Episode 7

Navigating Music Rights: What Every Podcaster Needs to Know

Scott and Kevin dive into the often murky waters of music rights in podcasting, shedding light on what creators need to consider when using music in their shows. They emphasize the importance of understanding copyright laws and the potential risks of using published music without proper permissions. The conversation touches on the various types of music that podcasters might utilize, from theme songs to background tracks, and explores the gray areas surrounding fair use and licensing. Scott shares insights from his experience on YouTube, highlighting the differences in enforcement of music rights between platforms. As they navigate through these complexities, they also offer practical advice on finding royalty-free music and connecting with artists directly to ensure compliance and creativity in podcasting.

Takeaways:

  • Understanding music rights is crucial for podcasters to avoid legal issues later.
  • Using music from independent artists may require obtaining permission directly from them.
  • Royalty-free music can be a great resource for podcasters looking for affordable options.
  • Spotify has specific licensing options for music-oriented podcasts, but may limit distribution.
  • Fair use can be a gray area, especially with music and recorded speeches.
  • Always do your homework ahead of time regarding music rights before launching your podcast.

Links referenced in this episode:

email us

Scott's podcast

Kevin's podcast

Transcript
Scott:

Yeah, we actually.

Scott:

So Jen and I, we actually interviewed a book author last night because we've.

Scott:

Some of the publishers that have reached out to us.

Scott:

We're finally getting to these.

Scott:

These interviews and squad cast is so different than Riverside.

Scott:

I think quality wise, it's just fine.

Scott:

I think they're both about the same.

Scott:

Right.

Scott:

It's just kind of preference.

Scott:

But it sounds like an interesting book that this guy wrote.

Scott:

He wrote like a.

Scott:

From a first person perspective, from John Quincy Adams, because John Quincy Adams, I was actually pretty, like, extensive with his, like, journaling type stuff.

Scott:

So he actually wrote down, mean, he had like, 51 volumes of, like, journals that he kept his, like, secretary of state and all this stuff.

Kevin:

Wow.

Scott:

And he would actually write, like, we were in this meeting in Congress, and I said this to this person, and this is what I did afterwards.

Scott:

And.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

So this guy did all this research.

Kevin:

That's crazy.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

But the.

Scott:

The book itself actually sounds pretty interesting.

Scott:

So we kind of.

Scott:

We did the podcast last night, and I'm gonna edit it up.

Scott:

We'll release it in a couple weeks.

Scott:

So that'll be interesting.

Scott:

So.

Scott:

Okay, that's enough of the preamble.

Kevin:

Welcome to the idiot's guide to podcasting.

Scott:

Welcome to Idiots Guide to podcasting.

Scott:

We are your hosts, Scott and Kevin.

Scott:

And today, I think this is episode.

Scott:

Might be episode seven for us.

Scott:

We're going to talk about music and royalty stuff.

Scott:

And, kev, you did the research on this one, because this is kind of the podcast that you originally had in your brain that you want to put together.

Scott:

So what kind of would you figure out?

Scott:

Because I've never really looked into this.

Kevin:

Okay, well, okay.

Kevin:

Research is a strong word.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

Do some googling.

Scott:

I mean, let's be fair.

Kevin:

The idiot's guide to podcasting.

Kevin:

Okay, so I'm going to tell you what I know, and I'm going to tell you what I don't know.

Kevin:

Perfect.

Kevin:

So, first of all, there's kind of two things I think we need to talk about.

Kevin:

One is using published music.

Kevin:

That is, you know, really, you know, for artists who are trying to make money or a living as an artist.

Kevin:

Right.

Kevin:

I mean, that's.

Kevin:

That's one thing.

Kevin:

And then there's the music that you have, that you want to use in your podcast for a variety of elements, right?

Kevin:

Your.

Kevin:

Your transitions between segments, your theme music, your outro music, whatever that might be on the side of, like, using artists music in your podcast.

Kevin:

Musicians and recording artists.

Kevin:

As much as I can tell if you're using bits and pieces here things that are the.

Kevin:

Or even, like, I would say, large chunks of a song, you're not gonna have a lot of trouble in the podcasting world.

Kevin:

But I think everything there is pretty gray right now.

Kevin:

There aren't a lot of, like, laws and rules about it.

Kevin:

But when you start getting into using a whole song or having a podcast that really focuses on an artist, an artist's music, that kind of thing, you have to be a lot more careful.

Kevin:

So, for me, the podcast I'm starting up, is that right?

Kevin:

In a sense.

