You'll Fall in Love with Our Royalty Free Production Music for Your Wedding Video
Soundstripe Team
Jul 10, 2018
Love is in the air, especially if you’re in the wedding videography business (or are trying to break into it). These days, more and more couples want to capture their magical day in a short, heartfelt video that they can share with friends, family, and their social media followers. They’re also willing to budget for this expense, which is good news for your bottom line. Music plays an important role in crafting the perfect wedding video, but where can you find royalty free production music that lets you avoid any potential legal troubles? The answer is simple – Soundstripe. Our unique model gives you access to all the stock music you need to grow your wedding video business without risking copyright infringement headaches.
In this article, we’ll lay out how our service works and why we’re the perfect music partner for every ambitious wedding video creator.
The purpose of a wedding video isn’t just about capturing what’s happening. It’s also about telling a story and triggering lots of ooey gooey emotions in viewers. One of the best tools in a videographer’s arsenal is a great soundtrack. Music has a unique and powerful ability to:
Take a quick gander at this wedding video of Caroline and Gabe. The ambient music at the start of the video is a perfect accompaniment to the opening scene-setting shots of the venue. The music is hopeful and builds, pulling viewers into this breathtaking scene and helping them feel like a guest at the wedding. If you continue watching the video, you’ll notice how the music subtly shifts to fit the different moods of the event as the wedding unfolds. It grows hushed and reverent during the ceremony and then builds into a celebration of sound as guests and the newly married couple shake a leg on the dance floor during the reception.
A great videographer knows how to use music to its fullest effect. The result is a polished video that couples will be dying to share with their friends and family. Each share is as good as handing out your business card to a potential new client!
It’s so tempting to drop John Legend’s “All of Me” into your next wedding video. The bride’s mom would be balling her eyes out within seconds. There’s just one problem. You don’t own that song, and unless John Legend or his label gives you permission, using it would be a prime example of copyright infringement.
Any music created by any artist is protected by copyright. Unless you get permission or purchase a license, you cannot legally use that music. Yes, that includes wedding favorites, like Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect,” and Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years.”
We can already hear your excuses. You might be thinking, “I’m just a tiny company. John Legend isn’t going to waste his time coming after me.” Here’s another classic: “The only ones who will be seeing this video are the couple and their friends. No one else is going to know, so what’s the harm?”
Let us start by simply saying this – breaking the law is breaking the law, even if you don’t get caught. Artists work incredibly hard to learn their craft and create unique works. Stealing it means stealing from them. Sure, John Legend doesn’t need your money, but if everyone stole his music without permission, he’d have no incentive to ever release a new album.
On the other hand, when breaking into the videography industry, you never know how big your creations could get. If you don’t take yourself seriously as an artist no one else will. Growing your business requires learning all the legalities of your craft. By preparing your videos with legal-friendly soundtracks you can set yourself up for the day your videos do go viral. You don’t want your next video to shoot to stardom only to have YouTube cut its ascent mid-flight with an immediate takedown notice!
Now, let’s talk about getting caught. You might be right that chances are low that labels will go after a small business, but as you become more financially successful, the risk of landing in legal hot water will only increase. This is probably a good time to mention that plaintiffs can sue you for up to $150,000 for each copyright infraction. If, for example, you used “All of Me” in ten separate wedding videos, John Legend’s label could theoretically come after you for $1,500,000. Ouch!
Oh, and there’s the possible jail time you could face as well. Again, the chances of going to the big house are small, but do you really want to risk spending the next few years in an orange jumpsuit?
Additionally, the chance of a copyright holder finding out your dark secret might be bigger than you think. That’s because today’s couples are all about sharing every aspect of their lives online, including the wedding video they (or their parents) shelled out good money for. Your videos could easily find their way on YouTube, and the video behemoth has been cracking down on copyright infringement. Over the last few years, YouTube’s Content ID system has gotten incredibly sophisticated about sniffing out copyright infringers.
If you post your videos on your own YouTube channel – a smart move for any video-centric business – YouTube could pull your videos (squelching any ad revenue they were generating). If you get three copyright violations within 90 days, YouTube can even close down all of your channels and ban you for life. It would be a sad day for a videographer to get kicked off the biggest video platform on the planet! (Here’s a useful and somewhat amusing copyright primer from YouTube.)
Before you start scribbling letters to John Legend begging for mercy, we have some good news. You don’t have to steal music to create cinematic wedding videos for your clients. You can find high quality royalty free production music right here at Soundstripe.
Our mission in creating Soundstripe was simple. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for content creators like you to access great stock music without having to deal with complicated music licensing rules and regulations. The result is a monthly or yearly subscription service that gives you complete access to our royalty free music library.
We find and work with exceptional artists in a wide variety of genres and are continuously updating our music library. As a content creator, you can use as many songs as you want as many times as you want without ever having to pay a licensing or royalty fee.
In fact, we continue to roll out new capabilities all the time.
As a wedding videographer, your job is to capture a couple’s most magical day, but you also have to earn a living at the same time. Soundstripe is designed to help you easily find and use great stock music.
Here’s how:
Our music library contains 49 unique music genres, including a wide variety of genres that are ideal for wedding videos, like:
Sort by genre to quickly filter for the types of music you need.
Sometimes a music genre is still too broad to make it easy for you to find just the right piece of music. At Soundstripe, you can dive even deeper by sorting for the emotion you want your music to convey. This is ideal for a wedding video, where creating emotional resonance is so important and where you may need to transition between a variety of emotions throughout the video. Our mood filters include wedding favorites like:
For professional videographers, time equals money. You are an artist as well as a business person, which means it’s important to save time on things like finding the right music, so you can spend more time utilizing your creative talents as you cut and edit your video. Soundstripe makes it as easy as possible to find the music you need. Besides allowing you to sort for genre and mood, you can also filter your music according to:
Each filter allows you to hone in on exactly the type of music you already have in mind or lets you filter out what you know you don’t want so you can explore high potential pieces.
One of the most powerful tools our music library offers is the ability for videographers to create playlists. While every wedding and every wedding video is special, great videographers develop repeatable systems to save time and effort. These systems allow them to quickly and easily assemble videos based on proven storyboards, editing techniques, and music.
Our playlist function allows you to save music choices you already love into a playlist. In fact, you can create multiple playlists that coincide with different video product offerings. Instead of looking for all-new music when you start a new project or trying to find that song that worked so well in your last video, you can jump right into your curated playlists and pull the selections you already know and love.
We think that the music in our library is great, but we aren’t about to rest on our laurels. Instead, we want to make sure our subscribers have plenty of new music to choose from. Even after you’ve developed your wedding video music playlists, we encourage you to check out our recently added category to discover the freshest music around!
If you want to take your wedding video business to the next level, it’s time to sign up for Soundstripe. At the end of the day, it’s all about love! Your clients will love your professional, polished videos, and you’ll love our simple, cost-effective subscription to royalty free production music. You and Soundstripe are a match made in heaven!
Have questions? Give us a call
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