Copyright: Music in your Streaming Video

Using music adds a lot of impact, emotion, and professionalism to a video and you want to include it whenever appropriate. But it’s important to make certain that you have the right to use it. Copyright infringement is not something you want to be a part of and can result in a very expensive lawsuit.

Here are a few guidelines in regard to copyright for music. Please DO NOT  take this for legal advice. We here at Chisel Multimedia are not lawyers, and you should always consult with an attorney with your legal questions. This article may help you understand the general idea of copyright and what options you have available.

Fair Use

Copyright law permits use of copyrighted material without permission under some circumstances. These circumstances are described as “fair use.” Fair use is governed by these four factors:

1.       The purpose and character of the use. Some uses are classically considered fair, including criticism, parody, and music news reporting. If your use of the music is noncommercial and educational, it’s more likely (although not certain) that you meet the fair use requirements. If you’re charging for the video or using it to promote a product, the standards are much tighter.

2.       The nature of the copyrighted work itself. Highly creative work is more tightly protected than things like scientific data or historical quotes.  Assume music falls into the “highly creative” category and will be well protected.

3.       How much of the copyrighted work you’re using.  All or most of a song works against against fair use, compared to using only a portion or segment of it.

4.       What effect does using the music have on the expected market value?  If the music is playing on streaming platforms is likely to cost the copyright owner substantial sales, that reduces the chance that a court would consider it fair use.

Ultimately, the jig on fair use is, don’t take chances.  Unless it’s obvious and well established that what you’re doing with the music constitutes fair use, don’t count on it. If you’re writing an article about the band itself, that’s probably all right. Otherwise, be very careful.

Public Domain

Copyright doesn’t last forever. When a song is old enough, it enters the public domain. You can use any public domain song in any way without fear of legal repercussions and copyright restrictions do not apply.

How old is old enough? That varies from country to country and also  by the date of original creation. Current U.S. copyright law protects a song until 70 years after the death of the composer.  

It’s also important to remember that copyright protects the recordings, performances as well as composition. The variation by individual song is so wide that it’s best to check that a song or performance is in the public domain and not just assume it is because it’s old.

Another circumstance in which a song might be available for use in a video is under a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is a choice by the creators of music and other forms of art to publish their work under these rules. It’s a nonprofit organization for  which musicians and other artists belong to. A Creative Commons license varies in the details, but might allow people to incorporate their song into videos or other compositions for free. The license does require acknowledgement of the copyright holder, and some other restrictions may apply.

 It’s a good idea to explore the specifics of the license and not just assume that a work published under Creative Commons is free to do whatever you want with it.  There may be some provision to the license allowing it to be played but not synced to any sort of video images. Free Music Archive is one website among many that offer CC licensed music. Check them out but again, be diligent in understanding the specifics of use.

Request Permission

If a song is neither in the public domain or published under a Creative Commons license, the only way you can legally use it in a video is with the permission from the copyright holder. You can usually find the copyright owner with the information which will accompany the recordings or on download sites.

In most cases with commercial music, the copyright holder for a performance is the record company. For independent artists music, it may be the artist, or record company established by the artist for legal purposes. Whomever it may be, that’s the person or company that has to give you permission.  Of course, they will probably want money for the privilege. We all gots to get paid, right!

If in the end you’re successful in your negotiation, you’ll be issued a license for the use you have requested.  This license will be specific and will probably not give you license to use the song in any other way. Be sure you understand these terms clearly. This is without doubt the most expensive way to obtain music for a video. If you have to have a particular piece of music, this may be your only option.

Tips On Promoting Your Video

You have just created a cool, informative and persuasive video and have it embeded onto your website.  How do you get people to discover this?

You want to drive traffic to your site hoping for leads that will convert into customers, right? Whether you want them to buy your products, hire your services or maybe just to become a subscriber to the page. Maybe your objective is to promote brand awareness and increase your name recognition.  Each of these goals would require a different marketing strategy.

Here is a few tips on how to promote your video so you can maximize your objective.

A lot of this is SEO related, the goal being a front-page search-engine appearance and rich content. Promoting your videos on social media and how to give your video the best chance of going viral to maximize brand awareness are 2 other subjects we'll touch on later.

Presenting the Video 

A lot depends on how the video is presented on your web page.

Most importantly, use Google-friendly code to embed your video. The best codes for the purpose from streaming platforms are HTML5 with JavaScript or Flash Player. Unfortunately, iframes is something to stay away from at the moment. That may change in the future, as we all know, Google is always updating.

Second, make a decision about your goals.  Whether you're looking to maximize ranking for your page itself or to generate the largest views. If you're looking to maximize ranking, don't enable embedding elsewhere. If your goal is to increase views, allow others to embed the content. If you can, try to utilize both solutions.  If you are hosting the video yourself then enable embedding but require that iframe be used. This creates a link to your site, but isn't likely to have their site displace yours in searches. Self-hosting your video content is not suggested. Services like YouTube or Chisel Multimedia are better choices for stability and performance.

Next, make sure the video is prominently displayed in a good size frame, about 640 x 360 px or so. You do not want people scroll past it because it's not eye-catching on the page.

It's also important for SEO purposes to have a variety of content on the page where the video is embedded like text, photos and links. One thing you want to stay away from in most cases is having more than one video on the page. You want searches for videos about a specific subject to show your page prominently in the results. That's most likely to happen if your video on that subject is the only one on the page.

Be sure and test with searches duplicate those your desired traffic will likely use. If the search gives you a result where your video shows up as a snippet on the first page, you've set it up right.

Promote Video on Social Media

All the usual rules of social media promotion apply to promoting videos.  It's a discussion, not advertising, so to avoid any spam. Try to engage in conversations with your target audience. Let yourself become known as someone interesting who has something to contribute to ongoing discussion. Occasionally present links to your web site when it's appropriate. Most of your social media participation shouldn't be self-promotion of any kind.

Should you embed the video itself on the platform? That depends on what you're trying to do and also on the nature of the video itself. Do you want people to come to your site to see the video? In that case, you do want to embed it. Do you want people to see the video, and be interested enough by it to come to your web site for other offerings? In that case, embedding it would not be wise.

If the video is long enough to justify this, one approach might be to create a teaser trailer. This trailer can then be hosted on a video portal along with a link that takes the viewer to the whole video on your site.

Promoting  Video for Brand Awareness

If you are just trying to create brand awareness then the guidelines above do not apply at all. For that purpose, the only things that matter are the content of the video itself. The video should identify your brand clearly and enable viewers to find your web site easily. Your goal then is to maximize the number of people viewing it.

If you're using your video to bump your web site in the search engines and drive traffic, one site you want to stay away from is YouTube and any other video sites. YouTube is excellent for reaching  a lot of people with your video, but it won't give them links back to your web site. Searches for a video on the specific subject will likely display your video on YouTube before the version on your own site. That defeats the purpose.

If you're going to use the video for brand promotion then that calculation isn't that important. You'll drive traffic to your site not directly but by increasing brand recognition. Meaning, people that are interested in what you have to offer will search specifically for you later. In that case, YouTube is exactly where you do want to share it, because of the size of the potential audience. Just be sure that keywords, such as the name of your business and the title of your site are prominent parts of the video content.

In summary, there is more than one right way to promote your video. Whichever approach you decide on, it should have a clear overall marketing strategy.