A production music library is somewhere where you can buy the rights to various music tracks for your own commercial or personal use. Here we will look at why you would need this, how to go about finding music production libraries, how to use them and more.
Why You Need Music Production Libraries
Firstly, the reason that you need a production music library is that it will enable you to purchase music that comes with the rights. Of course it is possible these days to listen to almost any music that you want for free using systems such as YouTube and Spotify, so you might wonder why you would need a music library. This is particularly true when you consider that the music in a music library is largely not music you would have heard of before. This is random background music with no big names attached and often with no singers or lyrics. So why buy short snippets of music from someone you’ve never heard of when you can listen to the latest big hits and even download them for free?
The answer is because music production libraries allow you to buy not just the music, but the rights along with that music. This then means that you can use that music for commercial uses and in other ways that you would not be permitted to use it for otherwise.
For instance then, say that you are making a computer game, or a short film, or even a book, and say you then intend to sell this via a short trailer that would get people excited. If you use a piece of music that you do not own the legal rights to, then you will face a lawsuit following the release of the trailer because it was for a commercial purpose and you did not first get permission from the owners. Likewise if you uploaded the video to YouTube, then the system would recognize your track as something that you did not own the rights to and this would then result in either the video being blocked by YouTube so it could not be watched, or in its having its audio track removed so that it could be watched but not listened to.
The same problem exists for making the short film or game itself. If you have a tense film then no doubt you will want eerie background music – but what to use? Again you would do well to seek out a production music library. Alternatively you would have to use a piece of music that could get you into legal difficulties, or spending a huge amount of money having it specially written for you.
Finding Music for Your Production
Search online for a production music library and you should be able to relatively easily find somewhere that sells music for your productions. You should be able to listen here to samples first and you can expect to pay around $30-$50 for tracks (though if you’re very lucky some sites will give away freebies that you can use without paying anything).