E-mail Interview with Chad Feuer of Killer Tracks

I'm a big fan of consumer generated media, and think that with new tools that abound on the internet, small businesses are going to generate a lot of traffic building high quality videos and mash-ups. The question, especially for businesses, is what to do when you need popular music or video? The internet is a pretty permissive place, but when you're running a business, you can't afford to make mistakes with copyright law.

But where do you buy the music? Here's a place. It's called Killer Tracks, and they license music for use online and in radio and television commercials. My interview is with Chad Feuer, who can help you get set up for remarkably reasonable prices.

The interview:

1) What do you do, and how long has Killer Tracks been around? Where are you located?

Killer Tracks, which is located in Beverly Hills, is a production music company that was founded in 1989. We started out with a catalogue of 30 production music CDs and now license music from over 2000 CDs for over 35,000 unique tracks.

2) When exactly do I need a license?

In regards to production, you need a license anytime you’re using a piece of music that you didn’t compose or write. All music is considered “Intellectual Property” and as such is owned by the copyright holder, ie: composer or the music publisher to which the representation has been assigned.

3) What kind of companies are use your services, and for what kind of purposes?

All different kinds of people license our music: Fortune 500 companies, sports teams, movie and television studios, production houses and local editors. They’ll use the music for their commercials, corporate videos, websites, movies on DVD that are being sold, film festivals….pretty much anything under the sun.

4) How does licensing work? Is it per song, per play, or per production?

Licensing works differently for different companies. For Killer Tracks, you may license on a “per use” basis or annually. For the “per use” basis, you pay a needledrop fee each time the music is used in the production. Imagine a record player: you place the needle on the record, let it go for 10 seconds and then lift it. That’s a needledrop, whether you let the record play for 10 seconds or 2 minutes. For our annual agreements you pay a yearly fee and are given unlimited use of a selection of CDs from our library. Needledrop fees don’t apply in this case.

5) Do I sign up as an individual or as a company? Can we put this on the corporate credit card?

Any one who is interested in licensing music from Killer Tracks may do so as long as they expect to have at least 12 uses of music per year. If they don’t, it’s best to contact us as the need for music arises. Placing license fees on a credit card is always accepted.

6) Do you license all of the world’s music, or just certain artists? Is it popular tracks, or is it more orchestral and movie tracks.

We license tracks for music only in our library, which contains every genre you can think off. If you’re looking to license a track that’s not within our library you would need to contact either the artist who wrote it or the publishing company who now licenses it.

7) Anything you want marketers to know? Any special promotions?

If you mention that you heard about Killer Tracks from http://www.brandstorming.com, I’ll cut 10% off the needledrop rate when licensing.