A Guide to Getting Music Licensing for Your Independent Film

If you are an independent, very low-budget filmmaker, you may think that getting recognizable music, or music by singers or songwriters signed with any kind of label, is completely impossible. Getting the rights to a song that is shared by an artist, a songwriter, a record label, and a publishing company can be tricky, but it is not unattainable. It is also not as expensive as you might fear.

Last summer, I worked on a very low-budget feature film. The budget for this feature film was under $20,000! The director had one song in particular in mind to use during one of the scenes that was by a known singer. While it certainly would have been easier to just let the person scoring the film fill the scene with music by an unknown, the notion of using the particular song in the scene just wouldn't die. So it was my job to see about getting licensing for the song for this small indie film. I thought it couldn't hurt to ask as the worst case scenario would have been for them to say 'no.'

What I learned is that it is not impossible to get real music for a film; in fact all it takes is a little negotiation.

For a small production, even getting a one-hit wonder's songs can be taxing, but it is not out of the question. It is just a matter of contacting the right people and trying to get on the same wavelength. If a film is really low-budget, there is probably a reason, and you probably have very little money to spend on acquiring music rights, but a little money can go a long way if you have a lot of grit and some decent bargaining skills.

To secure the rights to a particular recording of a song, a filmmaker must have both a Master license and a Synchronization license. A master license is obtained through the record label, or whoever owns the copyright to the recording you want to use. It will usually be the record label, though some very wealthy artists, such as Madonna, have the money to buy back their catalog, and therefore own all of their own material.

A synchronization license is obtained through the song publisher, or the copyright owner of the actual musical composition. It will usually be a publishing company that owns the composition copyright, but again, in certain instances, an artist may have all rights to their songs. If you want to use a master recording, a recording from an artist on a label, you must get both of these licenses for the usage to be legal.

If you just want to use the song's composition, and will have the music and lyrics re-recorded for your production, you will need only the rights to the song itself, which means you need only the synchronization license. Don't just assume it will be cheaper to re-record the song though. Depending on the deal you get with the label, and factoring in the cost of studio rental and payment of musicians, you may be better off just shelling out the dough for the master recording.

The lower on the totem pole a person is, the more likely you will be able to get their music at a reasonable cost.

What I did was contact both the record label and the music publisher for the song that I wanted and I asked for free festival rights. Both of them responded to me rather quickly. The music publisher granted me the rights to use the song in the movie in festival for free with a MFN, or Most Favored Nations, clause. The MFN clause means that if someone else gets paid then they have to get paid the same amount. The record label told me that I could have the rights from them for $350. If I accepted this, then I would also have to pay the publisher $350 due to the MFN clause. That was way more that we could afford, so I counter offered to the record label with an offer of $75. A few weeks later I heard back from them and they had accepted my offer! I now had to pay the publisher $75 as well, but I got the full rights for only $150!

It was not a hard process, but it was a tedious one. Though it may seem unlikely you will get a Madonna song, and probably is, why not give it a try? She owns it all, and she may be feeling charitable.