Quality music licensing has always been a tricky field to navigate. High-quality tracks have traditionally been expensive to license which can make it difficult for smaller productions, but over the past couple of years, the market has seen a shake-up with companies like Artlist leading the way in offering a flat-fee subscription service.
Musicbed has long been a leader in the premium music market, with an enviable roster of musicians and easy-to-use interface–after all, what good is an amazing library of music if you can’t find what you need–but compared to some of the subscription services they’ve been less accessible if you don’t have access to agency-level budgets.
That’s all set to change now that Musicbed Membership has gone live after first being announced back in April, during NAB 2018.
The subscription service offers unlimited access to a large roster of artists and songs. While it doesn’t look like it’s the complete Musicbed library just yet it is comparable to other subscription services and it seems like the company are working towards complete library access for members.
Musicbed Membership is available in monthly or annual options in six different Membership options, categorised by the intended use of your productions. Pricing for the plans ranges from $9.99 to $99.99 USD per month with annual plans a little lower as you would expect.
All up it works out to be $99.96 to $1,079.88 USD for a year if paid annually, which really is great value compared to similar projects using the Musicbed library via their existing “a la carte” pricing model. As a comparison, existing subscription-based offerings from Artlist.io and Soundstripe are $199 USD and $135 USD respectively. Many would argue that the quality and selection of tracks in Musicbed is superior but you will have to do a bit of listening to find if the library of music suits you. Depending on your licensing category it’s not unimaginable to be able to justify having memberships with multiple providers to give yourself the widest range of music options.
The Musicbed Membership plans are categorised as follows:
- Creator/YouTube
- Non-Profit
- Wedding/Photography
- Freelance Filmmaker/Production Company
- Business/In-House Team
- Custom Enterprise
It’s important to note that the price will change depending on your client or organization size. The ad spend budget also affects the membership cost and if you want to use the music for broadcast, VOD or OTT than you will need to do a custom quote.
Full Clearance for YouTube with SyncID™
All of the songs in Musicbed Membership have been pre-cleared and are ready to license for YouTube, including for use in monetized videos. With the YouTube/Creator Membership, you’ll have the ability to use unlimited music in your videos on Vimeo, YouTube, Patreon, Instagram, and other streaming platforms.
SyncID™ is a tool developed by Musicbed that automatically clears claims, allowing you to monetize or remove ads. Once you receive a copyright claim, SyncID™ will automatically clear it.
Other Licensing Options
As we already mentioned, Musicbed is not the first to offer an all-you-can-eat style music licensing subscription service. There are a number of other platforms like Artlist.io, Soundstripe, Epidemic Sound’s Youtube subscription. Most of these platforms allow you to listen to tracks and even download watermarked tracks to use in your composition before signing up. Another thing to consider is to make sure that the license covers your project and usage.
Regardless, this announcement from Musicbed is sure to make their offering more compelling for smaller content creators and production teams.
What do you think of the Musicbed Membership service? Where are you currently licensing your music from?
