Should I be disappointed?
by paul bolden
on
Oct 17, 2009 at 9:04:18 am
Hello everyone,
I produce special interests videos. Most never sell more than a 1,000 units over their life. I use smartsound music and by chance was reading the licensing agreement more closely. It would seem that I am limited to the replication of 10,000 units or else I'm going to get hit with additional licensing fees. WHAT'S THAT ABOUT!? I guess the question should be "When is royalty free music not royalty free."
I may never sell over 1000 units of any particular video but it not because I don't want to...right? If I should get lucky and sell 100,000 units, typically what's this going to cost me using smartsound royalty free music? A lot of you folks have to be staring down the same potential barrel.
Is this pretty much the industry standard with royalty free music or should I consider music sources other than SmartSound for projects that I feel have a sales potential >10,000?
Re: Should I be disappointed? by Jeff Handy on Nov 3, 2009 at 2:34:10 pm
I would say, if you have that problem of too many sales, paying the minuscule licensing fees won't be such a hit to your wallet. Read, it's not a bad problem to have.
Re: Should I be disappointed? by Frank Marsilio on Nov 4, 2009 at 5:29:48 pm
Hello Paul,
In fact, most royalty-free music libraries (I admit there may be some exceptions but you will find this true for most of the quality suppliers) have such a restriction for replication. The threshold is typically much smaller, often 2,000 units. The reason for the exclusion is that in projects where something is being replicated in large quantities there is typically a fee being charged by the producer or the seller to the purchaser of the item, whether it be a DVD of a movie, a software game or some other item slated for wide distribution. Using your number of 100,000 units, this can be quote a large revenue stream for the typical DVD prices of $14.95 to $19.95. But please understand, we didn't invent this, this is quite common among the good suppliers.
In terms of pricing we are actually very flexible and will work with you. Typically you can buy an unlimited replication license out for as low as a few hundred bucks depending on how many of our tracks you used and what you think the real number is likely to be. Should you do a project that is fortunate enough to get wide distribution, you can simply call me personally at that time and I will work something out with you that makes sense for you and us.
Recently we expanded the royalty-free scope of our license giving you almost unlimited rights in distribution, broadcast and international use, this was the one area we kept because almost all our royalty-free competitors still have the restriction, and as mentioned, it's a lot smaller. But please consider that we released 44 music albums this year and will release another 15 before the year is even up. The point is if we were not competitive with the other royalty-free libraries the composers simply wouldn't work for us and we wouldn't have the best release schedule in the royalty-free industry: 59 discs released in a single year... in a recession year no less, is an absolutely staggering number for royalty-free part of the industry, on the order of a large needledrop library, but without the high-priced license fees.
So yes, to supply you with all that high-quality music we need to be competitive with the other RF libraries and I sincerely hope you can understand that.
Thanks Paul. We appreciate your patronage as a customer and will continue to try to work our best to keep it.
Best regards,
Kevin Klingler
President & CEO
SmartSound Software, Inc
Edited and posted on Creative Cow by Frank Marsilio
--
Frank Marsilio
Technical Support
SmartSound Software
support@smartsound.com
http://www.smartsound.com/support/
