Media producers working on projects often have to answer questions about Fair Use of copyrighted material in their projects. It’s generally known that, within certain limitations, copyrighted material can be used without obtaining permission from the rights holder if the usage falls within certain limitations.

So what are those limitations?

According to the US Copyright Office, there are four factors to weigh when deciding if your usage of copyrighted material would be considered Fair Use.

Ask yourself these four questions and grade yourself honestly on a scale of 1-25 for each question; with 1 being “There’s no way a judge would believe that” and  25  being “Even my worst enemy would say ‘yes'” (*This quiz does not constitute legal advice. We are not lawyers.)

1) Are you doing something transformative? In other words, are you creating something that is new and original in which the copyrighted work is just a component?

2) Is the material you are using well-known by the public? A clip from a high-grossing Hollywood movie studio would score lower in this case than a quote taken from a 1950’s out-of-print textbook about the Civil War.

3) Is the amount you used reasonable in regards to what you’re trying to communicate? For example, if you were trying to communicate the brilliance of novelist Stephen King, did you make your point by sharing a particularly well-written group of sentences… or three entire chapters of Carrie?

4) Will your usage in any way reduce revenue for the original copyright holder or occupy any market space in which the copyrighted work competes? Will the rights-holder miss out on any revenue opportunities because of your usage of their intellectual property?

If your final score was 90 to 100, we think you’ve made an “A” on this quiz and your usage is probably ok. If your final score was below 70, then we think you’re better off contacting the rights holder and obtaining permission beforehand or replacing that portion of your video with something affordable (*plug: like our royalty-free music).

In the recently published 35 minute video below, intellectual property attorneys Anthony Falzone and Julie Ahrens address real-world examples like You Tube videos, movie reviews, etc. and explain exactly how the four questions would apply:

The part of this video that may surprise media producers most is when Ms. Ahren explains that making money on a project would not immediately disqualify you from incorporating copyrighted material in a larger work. Fair Use is not just for schoolteachers. It’s less about commerce and more about giving artists leeway to create something new and unique that doesn’t jeopardize revenue for creator of the original work.

Mr. Falzone summarizes the concept best at the end of the video when he says:

“Fair Use is not a dusty, dark little exception to copyright rules. It’s a fundamental part of the copyright bargain. It is a thing that protects your right to express yourself and create new things from the world around you.”

Special thanks to the Stanford Center for Internet and Society for publishing this video.

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace with nearly 15,000 tracks online where media producers, video producers, filmmakers, game developers, businesses and other music buyers can license high-quality, affordable royalty-free music from an online community of musicians.

A musician uploading tracks to our site recently asked how they can upload additional versions of their track to www.musicrevolution.com. Here’s how that works:

First, be sure you’ve already uploaded what our system calls the “Primary” track.  Then, when you edit information for the “Secondary” track, uncheck the box that says “This is the primary version of the track”.

Underneath that you’ll see a see a dropdown that lists every track you’ve uploaded to our system. In that drop down, select the “Primary” track to which the track you are editing is a “Secondary” version. That’s it!

FYI, we see many of our musicians price the “Secondary” versions a bit lower than the “Primary” versions.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks for letting us sell your music!

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

A while back I wrote a review of Michael Levitan’s The World in Six Songs which outlined the six different ways that music has played a significant in society’s development. One of those ways is “friendship” songs. These are songs that crystallize a belief or emotion held by a large group of people and thereby unite those people on a deeper level.

With that in mind, check out the incredible rap music coming out of the middle east lately. Just amazing:

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

If you find yourself in a creative “rut” where you feel like everything you do sounds the same, working with different types of scales is a quick and easy way to dramatically change the sound of your music and throw you off balance in a healthy way.

I was browsing through a gift shop in Atlanta recently and came across a very cool poster that notated about 25 exotic scales. Due to copyright issues, I can’t re-distribute that poster, but I found something similar on this web page (which features a convenient play-along track so you can just grab your instrument, hit “play” on this web page, and start trying out scales):

http://guitarteacher.com/2010/03/02/exotic-guitar-scales-1/

Singer/Songwriter James Taylor supposedly once said, “Some people collect butterflies or coins…I collect solos.”