Kevin:

Right.

Kevin:

So what I'm doing is I'm taking a song, and I'm talking about themes related to the song.

Kevin:

Now, it's not about the song necessarily, but I am using the song in its entirety, and so I'm gonna try to figure this out as I go.

Kevin:

I'm gonna need to do a little bit more research here, because I want to be really careful.

Kevin:

One.

Kevin:

Because an artist is not gonna be really getting royalties from my podcast unless I get permission from the recording label.

Kevin:

Right.

Kevin:

So I do have to do a little bit more research.

Kevin:

But I'll tell you what I'm not gonna do.

Kevin:

I'm not going to title each individual podcast the name of the song with the artist's name in it.

Kevin:

Right.

Kevin:

You know, so let's.

Kevin:

Let's be smart about this.

Kevin:

There.

Kevin:

No, there's not laws about it right now, but you also don't want to put yourself in a spot that's, you know, gonna force you to pay a ton of money.

Kevin:

So, I don't know.

Kevin:

Scott, do you know something about this?

Scott:

Yeah, so, a little bit.

Scott:

And mostly because of the stuff that I've done on YouTube.

Kevin:

So the rules there are pretty different.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

So I wouldn't even say that the rules are different.

Scott:

They're just enforced on YouTube.

Scott:

Right.

Scott:

I think.

Scott:

I think with the reality to what you're saying on podcasts right now is there is no true kind of content id system.

Scott:

So that's what.

Scott:

That's what YouTube has on the back end.

Scott:

They have stuff that can catch large video clips if you're just playing them, or audio relatively easily.

Scott:

So that's their content id system.

Scott:

And so their content id system is right in line with all copyright stuff out there.

Scott:

So just like you would on regular television, there's.

Scott:

Unless you have certain license rights to these songs, you either can't use it at all, or if you do use it, you don't get, you know, if your.

Scott:

If your channel is monetized, you don't get to.

Scott:

You don't get the monetization for that.

Scott:

The artist does or the copyright holder, the owner does.

Scott:

So what I've found is in the podcast world, there is, I haven't seen any content id system.

Scott:

Now I have seen, because I listen to a fair amount of podcasts, and I have noticed that some of the bigger podcasts that I listen to, when I would, when they're talking about, say, a musician or something like that, they could very easily throw in an example of their song.

Scott:

But I noticed oftentimes that they don't.

Scott:

And I believe that that's them kind of playing it safe, like you said.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Scott:

To make sure that they don't infringe on any copyright.

Scott:

Because let's say you take some of the bigger podcasts out there, right?

Scott:

Some NPR has big ones, this american life or whatever, right?

Scott:

If they were to start playing Beatles music on there, you sure as hell, you know, they'd get, they'd get a cease and desist or they'd get hammered real quickly.

Scott:

Yeah, I don't think, and I think that's just because they're so massive.

Scott:

Now, if we started playing, if we played a snippet or half of a Beatles song on this podcast, nobody would probably know ever, right.

Scott:

Minus the other person that listens to this podcast.

Scott:

But that doesn't mean that we couldn't get hit with a copyright notice of some sort.

Scott:

Right now is podcasting is still, because it's relatively decentralized.

Scott:

There is no one place for video, not like YouTube.

Scott:

YouTube's kind of the place.

Scott:

Yeah, there's other video platforms, but really everybody says, look it up on YouTube.

Scott:

There is no place like that for podcasts.

Scott:

Right.

Scott:

There's the big ones, there's the big players, Apple podcasts and this, that and the other.

Scott:

But they aren't hosting the files, right.

Scott:

Whereas YouTube is hosting all those video files, so it can scan all that stuff.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Scott:

You know, so I think you're on the right path.

Scott:

And I think anybody listening to this podcast that wants to do a music oriented podcast, I did see somewhere that Spotify, if you label your, if you, if you say like, I'm gonna do this kind of podcast, like Spotify has an option for that.

Scott:

So like if the music is in the Spotify catalog, you could potentially use that there, right.

Scott:

But I would have to do a little bit more research.

Scott:

So if anybody listening is going to do a music oriented podcast like what you're talking about, Kevin, you know, hosting on Spotify now, I think it would be an expotify, exclusive that might be the downside because that's right.

Scott:

They say, hey, you can use the music in your episode that's in the Spotify catalog, but this podcast can only be on Spotify.

Scott:

So you're kind of pigeonholing yourself into one particular platform.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Kevin:

So you're right about that.

