Online Music Licensing – How to Make Money from your Back Catalogue

by Heather on 7 October 2008

Today I’ve been uploading music to YouLicense and CuePop. These are both sites in the business of online music licensing that will put that back catalogue of unused music to good use and hopefully make you some money! If you’ve also been savvy enough to keep your copyright and licensed your commissioned music non-exclusively, then you’re free to upload that too.

Then, producers and directors and any other programme-makers can browse through, license the music there and then and download it immediately, ready for their production.

The two different sites have very different terms though, but I’ve no idea which is most likely to get music placed so I’m checking them both out.

YouLicense

YouLicense is a new site. They need to work hard to publicise the site in order to get the online music in front of the right people to license. However, they only take a small percentage of the licensing fee for each track that’s sold. There’s a limit of 10 mp3 tracks and 1 album or compilation unless you buy a subscription for so-many-months, and then you can upload as much as you like, in a variety of formats – and the bonus is that, then, they take no commission at all. The theory is that if you can make enough money from licensing then that’ll cover the subscription and anything more is profit for your coffers. They also seemed to be a bit more geared towards songs rather than incidental or instrumental music, and you can sell the piece outright, copyright and all (but why on god’s earth would you do that you crazy crazy person???).
My YouLicense Page

CuePop

A mahooooosive online music and sound database, still seems to be in earlier stages but much more advanced. And so the terms are a bit harsher! Set your own prices, but CuePop takes fifty per cent (50%)of the music licensing fee, and a hundred per cent (100%) of the mechanicals from royalties (ooh that’s haaaaarsh), which totals a massive fifty per cent (50%) of your total monies from royalties. Though if they can license my music to a US television show or three and mayb a couple of features, my CV will be very happy and they’ll have earned their commission. They’re specifically going for the television, film, multimedia licensing route and you can set all your prices for individual media, eg CD-Roms, Theatre, Audio books, podcasts, that sort of thing.
My CuePop Page

In conclusion

What’s nice about both these sites is that you don’t have to sign away any copyrights or licenses for copyrights. They’re more of an intermediary, and they’re both non-exclusive. So you can re-license the music again and again and again…

Money for old rope can’t be bad