hey everyone,

well i'm hoping someone with an advertising back ground or someone who has experience with this will chime in and help me out

i'm heading up the recruitment committee at my ambulance garage and we have created a commercial that the local news agencies have agreed to play during the 6 o'clock news (we got damn lucky)

the only problem is we need music to go with it and no one knows any freelance musicians that could help out. and i have no idea how to go about getting the rights to a song so we can use it legally. i have tried once and they agreed but wanted about $7500 for the rights to it.

and since we are a volunteer service our funds are slim to none.

so, any ideas, helpful hints, anything would be greatly appriciated!!

thanks to anyone who can help!!!

 

With your budget (which is ZERO), I suggest that you look into royalty free music libraries / production music libraries. Such services have large amounts of various types of music that you can use at little or no cost. You'd be surprised how good some of royalty free stuff is.

Outside of that option you're looking at considerable cost and effort. There are research costs to find out who all needs to be involved in contract negotiations. These days there can be any number of people/entities involved, from songwriters, performers, composers, to publishers, etc., all of who need to OK a deal and will need to get a cut of the fees. Just finding out who all are interested parties can cost you a lot of bucks (not to mention the actual fees for use). You'll need a lawyer too to negotiate and write up such agreements. There are service companies that do music clearance. If you insist on using non royalty free music, then such services are worth the money. They will handle everything: locating all involved parties, contracts, fees, etc.

Another way is to talk to the folks at ASCAP. They offer clearance services with ASCAP members, but again, it won't be cheap. Then again, ASCAP may offer some pro bono for non-profit organizations (are you non-profit?), so you might want to look into that. I suggest you contact ASCAP and ask, if they can't help they could certainly point you in the right direction, maybe offer contacts with other clearance services or appropriate royalty free services.

Royalty free / Production Music Libraries. For you it's almost certainly the way to go.

However you go, good luck.

:santa:

 

I wish I could be apart of your ambulaence people. How doy ou get involved with ambulance? I nevre ever figured it out, its like a total mistery.

 

kobiashi thank you so much that was exactly what i was looking for! your the first person to really seem like they know there stuff.

manual f150: its really not that hard. first you hafto find a service that is BLS (basic life support) these are usually rural volunteer services. then you have to obtain your EMT-B (emergency medical tech basic) certification. this takes anywhere from 4-6 months. its not an easy test you basically have to obsess over the material but when your pass its a great feeling. usually the BLS service will know where to find a class. they may even offer there own. which is a good choice because it will usually be free if you agree to run with them for x amount of time. thats a short version. PM me if you want to know more and i can help get your started

 

Also you are allowed to use 10 seconds of any song as long as it isn't the catch of the song.

:30 second spot, loop 10 seconds 3 times or mash 3 songs together.....

Also I cant remember exactly it's either 20 or 30 years after the recording, the song is up for grabs.

Also talk to your local radio stations they usually have tons of royalty free music , sound FX, for the commercials that they build. You might get them to run a spot too, as well as, or at least help you.

I use to be a copyrighter at a local radio station.

 

thats great news. this is proving to be one hell of a project