Kevin:

I did look into that a little bit because I'm really, you know, music is a big, is going to be a big part of my podcast.

Kevin:

They, you can, you can't import music into the Spotify for podcasters like platform editing, editing platform.

Kevin:

You can upload a file, an audio file, a completed podcast, but you cannot import your own music.

Kevin:

You can import Spotify music.

Kevin:

Now you just become a Spotify exclusive podcast.

Kevin:

But if it's already in your podcast, you can do that.

Scott:

So yeah, there is ways.

Scott:

So the other side again, I've learned this more from YouTube because there is some audio out there that's not music that is still copyrighted.

Scott:

The example that I use sometimes is the Martin Luther King I have a dream speech.

Scott:

It's actually copyrighted UMG, I think, or universal or someone like that owns the copyright to his speech.

Scott:

So if you try to use the audio from that speech in a video, you'll get a hit with a copyright notice.

Scott:

Now because that was kind of like a public event and our channel is history and kind of educational in nature.

Scott:

You can claim certain things called fair use.

Scott:

Again, we are not lawyers.

Scott:

This idiots guy to podcasting.

Scott:

Don't take our advice.

Scott:

But this is what I learned.

Scott:

You can claim fair use and what I've been able to argue and win fair use for some of our videos because we would do make.

Scott:

Jen made a video from Memphis talking about Martin Luther King's last speech.

Scott:

The.

Scott:

I haven't, um, I've been to the mountaintop, or I have seen the mountaintop.

Scott:

Um, and we use that.

Scott:

I got the initial copyright notice.

Scott:

I argued fair use because we were educational video and we were using that just as an example.

Scott:

Um, and I won and it came through.

Scott:

And I can still monetize off of that video to.

Scott:

Because that's claimed under, under fair use.

Scott:

Cool.

Scott:

So there are instances where you can use that.

Scott:

But I think again, to your point, kev, music is even more kind of locked in on that kind of stuff.

Scott:

So it's more something I think what you're doing is probably the right thing to do is the kind of music, if you can reach out to the, you know, find the right avenue to request.

Scott:

Hey, I want to make a podcast.

Scott:

You know, about these musicians, and I'm promoting this.

Scott:

And if they say, yeah, you have, you're more than welcome to use, you know, whatever songs, if they kind of give you that notice, to be honest, from there, you're probably good when you start putting it on, on podcasts because you keep that for your own personal records.

Scott:

And then as long as you're kind of staying within the bounds of what they authorize you to use, you should be fine.

Scott:

Um, so.

Scott:

And you can do that.

Scott:

I've just never gone down that path, so I don't really know much about it.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Kevin:

And I have not started doing that quite yet.

Kevin:

Um, you know, but I'm going to start doing it soon.

Kevin:

So that is, you know, a hesitation I have of, like, how hard is this going to be?

Kevin:

I don't know, you know, that's why this is the idiot's guide.

Kevin:

So you'll.

Kevin:

We'll find out.

Scott:

Yeah, well, I mean, we'll find out, you know, and that's one of those things that once we start doing it, sometimes you just have to try, like, I've done that before.

Scott:

You just have to try.

Scott:

And they kind of slap your hand.

Scott:

You're like, I'm sorry, I didn't know.

Scott:

And then you again.

Scott:

Yeah, the other thing is, too, is there are royalty free, you know, royalty music sites that you can get licensable music from.

Scott:

Right.

Scott:

You pay, you know, a low subscription fee, you know, sometimes monthly, sometimes annual.

Scott:

You can pay one off for certain songs and they'll even say on their website, hey, you can use this.

Scott:

There's different websites do it different ways.

Scott:

You can use this for one YouTube channel and then one other in each platform.

Scott:

You can, you have the rights to use this song as long as you're under a certain amount of your audience is only this big.

Scott:

You can use on your, on one video on your YouTube channel, one video on your Instagram channel, and one podcast.

Scott:

Or you can use it on three different YouTube channels as long as they're kind of all associated with you.

Scott:

So, like, I use upbeat for one because they're actually pretty inexpensive for a decent music selection.

Scott:

So it's upp beat, b e a t.

Scott:

I think it's upbeat IO or.com or something like that.

Scott:

But you can use it on three different YouTube channels.

Scott:

You can kind of whitelist these YouTube channels and I think you can use it on like a podcast as well.

Scott:

So, yeah, there are options out there if you go and start hunting around for royalty free music websites.

Scott:

There's a ton of them.

Scott:

Out there and a lot of them on there.

