this out because I guarantee you, we've seen it before and we've seen it, we've done it, we've helped them, we've read the fine print, we figured it out. So if you come up with any of those situations and you're unsure what to do, reach out to Tom. There's not going to be a problem. He's going to help you and figure that out. You don't have to be one of our clients to have us help you figure that out. Like, we'll figure that out with you. We want you to succeed and we want podcasting to succeed and we want these stupid issues and this exploitation that's happening of podcasters to not be allowed to. To not be. We don't want anyone to. To take it. So if we stand up against it all together and we say this isn't good enough, then it's going to stop as an industry. We just stood up to Sound Tribe and said it, and now we will never recommend them again and that they're off of our recommendations list. So that has power. We have thousands that we've launched here that has power. Right. So use your own power of recommendation as well and doing more scrupulous sources, more really good sources that are doing benefits to the podcast industry. Now. The other thing I do want to say, though, I'm also skeptical. Although right now we're recommending Premium Beat, I'm also skeptical of what's going to happen to them in the next 30 days alone because Premium Beat just got bought by, is merging with iStock and Shutterstock. They're all together. Shutterstock and Premium Beat were owned by the same company anyway, but now they're merging with iStock and we don't know what that merger holds. What happens when you have three subscriptions? Are they going to do right by you or are they going to overcharge you? What's going to happen next? Are your licenses going to get muddied between your image licenses and your music licenses? What's going to happen there? Are they going to do away with the single purchase, the single use purchase? We don't know.

I'm not sure. But again, you can see why I'm very hopeful for AI music generation. It concerned me when you said there may be some things they're doing there with those rights. I thought inherently, if you're generating something creative through AI, like music or an AI image, you can't copyright them, right?

It's not about that, Tom. It's about the idea that you're going to sign on for a service to utilize it, and then the next thing you know, they change their licenses on you, they change their subscription model on you, they start charging you more and more and more. And look, that's happened everywhere. Like, even ChatGPT has premium rates. Like, you know, like they remove the services that you thought you had and now you can't use them anymore. And I. So I think it's more likely to happen to those of us who are agencies than it is to happen to the individual users, because once they've sold you something, it's done and like, they're not going to be able to take it back. So My encouragement to you is if you are at all thinking about changing your music or if you fall into any one of these subscription services, stop using them and go buy a music license now before anything changes over at Premium Beat.

Because my understanding is that license is good into the future in perpetuity. As it's sold today.

As it's sold today. And that's what. And if you get that little certificate, what if they do away with that tomorrow and they go to these stupid codes that Sound Stripe went to, like, you know, these are the things that could happen tomorrow as they could all change their business models. So I'm saying to you today, if you at all think that is, go buy music today.

All right, sounds like some good advice. Now. I really do hope we're going to be back for an update here in the not too distant future with new developments in AI generated music. It is a little too, you know, a little premature to know when that will be. But you know what? We will let you know.

Yeah. And so the other thing that I do want to mention briefly is our good friend Fran Acero, who is our YouTube absolute expert and everything. YouTube. She also wants to mention to this, and this is slightly an aside because it's a little different about using music clips within your show or within your. And mostly within your video in this particular case that she's talking about. But if you use music clips within your video, they are not covered just because you said and give credit to the musician, that doesn't work. You have to have an explicit license purchase, use whatever that might be to play any amount of music or sound effects. You must have the rights to that or YouTube will get it from within the video, too. So don't just think this is your intro outro that's covered. I want you to understand that it does apply to the core content in a video. And what really happens over on YouTube is when they send you a notice that says that you're in copyright violation, immediately deal with it. Because every time you get one, it's strike against you. And if you get three strikes, they'll shut your channel down. There's no recourse. You will have to start your subscribers everything all over again. There's no recourse. Once you get shut down, you can't appeal to anything and get it reinstated. Doesn't work. So have any problem with it, rectify it immediately.

Good advice, Tracy. All right, well, I hope you all got some value out of that. I hope it wasn't too much of a rant. It's just this is a real important issue. It came up. It's something we've been dealing with and had to find a solution for. And we hope that our listeners would appreciate understanding what that solution is for today. But at the same time, it may be different tomorrow. But that's why we're here. That's why we'll be back next time with another episode. We'll always come back and let you.

Know what's changing and in fact, our very next episode. So next week we're building on this. So assuming that you might go out and buy brand new music now, you've got an opportunity to update your intro or outro and let's update it for what's really going on right now and how listeners want to hear that intro outro. That's going to be our next episode. We're going to talk about doing some new sound design on your intro outro and script design as well, and really making it what it needs to be to keep up with the way the current listener base is in 2025.

I think it's a great update to do. Tracy. We probably haven't done anything like that in a long time and definitely things have changed. Our thinking has changed. There's a lot of going on there. So I look forward to that one.

Tracy all right, so thanks everyone for listening. We so appreciate you being here. And we'll be back next week with another topic. Right in the middle of everything going on, podcasting.

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