Use of music by RF Clients

[Paolo]

Good afternoon,

For those working with RF libraries – when a client purchases one of your music cues, can that client use that specific cue in perpetuity for any and all of their future projects? Or only for one specific project?

Thanks!

[Paolo]

bump

[Art Munson]

can that client use that specific cue in perpetuity for any and all of their future projects? Or only for one specific project?

Depends on the library. Read the fine print. 🙂

[Paolo]

thanks Art. That makes sense that RF libraries would differ and have different licensing agreements.

[LAwriter]

Yes, and just to clarify – a client cannot “purchase” your music. They can pay a fee to “license” your music. Otherwise you’d better be charging thousands per track, cause you’ll lose ownership by “selling” it to a client.

[Mark Lewis]

In the literal sense ‘Royalty Free’ means not having to pay a separate fee for every use once a license is purchased.
And most RF licenses are in perpetuity. I have never seen a time limit stated in any RF license that I have had experience with. Like, ‘you can only use this music in your youtube video for 3 years’. That wouldn’t be very cool.
It is also important to include ‘in perpetuity’ in the license to protect your client. If you decided to sell your music outright to someone at a later date that new owner could feasibly go back and take legal action to pull your track from videos and movies and commercials unless ‘in perpetuity’ was included in the wording. ‘In perpetuity’ means ‘not subject to termination’.

But of course you should contact each library you are dealing with to get a specific answer to your question.

[Paolo]

@LAwriter

a client cannot “purchase” your music. They can pay a fee to “license” your music.

Thank you; good point – that the client pays for a license – it’s not a buyout.

@ Art Munson @Mark Lewis

Thank you gentlemen – I read the fine print which I guess is where I should have started 🙂 This is from Mark’s licensing FAQs:

The license is a Lifetime License
This means you can use this music in as many projects that you, the licensee, are personally involved with as you want without paying extra fees or needing to re-license the music.

[Author]

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