Justin Taylor

Everything to Know About Licensing Music in Your Podcast

Creating a successful podcast involves more than just picking a compelling niche. It's about creating an instantly recognizable sonic identity and mood that listeners love. One great way to achieve that is through music licensing.

In this article, we'll go over some essential details about music licensing that can help your podcast flourish without getting into legal trouble.

The Basics of Copyright Law

We hear it all the time: "I want to learn how to grow my podcast brand, but I don't know where to start with licensing."

The world of copyright law is confusing, and it's easy to find yourself paying the price for doing things wrong. The most important thing to remember is that copyrighted music is intellectual property. To use a piece of audio someone else recorded or wrote, you must get synchronization rights.

Also known as "SYNC," synchronization rights are legal permission to use written composition in your audio or video production.

Other agreements can exist as well. When negotiating licensing contracts, you might want to consider master and mechanical rights. Master rights involve recordings, while mechanical rights let you reproduce the work onto CDs, DVDs, and other mediums.

Additional protection can come into play with contract clauses. Two of the most common for music licensing are indemnity and perpetuity licenses. Indemnity protects against loss or financial burden. It can keep you and the copyright holder from liabilities and lawsuits. An in-perpetuity license means that you can air the podcast with the licensed music forever.

How to Grow My Podcast Brand: Finding Music to License

There are many ways to get music. The go-to for many podcasters is to use license-free works. Music in the public domain is always available, and many artists make some of their work available for free.

Alternatively, you can turn to production music libraries, buyout collections, music publishers, and even music labels. Work from big-name commercial artists is pricey, but there's no shortage of lesser-known creators out there.

Whatever you do, make sure every piece has proper vetting. The last thing you want is to violate someone's copyright unknowingly. Music licensing can be confusing. But when you do things by the books, you can create the signature sound you've always wanted for your podcast.

Author Resource:-

I'm Justin Taylor, podcast marketing consultant, providing info about monetizing a podcast, analytics, promotion ideas and advertising for SME's. You can find my thoughts at podcast guides blog.