Get Great Podcast Music without Worrying About Music Rights

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Welcome back to Feed you'd Brand. This is Tom Hazard, one of your normal co hosts and today I'm going to introduce a new member of our team at Brandcasters as today a. I don't know if I want, I don't want to use the term substitute co host. I'm going to say alternate co host today and that is Alexandra Hazard who is a critical member of the team here at Brancasters. And Tracy's unable to record with me today, so Alexandra's here to be my co host. So welcome Alexandra.

Thank you. It's fun to be here.

Those of you who know us at Brian Casters and work with us, you may have had a lot of interaction with Alexandra already. If not, you may. So it's actually perfectly natural for us that she would step in for Traci to co host with me. And I'm really pleased to have her here and be sharing the subject with you. So today we actually have a really important subject to talk about for anyone who is already podcasting or considering podcasting. And this has come up recently because we found several people that have already been podcasting and have come to work with us, sort of, if you will, transferring their production to our company that are doing some things that are, how.

Do I say, not very ethical. That's what I would say.

Well, ethical is one way to put it. I think they actually are running afoul of music copyright laws in reality. And so we thought we should have a discussion about this today. Talk about what is acceptable and what's not acceptable in the eyes of the legal system. And I'm also going to say, you know what, we're not going to be your conscience also. I mean, all these people have been podcasting and not doing everything totally by the letter of the law for quite some time. And you know what, it's your show, it's your prerogative as a podcast host and owner. You can do what you want. But.

But hosting companies have to protect themselves and that's what they're starting to do.

Yeah. So that's how this came up recently. Where did we learn this?

We Learned about it on Libsyn. So we have some clients who don't host with us because they already had a podcast and we're over 100 episodes in and didn't want to move yet. And so we'll publish their episodes on Libsyn. And recently, when you log into Libsyn, they have a big notification at the top of the page that's telling you. By hosting with Libsyn, you are telling us that you are compliant with music copyright laws. And if you're not compliant, you'll get kicked off their platform.

Right, because they are not going to take responsibility for the music you're using on your show. I mean, in reality, no podcast host can. If you are posting your own shows up on their platform, they're not in control of the music that you use and choose. So let's take a step back. And so let's talk about music rights and music copyright laws in general. Music is very different in copyright law than many other aspects of copyright law when it comes to copywriting a book or an article or an image. First of all, I know from experience, and actually at a lot different trade shows that we speak at, the subject comes up a lot. But when you write a book, when you record a podcast, when you record a piece of music, or anything that is a protected work, you automatically inherently have a copyright in it if you're the author of it. I want to preface this statement by saying I'm not an attorney and I'm not providing official legal advice. I am just giving you some helpful information from my experience, and I do know quite a bit about this. But again, I'm not an attorney, and if you have questions about copyright law, you should consult your own attorney. You don't have to actually file any legal paperwork to obtain a copyright. You can file an application to register that copyright if you want to, but you don't have to, and you don't have to have done it to even fall under copyright law protection.

Right.

So you already have one. So that's an important thing to understand. But music. Over the years, the music industry has lobbied our government here in the United States. And I'm only going to talk about this in reference to within the United States, even though there are copyright laws across all, many, many different countries in the world, and there are a lot of similarities between copyright law in some countries, but again, check with your attorney. You need to know the details of that. But in the United States, the music industry has lobbied our government in the United States and gotten a lot of Advantages and protection from copyright laws. So music, my point is music, the music industry, I think, is the most heavily regulated industry when it comes to copyright law. And you have to be very careful. There are definitely some do's and don'ts when it comes to music. And this episode is a bit of a 101 on that and a bit of a public service announcement. And we just have seen some people who, we're not going to call them out by name on this episode, but we've seen some people really doing some things that are not right. And we would strongly suggest or recommend that you might, if you're one of these people, after we discuss this and you're doing one of these things with strongly suggest that you would might change your practices to align yourself with the copyright laws.

Right.

Because you don't want to get in trouble. The last thing you need is to have your podcast taken down. Because can will Libsyn just without notice, take you down if they discover that you're doing this?

I'm not positive if they do it without notice. Maybe they don't disclaim that on the notice that I've seen so far, but they do say that you will be like subject to being removed from LinkedIn or maybe they would delist you first from itunes and Stitcher and all the places you're syndicated before removing you completely from their platform in case you want have an opportunity to fix it. But I'm not positive they haven't said in that notice.

You know, it makes sense that they might shut you off first and then ask questions later because they don't want to get in trouble. This is the whole point. They're trying to make sure that they're not liable and that they protect themselves because they don't want to be the subject of a lawsuit at any point. And these copyright laws, especially as the Internet has come to be, have become a much bigger deal with the Digital Millennium Copyright act, dmca. And there's a lot of specific rules about taking down content on the Internet, obviously on sites like YouTube and Hulu and all these different.

Facebook too.

Facebook, yeah. About anything that is copyright protected. So this is not something you can afford to completely ignore. So when it comes to music, if you have your favorite, if you're my generation, your favorite Def Leppard song or Van Halen song or something, and you really, you're a rocker and you want that music to be the theme song for your podcast, I'm sorry to tell you, you really cannot do that. I mean, you could apply for the rights to use it, but you're gonna.

