Copyright Free Music

[Barry Beckham]

Many of you already are aware of the 31 albums of copyright free music that are available on our web site at www.beckhamdigital.co.uk Well, that music has just become a whole lot cheaper and it was already very good value to begin with.

Music for Photographers was designed for AV enthusiasts like us, once we purchase the music we are free to use it for our slide shows without any licenses or fear of breaching copyright laws.

Our web site shop on line has now been configured for Australian dollars following our move to Australia. However, you can check out of our shop in either US dollars, British pounds or Australian dollars and see the price of your purchases and your discount before committing to that purchase.

Many of you may already see some reduction in music prices due to exchange rates, but we have also priced the music very competitively as you will see. But the greater savings are in the discounts we can now offer on multiple purchases.

We have managed to persuade MGMusic to offer the same great discounts on their music that we already offer on our movie tutorial CD's and DVD's.

For Example:-

You can get up to 24% discount when you buy 6 or more copyright free albums or more on CD.

You can get up to 30% discount if you buy 6 or more albums as downloads

You can also get up to 40% discount if you buy 6 or more 6 tracks from any one Album.

The discount builds up from 2 purchases to 6 or more, to the maximums shown above.

You can find the music at the link below

http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/royaltyfreemusic_new.htm

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Barry

I've bought a few of your allbums and been happy with my purchases. However once I have used a track I rarely use it again in case I repeat the music when doing multiple shows. Being a pensioner I have to weigh up the costs against commercially bought tracks and the cost of a licence to use them, plus the big advantage with the likes of Amazon is the choice, I can get virtually anything from 65p per track. The discount you are offering on multiple albums is OK if I am going to use every track, however up to now I have found I only use about 50% of what is on the album. Maybe if you offered discount on multiple track purchase I would buy more.

Yachtsman1

[JEB]

Hi,

Like Yachtsman1, I also have a number of MG CD's. However I find that I don't use them very often as I'm afraid they are all very similar with little variety so I have recently purchased a licence which has given me considerable freedom of choice.

John

[Ronniebootwest]

Hi Barry,

What format are the downloadable albums recorded in please. Ar they mp3 or WAV?

Ron

[Barry Beckham]

Yaughtsman

Its not compulsory to buy! Iys just another recourse if you want it. You can actually get discounts on tracks, up tp 40% on selections from an album. If you only want 4-6 tracks that is a great way to get them. The way I have the music configured we can not currently offer those discounts on tracks across albums. I would have a lot of work to do to enable that, but given time I may do so.

The overall price is not of my making as the music is copyright to MGMusic, but if you can get copyright free music for 65p and it is what you want, who can argue with that. Personally I have found much of the copyright free music I have heard lacking in the charm and appeal necessary for a great AV, there must there must be exceptions to that I am sure.

Its not likely that every track on an album will ever be usable and if you expect that then perhaps that is a little unrealistic. What I Like is a lot of music to be able to choose from as it is sometime hard to find something that works really well. The more you have to choose from the better the AV. (generally)

For the future I am trying to get agreement to sell a batch of CD's even cheaper so enthusiasts could build up a stock of music that for their projects now and into the future. Perhaps a 20 CD batch.

Given the massive discounts I thought I would remind potential users of it and the fact that it just got a lot cheaper.

[Barry Beckham]

RON

Mp3 format

[Barry Beckham]

JEB

I agree, if you are creating slide shows not for gain a license is great, but if you do want to add the AV to a disk, or there is some gain, then your license doesn't cover you does it?

Horses for courses

[Adda]

You changed from English pound to Dollar?

And You set up the price from ~ 2,5 Pound to 5 Dollar?

If I buy some tracks from different CD's, there is no discount,

or I am wrong?

Because of the Pound to Euro exchange I decided to buy via download some tracks of different CD's.

I am a bit disappointed about the rise in price.

Adda

[Ken Cox]

BARRY IS LIKELY QUOTING AUSTRALIAN MONEY -- HE MOVED IN CASE YOU HAVE NOT BEEN FOLLOWING HIS JOURNEY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_dollar

and he does have to make a buck - that is what business is all about

ken

[Guest Yachtsman1]

From Barry

The overall price is not of my making as the music is copyright to MGMusic, but if you can get copyright free music for 65p and it is what you want, who can argue with that. Personally I have found much of the copyright free music I have heard lacking in the charm and appeal necessary for a great AV, there must there must be exceptions to that I am sure.

Hi Barry again

The 65p tracks are regular recordings from Amazon which if you use sufficient & including the licence fee, compares favourably. Another source for free downloads is http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ but I assume you would need a licence to use them commercially.

Yachtsman1

[Adda]

AUSTRALIAN MONEY

Sorry!

Adda

[Adda]

Hi Berry!

Zip with Mp3 Track Samples of Landscape 1 is empty (0 Byte)

Tranquil also

Celtic 1 also.

With best regards

Adda

[Lin Evans]

Hi Eric,

I'm a bit confused. Do you purchase royalty free/copyright free music from Amazon? I haven't been able to find any at Amazon - could you possibly point me in that direction with a link.

I did find one copyright free album but they were out of stock. As far as a license to use the music on your slideshows, what type of license do they offer? Is this something reserved for certain geographic areas? I wasn't aware that this was available in the US at least.

I've found Barry's selections on CD to be very good and I have used a number of them in my own shows but would like to have some available with more vocal selections. Unfortunately, most of them that I've found are instrumentals and most are not of "popular" songs but rather creations designed for royalty free distribution and generally classified by "mood".

