What’s the difference between a production music library and a royalty-free library?
There are a few things that make them significantly different. For example a royalty-free music library, like Pond5 or Audiojungle, is a marketplace that doesn’t just sell stock music, but also sells stock videos, stock photos among other things, like website templates and graphics.
On the other hand, a production music library, like De Wolfe Music, is just that, a library of music that is ready for sync and licensing. They usually focus on bespoke music and other custom productions for media. But they don’t sell other assets, like Pond5 or Audiojungle.
When it comes to joining a library like, Audiojungle or Pond5, all you need to do is sign up, create an account and start submitting your music. A production library works very differently. You need to approach them via email, build relationships and connections to see how you can submit your first music tracks.
The same goes for the upload process of your music. They both work very differently. Usually you can submit as many music tracks as you want to a royalty-free music library, but you can’t do the same with a production library.
When working with a production library, you submit an album of 10 to 15 tracks of music, in a particular style and then you wait and see how your music is doing when it comes to placements before you carry on submitting more tracks.
One of the only things that a production music library and a royalty free library have in common is that you can get performance royalties.
This is probably one of the most confusing topics in music licensing, even among experienced composers.
If you are a composer and you want to get started in music licensing, you need to be registered with a P.R.O in order to get performance royalties. Which you can still get even if you sell your music on royalty free libraries.
It sounds confusing right?
Royalty free music, but you can still earn from royalties.
Watch the video to get all the facts..
2 thoughts on “Production music library vs royalty free library”
I saw this vid yesterday & didn’t realize it was your latest. It was a very timely presentation of a confusing subject. The distinction you make between the different libraries out there really helps me with my submission strategies. It really clarifies a lot. I don’t know how anyone could argue with the information. Anyone with any real experience with the licensing world would know that what you clearly set forth is undeniably true. So thank you!
Thanks a lot John! The intention is always to make things clearer in order to be confident in submitting your music!