Pay a lot for those rights too.

Well, and the reality is you're never gonna type of a band. They've already signed their rights and a record company owns it. And the levels of approval and permission you'd have to go through and the rate you would have to pay to use it, it's just not going to happen. And if you use it without permission, then you're violating the copyright law.

Right. And I do want to say too that it's not just about using it in your episode for your intro and outro. It's also about if you're having a good time with your guest in your show and you want to play a song while you're already on the air. Because some people do like a Facebook Live and I've seen this happening lately where they'll be on their Facebook Live, they'll play their music right there on the live from their computer or whatever and it's just a normal pop song. And then maybe in the middle of the episode they play it too, because it's a transition between the next segment. And as fun as that may be, it's not following our copyright laws that we all have to abide by.

Yeah, I've had some people suggest or actually, you know, ask us at times at different trade shows, well, if you use less than eight seconds of a song, that's okay, right? That they thought that there was some exception if you only used a very, very small clip. And actually we have researched that and we understand that that is not in fact allowing.

Right.

So you can't do that either. So what we often do and what most podcasters really should be doing when it comes to music, whether it's you want to find some music for your theme song for your show or had to have, is some transition sounds between different segments of your show that you actually purchase the rights to royalty free music and you're still paying something for it. You have to buy the rights to a piece of music. And there are many different websites you can find them on, but the arrangement and the purchase of the music is completely above board. This is what it's for. You know, you buying music that is not subject to ASCAP or BMI royalties, which ASCAP is the American Society of Publishers and Composers and Publishers, I think. And BMI is the sort of, I think the uk, the British equivalent of that. And if you use music, like even music you hear played in a retail store, like if you go out to Ikea or you're in a restaurant and they're playing music. All the music being played in public like that, there are royalties being paid for that pop music to be played there. And every business that does that has to pay into a system that rewards the owner of that music for it by paying them royalties for it. So you just don't want to get involved in that with podcasting, because it's quite messy, unless you're a major, big, big company like NBC or CNN or somebody there, npr, whatever, that does this all the time, has a system for it, and it's nearly not a big deal for them.

Right.

So, Alexandra, can you share with our audience some of the details and what we do to help podcasters with music, where they might find it for themselves and what the costs might be.

So a lot of the times we use premiumbeat.com because they have a higher volume of songs, so it's easier for us to find what we're looking for. They've got so many different genres, and you can even look up by the mood. So, like, I had a client last week who wanted a song that makes you want to dance in your seat, and they actually have dance in your seat as a search term you can use, and they bring up all of the songs that would make someone feel like they want to dance in their seat. So we like to use premiumbeat.com but they are one of the more expensive. They're only $49 a license. However, that's actually one of the more expensive sites. Audio Jungle is cheaper, but you got to be careful because their licenses are generally more for websites than for podcasts. You got to make sure you're purchasing the right license if you use them, which they're through Avedo Market, which is a website market where you can get website themes and all sorts of other plugins and things for your website. But they do music as well. So those are the major two that we do use, and there are some others out there. But you just always have to be really careful and make sure you're reading through what that license is. For example, with premiumbeat.com specifically, it's on a project basis, so you have to be careful in how you name your project. So you go to purchase on premiumbeat.com and before you check out, it makes you type in your project name and a slight purpose of what it's for. And so I'm always careful to say the podcast name, and then it's for the show as a whole. So that way we could use it in the middle of the show and not just in the intro and outro, or if someone has an ad they're going to insert in the show, we can use the music in the background of the ad for that specific show. So I'm careful in how I phrase it because it is a project basis, and if you call it by the show, you're being really clear that the entire show is the project that you're using it for and not just one episode or not just the intro or outro for the episode.

So, yeah, wow, that's a good tip. And one of the other things that you'll notice if you go to premiumbeat.com is that when you search for these music titles, you will be able to listen to them. You can actually play them right there and even download them and download and listen to them. But when you download them prior to paying for them, and when you listen to them, there's a watermark in them. And if you're familiar with this, like with stock photography, if you ever go to istockphoto or Corbis or any of these other stock photo sites and you're looking for an Image for your PowerPoint presentation, or maybe, you know, your slide deck that you're gonna give an investment pitch in or some speech you're gonna give from the stage, often there's actually a visual watermark on that image that you can look at it, say, oh, that's the type of image I want. That's great. But if you download it without paying for it, it's got a watermark in it that says, hey, we're the owners of this image, and until you pay for it, then it has a watermark. But if you pay for it, we'll give you the version without the watermark based on the license you're buying. Well, premiumbeat.com with the music does the same thing. When you listen to that music track periodically, like every, I don't know, 10.

Seconds or so, yeah, it goes premiumbeat.com.

Yeah, that it's saying that over the music. And the reason I wanted to mention this to you today is we've actually had some podcasters come to us, and they've already had a podcast they're producing, and it's already published on itunes and everything. And their theme music came from premiumbeat.com and it actually still has that watermark.