Creators of production music could easily adopt the same philosophy with scales. Enjoy!

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

The vocals you hear performed by the anime singer featured in this Japanese TV commercial for Toyota were completely computer-generated:

Production music creators can generate vocal tracks like this by just entering pitches and text into a software program called Vocaloid, originally developed by Yamaha.  The software is modular wherein the user buys one “Vocalist” at a time. Here’s a mind-blowing demo of the most recent “Vocalist” called Tonio (distributed by Zero-G for $149.99 USD) singing Donizetti’s Una Furtiva Lagrima:

Tonio Demo

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

Based on David Pogue’s June 22, 2011 software review in the New York Times, here’s a quick list of the major differences between’s Apple’s new Final Cut X ($300), which will be replacing the traditional Final Cut software series (now at version 7 for $1,000). This move will certainly lighten the barrier of entry for creative types want to try their hand at video, but may cause frustration for veteran power users.

What’s In:

-When you drag video clips over one another, nothing gets cut.

-You can now continue to use the program while it’s rendering (!).

-You can now adjust a shot’s playback speed by just holding a key and dragging the right edge of the shot.

-The new “Color Match” feature helps shots looks more like each other.

-The new “Auditions” feature allows you to try alternate shots without placing them individually.

-Imported video can now be automatically analyzed to see how many people are in a shot and automatically sorted into folders that way.

What’s Out:

-Opening old Final Cut projects in X (!)

-Editing multiple camera angles.

-Exporting to tape.

-Buying the program via DVD (all online now).

Gotta make a quick plug for Blindfold, a great production music artist who just uploaded some feel-good alt rock tracks to our site for affordable licensing. Listen to his stuff here.

And here’s the full article about Final Cut in the New York Times

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

This week I have the pleasure of accompanying a local church on the piano as they do their big “Broadway Night”.

Seeing a Broadway show should be on everyone’s bucket list. There is simply nothing like experiencing the same level of talent and production value as any Hollywood film but live and in person. Many years ago when vacationing in New York I remember feeling disappointed that the only good tickets we could get were to some musical I had never heard of called Thoroughly Modern Millie. It turned out to be phenomenal. It was then I realized that Broadway keeps the bar so high you really can’t go wrong with whatever you see.

TV star Neil Patrick Harris sold that concept brilliantly in this opening musical number to the 65th Annual Tony Awards on CBS on 6/13/2011.

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

Convert any of your old MIDI gear into a soft-synth in just a few clicks. This new version of Autosampler could be a game-changer for creators of production music:

Part I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ0xgJDcC6Q]

Part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTvq2B5G0gY]

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

Will the James Bond theme ever become public domain?

Because Disney has so much invested in Steamboat Willie (copyrighted 1928), it is a given that they’ll do everything possible to prevent Congress from allowing works created after 1927 to go into the public domain.

And because the James Bond theme was 1st composed in 1962 by Monty Norman, the answer is probably no.

Disney has had huge success on this legislative front so far with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and Fairness in Music Licensing Act of 1998 . Despite this limitation, it often surprises media producers how many usable songs exist in the public domain such as Air on a G String, 1812 Overture and tracks found in this search result..

http://www.musicrevolution.com/search/?keyword=Apollo+Symphony+Orchestra&application=0&mood=0&genre=0&instrument=0&influence=&vocals=1&results=20&x=43&y=

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

We love doing scavenger hunts for ideas and content that help media producers make cooler videos. Today we found this very effective approach to featuring a corporate executive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rTzIAWI4Ms

And here’s a new $9.99 production music track just added to our library called “It’s My Business”. It’s by Plastic3 who is great at creating tracks that serve the emotional mood of a corporate video without sounding dated.

Stay tuned for more cool ideas like this!

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.