Podcasting music, what you should know

Before you start using music in your podcasts here are some facts that you should know.

Fact number one:
If you want to use music that is copyrighted you are going to end up paying a lot of money just to use a little bit of music. You will have to go through various organizations just to try and get permission to play the music on your podcast, so you need to ask yourself is it worth going through all of that for. You will have to pay a fee to the performing rights organizations, which ends up being about $750 for the entire year, you have to pay a fee to the record label, and this fee varies depending on what the record label decides to charge since it is a download not a stream-based system, and you will have to pay a minimum of $42.50 per track to the Harry Fox Agency for mechanical rights. And the worst part is even after paying all the performing rights organizations and the Harry Fox Agency the record label can turn down your request, so nothing is guaranteed.

Fact two:
Since you are not making money with your podcasts, unless you are doing podcasts for advertising you are not going to want to spend a bunch of money to get rights to allow you to use songs on your podcast. Thus enter into the picture "Creative Commons". This is a group that has designed a license for music artists who want to allow their music to be by podcasters and other users as long as they credit your work and are not making money with your music. This helps for young artists to publish their work and still get credit for it. It also allows users to jazz up their podcasts with music and other sound affects without having to pay an arm and a leg.

Fact three:
If you decide to use copyrighted music in your podcast without obtaining the proper licenses and paying the right fees to the correct organizations you can find yourself in a lot of legal trouble. If you get caught using illegal music you will end up getting sued by various groups who own the rights to that music. The risks of using the music without a license are very high; there are people who get paid to listen to podcasts and other forms of audio files to make sure that no copyrights have been violated, so the chances of you getting caught are extremely high.

Fact four:
Do not use music as filler for dead space or to help enhance your podcast, chances are it is going to end up taking away from the podcasts. Music should only be played as music, such as in a podcast that is promoting your new band or a radio program podcast that you have put together that features music from local bands. Using music as it should be used will add to your podcast and keep your listeners coming back, but using music as fillers for dead space makes your podcast seem unorganized, which will not help attract new listeners.

Fact five:
There are licenses out there that you can purchase that do not require you to credit the artist during your podcast but this is not a good practice to get into. It is just common courtesy to give credit to the artist even if it just mentions them in the credits. This helps to give the artist exposure and will allow your listeners to obtain a copy of the entire song if they like it. Everybody likes to receive credit for something they have worked hard, can you imagine how you would feel if you had created something for people to use and were not giving even passing credit for the work you did?