Yeah, we're actually in the process of fixing that for one of our transition clients who had that, which is unfortunate, because before they transitioned to us, they didn't know that, like, they were really doing that much wrong because they were using less than 10 seconds. As you said earlier. Some people think that's okay, but the watermark is still in there on their audio track. And our audio editor actually flagged it and was like, hey, this is on here. Is it the wrong version or did the client not buy the music? And so now we're actually re editing all those episodes to fix that because we don't want to be in violation now that they're on our platform.

Yeah. And so the lesson there is even a royalty free piece of music is something you still have to pay for. And if you haven't paid for it and you're using that sample track that says that has the watermark in it, that's a copyright violation, just like it is to use, you know, your favorite pop song or something without permission. So really not the best idea in the world. And we would definitely recommend you do not do that.

Right. And premiumbeat.com's not the only one who uses that watermark. Audio Jungle does too, and I'm sure almost every other one out there does. And when I found that a music website doesn't use the watermark, then they don't let you download it before you purchase it.

There's even ways to get around that. I've seen people, while they play it online and just record it, they don't have as good a quality piece of music. But still, I mean, there's really no reason to do that. I mean, $50 for a music track for something you're going to use for the theme song or your show is a pretty reasonable expense. And if we're setting up a podcast for someone that's included in the whole cost of it anyway. But the other thing you can do, and this is an option for people, is maybe you really want a very specific type of music and you're not happy having something that anybody else could buy off of a stock music website. And you want to create your own original music. And that happens. We actually have done that for people here at Brandcasters. We have resources that creating original music for podcasts in different genres and there are even other outsources that we've used who are, I would say, a little more higher end. Because it's not the cheapest thing in the world, right, to have an original song made, a signature song for your show or your podcast. But you certainly can do that. And then we have another podcast that Tracy and I co host. It's actually the first podcast we started several years a number of years ago. And it's. The subject matter is in 3D printing. And we did something a little geeky there, but it was pretty creative. 3D printers tend to make a certain type of sound and there are some different pitches in there. It kind of sounds a little R2D2, like some 3D printers. And so we recorded some raw 3D printer sounds and then had a musician go and take that and change the pitch of it and use the sounds in different ways and created our own original music for that podcast that was kind of techy, geeky, sounded like 3D printers, but also is musical. And that really worked well for that situation.

And we're doing that again. Actually, we're doing that with your new podcast, product Launch Hazards, which will be launching soon. And we're going to be taking noises because it's product launch hazards. Like it's. You're protecting yourself from the dangers of product launching and just getting a resource, which is really what the podcast is for, a resource for people who are launching products into the market. And so we are going to use some sirens and some city noises of when dangerous things are happening in a city. What does it sound like? And we're going to compose that into some sort of music for that podcast as well.

Well, that'll be interesting. It's too bad we didn't have that already done. We could have played a clip of it here in this episode, but it's actually not done yet. But anyway, you can get as creative and original and specific as you want. Or for most people, quite honestly, some good music track from one of these royalty free music sites is gonna be just fine. But anyway, there's really just the point. And the lesson here is there's really no reason to run afoul of the copyright laws. You're just asking for trouble, in my opinion. Or borrow, eventually it's going to catch up with you and cause you a headache. Right, and why do that? Just let's set yourself up from the get go to comply with the appropriate laws because it's really not that hard to do.

Right, Exactly. And also you can find so many similar songs to pop songs these days on these free resources. Like I've been on premiumbeat.com so often because I'm normally the one looking through it for some options for all of our podcasters. And I've found before lots of songs that sound almost identical to pop songs but are royalty free versions where maybe they use different instruments or have a slightly different melody, but it sounds close enough that if you're looking for that same feel that that pop song or rock song or whatever your favorite song is gave you. We can find something fairly close to it that you'll still be very happy with.

And we do recommend really having your theme music be 15, 20 seconds long in the beginning of an episode. Not much more than that. I know some people do do it longer than that, but less is more, in our opinion. So you're talking about a really small amount of music. And really, hopefully people are going to be listening to your show and subscribing and coming back over and over again because of the content of your show. Not necessarily music. I think the music is important to have a decent music and to be recognizable. They play your track. Oh, yeah, I recognize that music. I'm listening to the right show.

Right.

But it's not super critical that I think that it's worth hanging on to. Oh, I really like that pop song. All right. So, you know, we realized on feed you'd brand that this is a subject we hadn't really covered. And it's just because it's become more of an issue lately with certain people we're interacting with in the podcast universe. We thought it was time to take a little bit of a deeper dive in and have that discussion and share it with you. So I hope you enjoyed that. And thank you, Alexandra, for joining me as a co host here for the first time. And I'm sure we'll be doing a lot more of that. So listeners just know that now and again, you might have Tom and Tracy co hosting, you might have Tom and Alexandra, and you might have Tracy and Alexandra. I mean, who knows? We'll see. We may do a bit of a rotation. So thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next time with another great episode. This has been Tom and Alexandra on Feed.

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