Musical Content for Website Enhancement

Musical content can enhance the experience a visitors gets when visiting your website.  Strategically adding a soundtrack to your site can certainly add value.  In my last post, I discussed Creative Commons licensing and listed a couple of websites through which those on a limited budget can acquire music for their websites, without incurring additional costs.

This time I want to flip things around. Let’s say you’ve created your website and you want to add music to enhance your visitors’ experience, and you’ve got the funds to invest in acquiring audio. Where do you go on the net to find audio or sound effects?

Production Music Libraries & Stock Music Sites

The majority of online sites that have a catalogue of music tracks and sound clips are clumped under the categories of either production music libraries or stock music sites. These represent companies who acquire their catalogue of tracks by entering into either exclusive or non-exclusive contracts with composers and artists.

These types of sites make it easy for the end user to search for the type of audio content they are looking for, listen to it, purchase and download it, and immediately acquire the necessary and appropriate licensing agreements that make it legal to use the content. The artist and the production music library have an agreement whereby the two parties split the payment on a percentage basis based on a prearranged contract.

Music Licensing Marketplace

Another type of site where you can shop for audio content is a music licensing marketplace. On these sites, the purchaser of the music enters directly into a contract with the artists themselves to purchase content. This type of arrangement may take a little more work on the part of the end user, but its advantage lies in the ability to negotiate terms directly with the artist.

The marketplace website, in this regard, acts more as a forum to bring the two parties together. The website itself generates income based on fees charged to those looking for music and/or from a commission charged upon completion of the transaction.

With either type of arrangement, the purchaser of audio content is usually asked to fill out an online registration. Most of the time, registration is free, though some sites either require a fee or offer various benefits for paid membership.  In either case, once you’ve signed up, the search for the audio tracks you are looking for is usually quite easy. Most sites have search features that enable the user to look for tracks based on any of a number of parameters and filters, including tempo of music, genre, mood, and instrumentation, among others.

Where do I start?

You will find many music production libraries online, but here are a few to look into to get started:

www.audiosparx.com  – Audiosparx has a library of over 550,000 audio tracks from which to choose and offers customers both exclusive and non-exclusive catalogues from which to choose.

www.rumblefish.com – this company has the world’s largest music catalog for social media.

www.musicdealers.com – Music Dealers has a customer service option where staff members will channel you to tracks to fit your projects’ purpose.

For those interested in going the music licensing marketplace route, a good site to look into is www.youlicense.com.

Happy hunting!

Jef Chandler – Content Writer/Fact Checker