Help with finding royalty free Christmas music

J

jrod81

Veteran
Just got done editing a scene and have really gotten attached to the temp music that I've had in the timeline for quite sometime now. But I need to find something to replace it that is royalty free. I was using a very chill version of "Blue Christmas." Am I correct that I have to find a song pre 1928 to be able to use it? Even if I get clearance from an artist to use their version, it would still have to be a song pre 1928 in order to use it right?
Any websites would be helpful... google searches have only given me really cheesy synthesizer music...
 
"Royalty Free" does not mean "Copyright Free." Royalty free music is still copyrighted. You pay a single license fee to use the music but there are no on-going royalty payments due in addition to that one fee.

The magic year for music copyrights is pre-1923, not 1928. But be that as it may, that applies to the music itself, the melody and lyrics, but not to recordings of music. There are many recordings made earlier than that that are still under copyright. If you want to use an existing recording, you need two different licenses. There's a sync license to use the music itself, obtained from the music's publisher who is acting on behaf of the composer and lyricist. Then, if you're using an existing song, you also need a Master Use license from the owner of the copyright on the recording, usually the label that released it. Yep, there are two separate copyrights involved, one on the music per se and another on the recording. And neither of them involves the artist unless he is also the composer or owns the label. If you wanted to license "Blue Christmas" the song was written by Jay W. Johnson and Billy Hays, published by Demi Music Corp, dba Lichelle Music and also by Universal Polygram Obo Bibo Music Publishing. That's who you get the sync license from. Once you get that license you'd contact the label that released that specfic CD and license their master recording. Very likely Nichol Atkins would never even be anywhere in the loop and would never know you licensed the song - as far as licensing is concerned, the recording artists, in their roles as artists, are merely the hired help and have no ownership involvment at all with the music itself.

There are two types of royalty-free libraries, buy-out and needle-drop. With a buy-out you pay one fee and obtain a license that allows you to use the song as many times as you want in single production and in as many different productions as you want. Needle-drop, OTOH, means you pay a fee for each cut and the length of each cut that you use, each "drop of the needle" in the old analog recording days - using :30 of a song in the opening of the program and :15 at the end is two drops, thus two fees. There are many libraries available for license on a royalty free basis and not by a long shot are all of them cheesy synthesiser music. The DeWolf library, for example, represents the London Philharmonic among others and has an extensive collection of classical performances - hardly cheesy. You might take a look also at the Smartsound SonicFire library, they have a number of Christmas song collections and their related software allows you to remix, adjust length, etc. And the Magnatunes library has a good collection as well. Both of those libraries are searchable online. I'm sure others will chime in with other sources.
 
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thanks for the help. very helpful in "my ongoing education." google did not return any of the three you suggested so i appreciate you pointing those out to me. thats the exact reason i posted this... so that i could find sites that you guys knew that google has buried in page 8 or 15 of a search list...
 
In music there is copyright on the lyrics, copyright on the music, and copyright on the performance.

So, by using pre-1928 music and lyrics, you need only get the clearance from the performer. "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" and "Oh, Tannenbaum"(*) spring to mind for 'pre-1928', and in all likelihood their 'translations' to
English are also Pre-1928...

*"Oh, Tannenbaum" has a non Christmass version, which is from the late 19th Century. The 'Oh, Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine Blätter' is part of that 19th century version.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
In music there is copyright on the lyrics, copyright on the music, and copyright on the performance.

So, by using pre-1928 music and lyrics, you need only get the clearance from the performer. "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" and "Oh, Tannenbaum"(*) spring to mind for 'pre-1928', and in all likelihood their 'translations' to
English are also Pre-1928...

*"Oh, Tannenbaum" has a non Christmass version, which is from the late 19th Century. The 'Oh, Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine Blätter' is part of that 19th century version.
Click to expand...

A performance, as such, is not copyrightable as it is not something that is fixed and tangible. The tangible form is a recording of the performance and its copyright is owned by the person who creates the recording, not by the person(s) actually doing the performing for the recording. Clearances from the label that HIRED the performer, made the recording, and published it to the public are essential. OTOH, clearances from the performer to use an existing recording are irrelevant as far as copyright is concerned, unless the performer also happens to be the recording label that created and published the master recording.
 
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