I am always looking for classical in royalty free form...i don't see how it could be affordable unless there was a great demand for it, which there isn't...just look at how many classical radio stations there are left. What there is a need for ,however, is ballet music recorded at ballet tempo...many pieces have been choreographed for specific performances that are copyright protected or the recordings are of the performances with audience noise, hoof steps on-stage etc. i have cobbled and tweaked performance tapes from multiple sources to satisfy our ballet master and the results as you would expect have been pretty bad. i just don't know you could put together recordings for such a small market at a price we could afford.

Jay, two of those you mentioned, Pachelbel's Canon and Air on a G String, are available in Cinescore with quite a choice of instrumental arrangements.

http://www.musopen.com/

This company is doing some of this already.

Dave T2

Smartsound have a fair spread of royalty-free classical music in their SonicFire range.

Dave, the music at musopen sounds awfully synthesized to me. Besides, that, their model of bidding to find someone willing to record it and donate to the site is nothing like what I'm talking about.

Peter, I hear what you're saying. Just my opinion, but I haven't found Cinescore (and SmartSound) to be all that compelling. They still have that "canned" sound to my ear.

"i just don't know you could put together recordings for such a small market at a price we could afford."

Mike, I'm not necessarily talking about projects for home or school. I'm talking about projects that are budgeted, projects for paying clients.

It wouldn't be cheap, but it wouldn't be much more (if at all) than what you'd pay for the major stock music houses--Music 2 Hues, for example.

Have you tried magnatune.com ?

I've used them before - they're great to work with and they have quite an extensive selection of classical music. I used 8 of their pieces for my last film.

I find their rates to be affordable (though they used to be more so, a couple of years ago) and I like their business model.

Don't forget Kevin MacLeod, [url=http://incompetech.com/]

"Anyway, I would certainly appreciate your input!"

a) I take my hat off to you sir. That sample is magnificent. I've listen to some of the royalty free music around and it is simply an abomination. Does anyone actually know what music actually sounds like in this day of mp3 <sigh>. The remarkable thing is I only listened to it on the horrid plastic fantastic speakers on this office PC and it still sounded a million dollars.

b) The commercial reality. I just cannot see enough people seeing the value in what you're offering for you to break even on the venture. I wish it were otherwise. On top of that I think full orchestral music needs to be composed or at least arranged to fit the vision. As much as I love the sound of a full string section you don't want them going full tilt at the wrong time in the story.

Personally I stick to the offerings from Smartsound. It's not the greatest music ever written and there's a lot of synths used but at least it sounds clean.

Bob.

Jay, Three that I would love would be:

Dvorak's New World Symphony
Mussorgsky's Pictures from an Exhibition
Holst's The Planets

Terry

There's absolute loads of this around for very cheap. Here's a few I found straight away:

http://www.revostock.com/Stock-Music/49258/Jesu-Joy-of-Mans-Desiring.htm
http://www.revostock.com/Stock-Music/39789/Edvard-Grieg-Death-of-Aase.htm
http://www.revostock.com/Stock-Music/80075/Mozart-Clarinet-Quintet.htm
http://www.revostock.com/Stock-Music/21888/MAAdagio-in-G.htm
http://www.revostock.com/Stock-Music/63306/Prelude-in-C-Bach.htm
http://www.revostock.com/Stock-Music/49262/Pachelbel-musicbox-mix.htm

"There's absolute loads of this around..."

Again, most of the music is synthesized poorly and sounds bad. The "Pachebel-music box" was simply awful. I don't care how cheap it is--even free--I wouldn't use that in any project. The Grieg piece sounded almost as bad.

The truth of the matter is there are not "loads" of anything of any quality to be found. That's my point.

"I take my hat off to you sir. That sample is magnificent."

Perhaps I explained myself poorly. I sincerely apologize! I neither wrote nor performed the music in the sample I provided. I couldn't do that any more than I could flap my arms and fly! All I did was hire the composer/performer.

" I've listen to some of the royalty free music around and it is simply an abomination. Does anyone actually know what music actually sounds like in this day of mp3 <sigh>."

That's exactly what I'm driving at, or attempting to. Yes, there is a fair amount of royalty free music available. Unfortunately, I find little of it to be useful.

"The commercial reality. I just cannot see enough people seeing the value in what you're offering for you to break even on the venture."

You may be right. That's what I'm trying to determine.

"[i]On top of that I think full orchestral music needs to be composed or at least arranged to fit the vision. As much as I love the sound of a full string section you don't want them going full tilt at the wrong time in the story.[i]"

I agree. Original music would almost always be the best answer. But how often can we afford that? By the same token, there are times when a classical piece can work extraordinarily well. However, the onus rests with the individual filmmaker to have the artistic sense (ear?) to know when a certain piece works and when it doesn't.