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Barry

I've bought a few of your allbums and been happy with my purchases. However once I have used a track I rarely use it again in case I repeat the music when doing multiple shows. Being a pensioner I have to weigh up the costs against commercially bought tracks and the cost of a licence to use them, plus the big advantage with the likes of Amazon is the choice, I can get virtually anything from 65p per track. The discount you are offering on multiple albums is OK if I am going to use every track, however up to now I have found I only use about 50% of what is on the album. Maybe if you offered discount on multiple track purchase I would buy more.

Yachtsman1

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Lin

The licences in the UK are available from MCPS – Mechanical Copyright Protection Society, BPI – British Phonographic Institute, PPL – Phonographic Performances Limited, and are available from the Institute Of Amature Cinematographers, and allow you to use copyrighted music for non commercial purposes. The stuff from Amazon is just regular MP3 downloads, which you can use under the terms of the licences. I think if you google performing rights society you may be able to get more information. The Amazon link is http://www.amazon.co.uk/MP3-Music-Download...;pf_rd_i=468294

Regards Eric

[Barry Beckham]

Adda

I just ried the three track samples you mentioned and they all downloaded fine for me.

Barry

[Barry Beckham]

Yaughtsman

I have been to that music site before and downloaded a lot of tracks. Now there must be some good stuff on there somewhere, but I could not find anything with the charm I was looking for.

Not all of MGMusic is going to be suitable for an AV, it depends what sort of show your making, but there are some beautifully inspiring pieces that have grabbed me.

Try Heartsong or Sungrass from the album below to name a couple

http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/music/wedding/wedding.htm

When I contacted MGMusic about releasing copyright free music, the price of a CD was less than I paid for one track on one copyright free site I visited. I thought what they did to release there music so cheaply was pretty good.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

I haven't used anything from that site myself, but was able to download some of my favourite classical numbers, one of which was the Halleluia Chorus, which was used in a comedy AV at the recent RPS AV Critique. I just checked again, did a search for the Planets Suite by Gustav Holste & got a decent download free. http://www.freeplaymusic.com/search/catego...?t=v&i=1225

Yachtsman1

[Barry Beckham]

Yaughtsman

But the music lacks that richness you get with the right orchestra playing it. I had to buy New World Symphony as copyright free for my Black Country AV.

The music is good, but not in the same class at the one I have played by a top orchestra. Its all about choice and what you want?

[Barry Beckham]

I have now configured the Copyright Free Music tracks in our on line shop so that individual tracks can be selected across any of our 31 albums and a maximum of 50% discount on 10 of those tracks is applied.

Just select the tracks you want and place them in the shopping cart, our software will work out the discount for you on exit.

This will make it better to select just the tracks you want.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Yaughtsman

But the music lacks that richness you get with the right orchestra playing it. I had to buy New World Symphony as copyright free for my Black Country AV.

The music is good, but not in the same class at the one I have played by a top orchestra. Its all about choice and what you want?

Hi Barry

I have tinitus in both ears, my hearing is in it's 69th year, the speakers on my laptop are internal. The speakers I use when showing my work to the general public gave good results when I bought them, and better now using a Behringer external sound card. I think the average audience would not know any difference between a commercial and a free download on the equipment we use.

However, I have found the differences on some commercial tracks are quite noticable. I don't know what equipment Amazon uses to send us their tracks, but occassionally they re-send 2 or three times, when I checked the three downloads of the same track, the quality of the last is always the best, maybe they have some type of quality check, incidentally I have only been charged for one track each time. When loading the early tracks into audacity they showed excess clipping on the waveform.

BTW I have nothing to do with Amazon, just a customer. Good to hear about the track price reduction. The albums I have of yours were CD's not downloads.

Yachtsman1

[Adda]

Yaughtsman

But the music lacks that richness you get with the right orchestra playing it. I had to buy New World Symphony as copyright free for my Black Country AV.

The music is good, but not in the same class at the one I have played by a top orchestra. Its all about choice and what you want?

Wonderful.

Thank you very much!

Adda

[Barry Beckham]

Yaughtsman

I think you have misunderstood me. I wasn't referring to the quality of the music in the sense of how a piece would sound through a good quality stereo or a cheap PC speaker system.

I was referring to the charm of the music, that ingredient that makes us sit up and listen, the part that inspires us. It is the music itself, the arrangement, how the intruments are used and how they are put together.

Much of the music you can download from the Internet cheaply lacks the exact ingredient that we AV workers are looking for. It stands to reason when you think it through. If it had that something extra,it would command more money, be more popular and unlikely ever to be released as copyright free.

Of course there are always going to be some exceptions I am sure.

[Ronniebootwest]

What about music that has now lapsed into the 'Public Domain'?

I seem to recall that any music becomes public 40 years after the death of the singer/composer. Does this mean that it becomes copyerite free??

Ron

[xahu34]

What about music that has now lapsed into the 'Public Domain'?

I seem to recall that any music becomes public 40 years after the death of the singer/composer. Does this mean that it becomes copyerite free??

Ron,

In Germany it's 70 years, regarding the composer. In addition to that, the record company and the perfomer have their rights. Mozart has died a long time ago, but EMI will not allow you to use their Mozart records (perhaps 20 years after the last publication).

Best regards,

Xaver

[davegee]

I think(?) it is 50 years over here and that's the reason that the owners of the rights to certain Liverpool groups works are beginning to get VERY itchy and are petitioning for a change in the law.

DaveG