Are You Licensing Your Film's Music Properly? w/ Jeremiah Benzion of Artlist.io

A few years into my video career I got a big time scare.

Not one, but two filmmaker friends of mine were sued by big record labels for using unlicensed music on a couple of videos that happened to go viral.

I’m ashamed to admit it now, but during my first few years making videos, I didn’t even know what music licensing was, let alone pay for it. I wanted to support artists, but I couldn’t afford to license mainstream bands like Coldplay or the Black Eyed Peas, and the royalty free music that was available… Well, let’s just say it was less than inspiring.

Artlist is one of the most exciting of a number of music licensing companies that have sprung up in the wake of a spate of lawsuits against filmmakers in recent years. They feature incredibly high-quality music at a seriously insane price, and their interface is designed entirely with creatives in mind. My companies and I use them constantly and they’ve been a godsend for our business.

Artist Manager for Artlist Jeremiah Benzion is on the podcast today to talk about how Artlist is able to benefit both filmmakers and musicians and offer such value to everyone. We talk about how to best go about selecting music for your projects, the film and music pedigree of the company, and how they’re hoping to make life even easier for us as video producers in the future.

How are you currently licensing music for your video projects? Have you ever had a scare like I did? Let us know in the comments!

* Any coffee drinkers out there? Leave us a review on the iTunes store and email us with your contact info to be entered to win one of five Starbucks gift cards on us! *

In this episode:

- Why you need to be licensing music properly to protect yourself and your company
- Some strategies on how to approach the time-consuming task of finding and selecting music for a film
- An in-depth look at how Artlist can benefit you and your team

 
Quotes:

“What brought the founders to want to start something like this was a real struggle with finding good music to use for their videos. You know, a small company, doing as best as they could, always looking for something, and always settling for something.” [4:43]
 

Links:

Artlist
Follow Artlist on Facebook 

Follow Studio Sherpas on Twitter and Instagram  
Follow Matt on Twitter and Instagram  
Follow Ryan on Twitter and Instagram