Royalty free material in the form of photos, film clips, or music is not “free” in the sense of paying no money for use of the material. The true meaning is that royalty free use frees the buyer from paying royalties, or recurring payments, to the content producer. So in the standard definition of royalty free, this means that payment is simplified as a one-time payment and is fine to use multiple times for as long as you want (as long as you follow the content license agreement and use restrictions for the particular file).
Another related term that you might see is “copyright free”. Copyright free does not have a standard definition, and may be used in different ways. For a full discussion, see “The Difference Between ‘Copyright Free’ and ‘Royalty Free’” from copyright and plagiarism consultant Jonathan Bailey. Be very careful if you are checking out music, film clips, or photos that are labeled this way. It may mean anything from royalty free to Creative Commons to public domain. Check out the licenses carefully.
With regards to royalty free music, you may not have to think about having two licenses for each song (the license for the “master” or performer rights along with the license for the “synchronization” or composer rights). However, you may need to report the use of the music in your project to one or more of the PROs (Performance Rights Organizations, such as ASCAP or BMI) through a cue sheet so that artists are compensated for their work. An explanation and example are available at “Cue Sheets and Performing Rights” at the site for PremiumBeat.
A related type of licensing to the standard definition of royalty free is called “rights managed”. In rights managed licensing, you will normally license a single piece of content for a single, restricted use. Pricing may be designated by whether the project will only be distributed by streaming or if it will be shown in person, whether the project is a documentary film or a fiction film, or whether the use is commercial or editorial. Works governed by rights managed licenses are usually more exclusive than with royalty free licenses, i.e., there won’t be 1,000 people using them at once in different projects. A good discussion of the differences is at “Royalty-Free Music vs. Rights-Managed Music” from TEC 101.
Royalty free sites typically have different levels of payment for different types of use, although it is not as granular as rights managed. You may have the ability to do different levels of content use on a standard license vs a premium license.
Also, depending on the rights management organization you are working with, you may need to license the composer (“synchronization”) rights separately with one or more of the Performance Rights Organizations like ASCAP or BMI.
You need to be very careful about how you use your licensed content with regards to the license agreement. For example, in editorial licensing, the content would be used for works that are geared towards news or public interest. Generally, this would exclude commercial or advertising purposes. One major difference is that there are typically no model releases for editorial licensing. For creative licensing, model releases have been procured, and so these are more appropriate for commercial, fiction film, or advertising purposes. Please see “What is the difference between royalty free and rights managed stock photo / film / music licensing?” from Documentary Film Cameras for more information.
One example of where a company ran aground of this rule is in the 2018 Netflix film Bird Box. The filmmakers used footage from a real-life train disaster from the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic where 47 people died. Not only was the use of the footage outside of the editorial use guidelines set forth by the stock footage company (in the sense of Bird Box being a fictional film with commercial distribution), the mayor of the town said that the use denoted “a lack of respect”. Netflix said in 2019 that it would cut the footage from the film.
Before deciding on licensing, check out the works and materials available in various avenues and see what the difference in pricing is in consideration for the use that you need. And, licensing agreements may not be terribly interesting documents, but you may want to get used to reading them closely in order to discern the best way to get the material you need for your project while also staying within the bounds of copyright law.
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