General complaint about "royalty free" music

I know that this isnt necessarily pond5s fault or anything.
This applies to pond5... bear with me.

I think I should mention this. I know other producers who have similar issues. One works in TV commercials and the other makes decent income on you tube. So midlevel-ish producers.


In the past I made some videos on a youtube channel not under my name,one of them (which was popular) had a royalty free song
I purchased on another site. This royalty free license gave me all rights, it was expensive... like 60 dollars. Anyway the guy removed his songs from the site, and joined some music organization like the pro or bmi or something. So he claimed "monetization" on the video. He wanted the rights to the ad revenue. Now I could go through my emails for the purchase receipt and file a dispute. I didnt want to, I unlisted the video. I had EXTENDED rights....

The whole idea of "Im going to sell my music 'royalty free' then get the buyer to pay MORE later when his video gets popular" is kind of a jackassy move. Stock videographers, and stock photographers dont get that deal. I will not personally purchase any more royalty free music, and I know other producers who make their own (bad) music because they dont want to deal with this stuff either. I will do the same.

My point is....
I think pond5 should consider relabeling "royalty free" on the music section of this site. Someone who is new may think the same rules apply to music as the videos clips for sale. I know pond5 markets to a lot of film makers etc who might make this mistake.

I've had the same problem on one of my You Tube channels. I'm "not in trouble" but I can't monetize. You Tube has some really aggressive bots, I make sure to turn off the radio when I'm doing a video. IMHO "royalty free" music is sort of bogus, if just with You Tube. If it's been produced somewhere, it's in the system, and how are you going to "prove" you purchased the rights?

I've had several YT videos with RF music also claimed by someone else. I just remove the music and let it play silent and monetized. It is a pain.

I dont know a lot about the music industry. I produce some music with FL sudio. But my friend with a larger youtube channel said its because music artists are joining these organizations? Maybe not maybe they are doing it themselves.

I dont care if an artist wants to join pro or whatever, but then his work becomes "rights managed." This is a royalty free site, pond5 should have a RM section for rights managed stuff.... Assuming my friend is correct.

Or perhaps P5 should modify the contract for this purpose that states that once you decide to sell here, don't take the same content and go license it under a new rights managed system. This problem also exists with other RF models. Sonic Fire (Smart Sound) deals with the same issues and hence has lost tremendous ground particularly with the constant battle with Youtube. Vimeo seems to be the way to go if you don't want these issues or conflicts. Only problem on Vimeo is you can't monetize anything as far as I know. Youtube is not that great anymore. It used to be worth dealing with on the monetization, but unless you do lots of videos consistently for this purpose, you are wasting your time trying to make a penny with them.

I work at a radio station and we have the right to use anything we play on the air in our advertising. Of course, we pay for it through ASCAP and other organization fees. I was able to get YouTube to flag or account so that commercial music no longer causes issues when I upload stuff to the station channels. But it was a major PITA to get all the paperwork done and such for that.

When I do commercials for clients and such, I simply do not use music that isn't royalty free and from a source I can trust that it won't get flagged on YouTube. So any artist who has their stuff monitored onYT, they are not getting my business and I buy close to 1,000 songs a year.

And I don't mind a license that only allows me to use the song in one commercial so that I have to repurchase a new license each time I use the song. But once I buy a license, I don't want to pay any additional fees for plays or different media.

I do like the fact that youtube allows you to add songs in their online editing thing. All those songs are free to use. But honestly that is not very fine tuned.

I think you are sort of right vader, but there are lots of different youtube strategies. Some dont depend on constant maintenance. I have learned about some of these and have tried them on a small scale and they seem to work... For example prank videos posted to reddit. If you do them right you can get a ton of traffic.... I am experimenting with youtube, and I am definitely NOT an expert on youtube. I know a few people who make OK side income with little maintenance and shoots are fun, and you can have a ton of channels on one account.

Timely discussion. I'm editing an 18-minute show that has 12 pieces of music in it, including several from Pond5. I post rough cuts on YouTube (unlisted) for clients to see. Sure enough, up pops a Prostate Ad.

I then posted each piece of music on You Tube in separate uploads to find the offending music. (edit note - I didn't need to do that, since You Tube's video manager tells you what the offending piece is -- now i know). It was one from Pond5. YouTube lets you see who is claiming the copyright -- in this case it was ONErpm, and the "content" that supposedly matched the music was "Modern Motto - Tarazanio." That sounded like another stock music name, but what did I know -- a quick search revealed it isn't and the piece Modern Motto by Tarazanio sounds nothing like the Pond5 piece.

I've just filed a protest with YouTube and contacted P5 support. This is very worrisome, as has been mentioned. It looks like whenever I edit with music, I'll need to upload my music selections to YouTube before I lock them in. And equally worrisome is that assuming my test YouTube clip gets "cleared," what happens when I post the finished video? Do Viagra Ads pop up (ehmm)? And how about a year from now when I use the piece? And interestingly enough, I used the same piece a year ago, and checking the video on You Tube, there is no pop-ups.

As a music producer, songwriter and videographer, I have used RF music on projects on YT and have had the same issue. However when it comes up on YT I dispute the issue and provide the information to YouTube and contact the folks at VideoBlocks or however and it is resolved. If the music is sold as RF then switched, you need to go by the date of purchase and your documentation, which will be legal.
That is the law.

As a music producer, songwriter and videographer, I have used RF music on projects on YT and have had the same issue. However when it comes up on YT I dispute the issue and provide the information to YouTube and contact the folks at VideoBlocks or whoever and it is resolved. If the music is sold as RF then switched, you need to go by the date of purchase and your documentation, which will be legal.
That is the law.