Scott:

If you start looking and comparing at the pricing page, I always go straight to the pricing page because you can see all the features and they'll tell you, yeah, this is for one site and one site only, or this price, this price point is for, you know, one YouTube channel and one podcast or whatever it is.

Scott:

So there is those options too, if you want to go find these royalty free music sites.

Scott:

Like an epidemic.

Scott:

Sound artlist, upbeat, what I use, there's a whole bunch out there.

Scott:

You just kind of have to hunt around and search for the features that you want if you want to pay for that.

Scott:

So I did pay for upbeat.

Scott:

I got in early on upbeat.

Scott:

So I got kind of like a lifetime membership for like $200, which was a phenomenal deal because their annual subscription is actually one of the cheaper ones out there.

Scott:

It's like $60 a year.

Scott:

And then I've kind of tested the waters with some other sites and stuff like that.

Scott:

So cool.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Kevin:

And you're talking about recording artists, music like musicians who are putting their stuff out there.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

And there are some sites that are bigger, that actually have bigger artists on it.

Scott:

So musicbed is a really big kind of music licensing site.

Scott:

And there's some pretty big names on there, like Drew Holcomb and the neighbors were on there, some other, other big names that are on there.

Scott:

Some of them aren't available under certain plans.

Scott:

Some of them, you can do a one off license deal, and it's all the stuff.

Scott:

So it's music oriented.

Scott:

Podcasts are tricky sometimes, but I think the podcast realm is growing, so I think there's going to be more options as time goes on.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Kevin:

Now, the other side of this is music that you're using as transitions or in other elements of your podcast, theme music and intros, outros, etcetera.

Kevin:

There's a lot of great stuff out there.

Kevin:

Scott.

Kevin:

You've really turned me on to a lot of great stuff.

Kevin:

I've poked around quite a bit on pixabay.com and freetouse.com, i think.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

How do you like that site?

Scott:

Is that pretty good?

Scott:

I haven't really dived deep into that yet.

Kevin:

Yeah, I've actually found some good ones.

Kevin:

Um, you know, the, the tricky part about music, the, this kind of, this music side of things is that it's pretty time consuming.

Kevin:

Like you really kind of just, you gotta slog through, like really finding what you really want, you know?

Kevin:

And, I mean, you've done a lot of that.

Kevin:

Scott, I, you know, I'm trying to find, like, I'm trying to find theme music and, like, I, you know, transition stuff.

Kevin:

And some of it is, you know, not good.

Kevin:

Some of it is great.

Kevin:

And you just have to, like, follow the instructions on the website and make sure that you're doing what they say, like, free to use.

Kevin:

You just have to credit the artist, right?

Kevin:

Credit the artist.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Kevin:

But, I mean, you've made, I mean, how many videos that you've gotten music for?

Kevin:

Like, what have you found that's helpful, honestly, for me?

Scott:

Like, you do it enough times and you kind of.

Scott:

You can play a couple seconds of a song, and you just.

Scott:

After a while, you just kind of know.

Scott:

You're like.

Scott:

You already kind of know the vibe for a video.

Scott:

I think it's almost easier than it is for a podcast.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

Unless you already have something in mind for the podcast, for a video.

Scott:

Like, we just.

Scott:

We just released one today about an old school country music female country music star.

Scott:

Loretta.

Scott:

Loretta Lynn.

Scott:

So I was looking for some kind of upbeat country style music, kind of folksy, similar to her style.

Scott:

So I went to upbeat, and I kind of started typing in.

Scott:

And you can.

Scott:

You can filter pretty quickly for the Americana or folk or whatever.

Scott:

And I just start playing songs.

Kevin:

Right.

Scott:

And usually after, like, a couple seconds, I can kind of know.

Scott:

I'm like, yep, nope, too fast.

Scott:

No, that's too fast.

Scott:

That's too fast.

Scott:

Oh, no, I like this one, you know, and then I'll save it or whatever, and I just kind of fire through a whole bunch.

Scott:

And so a lot of these sites that will have.

Scott:

If you find one that you're like, oh, this is really good.

Scott:

I think I can use this.

Scott:

A lot of them will have, like, a link or a feature where more songs like this.

Scott:

So there's a similar songs type.

Scott:

You just click a link, and it'll give you similar songs.

Scott:

Sometimes I'll spend an hour, hour and a half, you know, without realizing it, just going through songs, trying to find the right one.

Scott:

And eventually, if I don't get.

Scott:

If I get lucky, I'll find it, like, three or four songs pretty quickly.

