General Royalty-Free Music

Most music composers and publishers are members of various composers' rights
societies. Some societies oversee and look after the composers' works with regards to
physical manufacturing of products that contain their music. These rights are called
"Mechanical rights". Other societies oversee and look after the composers' works with
regards to broadcasting and public performance of their music. These rights are called
"Performance rights".

When you find music listed as "royalty-free" on this web site and other web sites, it
usually means that the composer and publisher of the music are not members of any
society that oversees their mechanical rights. This means that you can freely use their
music on DVD, CDROM and any other physical object that contains their music, and you
can have these CD/DVD's manufactured in a factory, without paying any fee to any
collection society for that.

None of the composers on tanietracks are members of any society that oversee any
mechanical rights.

However, most composers are members of a society that oversees their broadcasting
and public performance rights. This means that anybody who broadcasts their music, or
plays it in public (for example, at a trade show, or in a sports arena), need to obtain a
license from their country's royalty collection society. In most cases, this does not affect
you (our customer) in any way, because the broadcasters already have this license and
therefore no additional fees are actually payable by anybody.

For example, you buy a track from us by a composer who is a member of PRS. You use
the music on a DVD film and manufacture 5,000 copies of that film. No problem, the
composer isn't member of any mechanical rights society, so there are no fees to pay for
this. A year later, your film ends up getting broadcast on BBC, or perhaps on YouTube.
Now, the composer will receive a payment for this. This payment is however just taken
from the already paid, annual license that the BBC and YouTube pays to the PRS. No
extra money is payable by anybody. Nobody has incurred any extra expenses, because
the license money was already paid by the broadcaster, as a large annual fee.

So, whilst the music is not entirely free of all strings, it is still fair to call it royalty-free
because neither the producer, nor the broadcaster (who already has an annual license)
has to pay any royalties.

The only time an actual additional expense would come into this situation would be if
you decide to broadcast the music yourself, and you don't already have a broadcasting
license. For example, at a concert or at some kind of venue that doesn't already have a
PRS license. Some countries also consider telephone music-on-hold to be a "broadcast".
As far as trade shows or sports events, here you would expect the venue/hall to already
have a license from their country's performance royalty organization, but you may want to
check that.

Recently, the PRS in the United Kingdom have deemed that a person or company in the
UK that uses music on a UK web site is classed as a 'broadcaster'. And, as a broadcaster
of music, if you want to use any music that is composed by a composer who is a member
of a performance rights society, you need a license from the PRS. The license typically
costs £50 per year. This applies only to UK persons and companies with UK web sites.
Wherever you look for "royalty-free music", be it on the internet or in traditional
production music libraries, most of the music you'll find is in this category. The composers
are not members of any mechanical rights society, but they are members of a performance
rights society, and it would be fair to call their music "general royalty-free".

Note on UK based websites:
As of spring 2008, the PRS (Performance Rights Society) in the UK now collects
broadcasting fees from UK companies using music on UK web sites. This means that even
if you buy a license from us, you also need to buy an Online License from the PRS in order
to use music on your site. This applies to all music composed by any composer who is a
member of any performance rights society world wide, which includes most of our
composers. The PRS Online license typically costs £53 per year and you can obtain this
license by filling in a simple PRS Online License Application form which you can download
here.

This only applies to persons or businesses in the United Kingdom using music on UK
web sites. Also, even if you are using music on a UK based web site, you may still avoid
PRS fees by using music composed by those of our composers who are not members of
any performance rights society. (See the completely royalty-free page.)