Music for Video: Promotion vs. Pay

Looking to get your musical stylings discovered online? In the quest for ever-cheaper source material for the low costs demanded by online production budgets, web video producers are turning to everything from the Creative Commons to promotional contests to get their projects scored.

For example, AudioStreet today announced it had teamed up with Vuguru to run a promotion whereby musicians with AudioStreet profiles can choose to make their material available for inclusion in the Prom Queen soundtrack.

The reward? Promise of exposure to Prom Queen’s audience and eventual inclusion on the Prom Queen DVD. It’s an interesting new approach to sourcing music for video content, which traditionally required access to expensive stock music libraries or licensing agreements with record labels.

With radio airplay at a considerable premium, many musicians are looking to licensing deals with motion picture productions to gain necessary exposure — Moby’s “Play” was a success in large part due to tracks being used for television commercials.

If you’re producing video and don’t have the pull of a Michael Eisner-backed production, there are a number of sources for audio, including Pump Audio, MagnaTune, RumbleFish, Jamendo and the Podsafe Music Network, which all offer free or low-cost license terms, often based on the Creative Commons.

And if you think you have a sound that the producers of Prom Queen might like, you can sign up for an AudioStreet account, upload some tracks and look for instructions on how to enter. It’s not a payday, but it could become a break, and that could be all your band needs.