Scott:

But if I don't, eventually I'm like, you know what?

Scott:

I just got to go with something.

Scott:

You know, maybe it's not exactly what I want, but, you know, 80% and done is better than 99% and never done.

Scott:

So.

Kevin:

Yeah, yeah.

Scott:

Like, our.

Scott:

And then what I do.

Scott:

Cause we make the YouTube video.

Scott:

So I've already done all the music research.

Scott:

Essentially, I use the same exact songs when I make the companion podcast about that YouTube video.

Kevin:

Right, right.

Scott:

So when I make the podcast, I already have all the music from the video.

Scott:

I use the exact same music.

Kevin:

Keep it streamlined.

Scott:

Yeah, just keep it streamlined.

Scott:

And then I use that.

Scott:

I tried using what they call stingers or like, audio tags.

Scott:

Not stingers, but like, audio tags in between for a while.

Scott:

And I still like that every now and then.

Scott:

It's like a kind of the common music, you know, jingle between segments.

Scott:

But I found that if I'm, if a podcast is really lending itself more to a story, I like using the music, you know, kind of down before, and then it raises, you know, for five to 10 seconds rather than the audio tag, you know, necessarily.

Scott:

So it, you kind of figure out, you know, what you like, and you listen to other podcasts, you hear what they do.

Scott:

You're like, oh, I really like how they did this.

Scott:

And then you try it on yours.

Scott:

Or I like how they did this.

Scott:

This podcast does that, then you try it on yours.

Scott:

That's honestly, I guess the best thing to do.

Kevin:

Yeah, yeah.

Kevin:

Well, yeah, yeah.

Kevin:

And it's really.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Kevin:

Like just kind of getting through it.

Kevin:

Some other sites you recommended, Scotty, was Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

Kevin:

Some.

Kevin:

You can find stuff on there, just direct from the artist, right?

Scott:

Yeah, bandcamps, a good one.

Scott:

There was an artist I was using for a while for personal videos.

Scott:

Andrew apple pie.

Scott:

Like, if you ever watch Casey Neistat vlogs, Casey Neistat kind of made him big for a while.

Scott:

You would recognize, people might recognize his music.

Scott:

And I actually emailed the dude.

Scott:

I said, hey, can I use your.

Scott:

I just emailed the artist.

Scott:

I emailed Andrew apple pie.

Scott:

I said, hey, can I use your music in my videos?

Scott:

He was like, sure.

Scott:

He was good.

Scott:

And his stuff was like, priced some albums of his.

Scott:

He would put a low price on it.

Scott:

Some, it's like, pay what you want, and I would pay him because I liked his music so much.

Scott:

Yeah, pay like $5 for an album of 15 songs or something like that.

Scott:

Yeah.

Scott:

But, yeah, there are some sites where you can find that.

Scott:

You can just email the artist directly.

Kevin:

Yeah, cool.

Kevin:

I mean, that's it.

Kevin:

That's what I got, man.

Kevin:

Is there anything else we need to consider when it comes to music?

Scott:

No.

Scott:

I mean, a lot of times if you're, if you're not sure and you want to play it safe, what you could do just to check yourself is to just start a private YouTube channel and you could upload a video version, a video file version of your podcast to YouTube, and YouTube will flag it for sure.

Scott:

I mean, if you're not trying to monetize, you're not trying to do anything.

Scott:

And the video is just private.

Scott:

It'll still show a copyright, but it doesn't mean anything negative.

Scott:

But that's just.

Scott:

That's an easy way for you to kind of check that I can think of.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Scott:

But then you're also trying to convert an audio file to a video and stuff like that.

Scott:

So, um, now just, uh, if you're going to do a music oriented podcast, do your homework ahead of time.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Scott:

Um, and figure that out, because you don't want to be doing something for a year or two, and then all of a sudden, yeah, you.

Scott:

You get big, and then, you know, some music company comes and says, hey, you can't.

Scott:

You can't use that music.

Scott:

You got to take those down or you owe us money or whatever.

Scott:

So.

Kevin:

Yeah.

Kevin:

Cool.

Kevin:

All right, well, till the next time.

Scott:

All right, peace out.

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Kevin Bennie

Creator and host of This Is How We Pray podcast, prayer playlists, and Thisishowwepray.org. Also, the taller and better looking brother of Scott.
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Scott B

Host of the Talk With History podcast, Producer over at Walk with History on YouTube, and Editor of TheHistoryRoadTrip.com