The question is, if classical and/or public domain music were available that sounded consistently as good as the sample you heard, and it was affordable, would you buy it/use it in projects for your clients?

Thank you, Bob, for your input.

"All I did was hire the composer/performer."

I have to take issue with the "All I did" bit. I was not assuming you did anymore than realise the value of music performed by real musicians playing real instruments recorded well. This seems to be something very few appreciate.

"The question is, if classical and/or public domain music were available that sounded consistently as good as the sample you heard, and it was affordable, would you buy it/use it in projects for your clients?"

If I ever had a project where it would fit, yes, in a heartbeat. Unfortunately that's not likely anytime soon but I'd buy it if I could afford it just to have it on the shelf.

I think you need to fly some $ numbers before any of us can really give you an answer.

Bob.

Bob, okay, I retract the first apology and issue this one... The music was not performed by "real musicians playing real instruments recorded well."

That music was created on a computer using samples of real instruments, as opposed to synthesized ones. This is the same equipment, application(s), samples, etc., used by Hollywood composers. The composer refers to his works as "ultra-realistic orchestral renderings."

Again, I apologize for any miscommunication on my part.

"I think you need to fly some $ numbers before any of us can really give you an answer."

I would like to see him keep it around $5 to $10 a minute, depending on the length and complexity of the piece.

No, he's not going to get rich, but it could, over time, provide a "steady flow" of extra income and get his name and talent out before the video/film producers.

There's all sorts of levels of royalty free music around. The links I gave were to some very inexpensive tracks. Ive used that level of stuff quite often, usually underneath narration or as subtle background. In that way it's worked extremely well and is all 100% legit which is important to me.

Maybe you want the London Symphony Orchestra for $10 ?

Really this whole thing is a total non-issue so far as I can see. You can choose whichever classical track you like an pay anywhere from about $10 to $300 to the rights.

If it's a piece in an important production that will be booming out in a theatre to a music-loving audience then the $300 track is the go; if it's just little tinkles behind some spoken narration to be seen on YouTube then $10 is exactly right.

"There's all sorts of levels of royalty free music around."

Yes, and the vast majority of it of, as it's been pointed out, is crap.

"... if it's just little tinkles behind some spoken narration to be seen on YouTube then $10 is exactly right."

That confirms what Bob and I said above. You've missed the point entirely.

Thanks, Terry!

I think people might not be understanding the difference between Royalty Free and Production Music. I do have kicking around somewhere the rate card for the body that represents most of the production music companies down here. The licence fee to use a track as a temp track is $500. Global cinema release is in the thousands and if you sell the rights for televison then the broadcaster pays a fee every time the movie is shown per track. It's quite possible to loose your home, shirt and wife making movies but the party who owns the copyright(s) to the soundtrack will never loose out.

Even with royalty free music it's not an entirely easy road. Changes in the law in the EU mean you still need to provide cue sheets regardless. Smartsound have this under control, I don't know if SCS do for Cinescore or not.


Anyways your pricing sounds quite reasonable. I'd suggest offering the music in a layered format then it can at least be mixed to maybe fit a bit better. Unfortunately that's going to mean a lot of data, too much for a download so you're looking at the costs of physical distribution. By 'layered format' I mean say strings as one file/track, percussion on another etc.

Bob.

Unfortunately, there would be no layering available--nothing fancy. The offering being suggested (at this time) is simply high quality music in the public domain available at royalty free prices that can be bought outright, downloaded immediately and used immediately.

At my work we've used a service called "Killer Tracks" They used to send a box of CDs every month but I think now it's all online. I think that when we're looking for something for an industrial we have to listen to a lot of samples. For big services I wonder if some scheme like Pandora uses would help guide you to a track you want.

My employers also do docs as labors of love (Profit? Not really). The last doc was Ballets Russes, which you could find a Netflix if you want to see it. They paid for a number of classical licenses but they also used a local composer and recorded some of his work up at a facility at LucasFilm. They would have used more of this if they'd had the time but they ran up against the deadline for Sundance.

If I remember correctly I think they felt it was actually easier and cheaper to use the composer's music than to deal with licensing. They definitely say now that music and image licensing was a very, very large part of the total cost of the film, but I think they mean hard costs. Their own labor was far more, I'm sure.

I think at $10.00/minute you're aiming at a very low-value segment of the market. You'd probably want the music to be used in videos that will be seen by from 5-50 people. Preferably just 5 people. Maybe you want 5000 families making video birthday cards and paying $10 bucks for a viral piece of music that everyone knows and likes.

Try to figure out what sort of income you actually need out of this to make it a viable business. Do you want $60k/person annually? More? How will you get that?

If the project has value then the producer should be capable of paying much, much more.


Rob Mack