All of the royalty free music represented by Sound Ideas (The Mix Libraries, The Mix Signature Collection, etc.) are copyrighted products, owned or licensed for distribution by Sound Ideas. These products and other leased music products can both be called "Stock Music" - which is defined as a variety of pre-recorded music, generally available at a much lower cost than original music or licensed commercial recordings of popular songs.

Royalty Free Music - also called Buyout Music - is a specific kind of stock or production music, produced for unlimited use in an unspecified number of applications and productions. For more information, please see our What is Royalty Free Music? page.

Although popularly known as royalty free music, a more accurate description would be "license-paid music". Not only do the tracks cost far less than many other licenses, but the other big advantage is that once you've downloaded the royalty free track(s), your license covers multiple uses. The license is to you (or your company) not the specific project you're working on, so you can use the royalty free track(s) over and over again, on as many projects as you like.

Simply complete them as usual, telling the broadcaster the royalty free music track titles and composer's names etc. This enables the broadcasters to tell the relevant performance rights societies, so that performance royalties can be distributed as usual. This still costs you, as the producer, nothing! If your production is not a film, TV or radio broadcast, you do not need a cue sheet.

Composers are entitled to a performance fee from radio stations, television stations, theaters outside the U.S. for the right to publicly perform their music as synchronized in a film, television production, advertisement or other medium. Licensees must therefore prepare an accurate cue sheet of all music (including royalty free music) used in the production to assist in the collection of these performance fees by the composer or the composer's designated performing rights society.

Once you've been guided through the shopping procedure, you can proceed to download the file(s) you've purchased. Download by clicking on the link you're shown to start downloading - if you're unsure, here are some instructions. When your download is complete, save the file to your hard drive, and the royalty free music is yours to use! You'll be sent an e-mail giving you full details of your purchase, including how you can reconnect and download later if you prefer.

Royalty Free Music is by far the easiest and most cost effective means of incorporating copywritten music into any audio/visual project or presentation. It is widely used by webmasters, multimedia developers, corporate and audio/video professionals in many diverse applications. Very simply, Royalty-Free Music describes a piece of music that you can use as much as you want after paying a one-time license fee, subject to terms outlined in the license.

Not to us - the license we give does not include Public Performance rights. With TV & Radio it is typically the responsibility of the radio station or television station to obtain a license and pay the necessary fees, so if you are the Production Company, you will pay nothing - but you will have to give the broadcaster a cue sheet listing all music including royalty free music used (see cue sheet page).

Charges for royalty free images are usually based on the size of the photo you need rather than specifically what you want it for. You do not have to pay any additional fees based on the intended use. The quality of such pictures is usually limited in comparison to rights managed image material.

Sound Ideas' sound effects are sold as royalty free (or buyout) products and their use is governed by the Sound Ideas End User License Agreement. Use of Hanna-Barbera and Turner sound effects products is governed by the Hanna-Barbera & Turner Sound Effects End User License Agreement. When you buy a Sound Ideas, Hanna-Barbera or Turner library, you buy the rights to synchronize the sounds with your productions.

A royalty free image means that the price of the image is the same whatever the time of use and the number of prints. Thus, when you buy an image under a royalty free license, you can use this image without limit of time and without limit of number of uses.

All of the images on our site are Royalty-free. Please follow this link to view our license agreement that outlines permitted and prohibited usage.

Royalty Free (RF) or Clip Art photography is a relatively new development in the stock industry. Typically, the client purchases a CD with hundreds of generic photos, sometimes grouped by category or subject, for one fixed price. Once the CD is purchased, the client can use each photo as many times and in as many ways as she likes without paying any further licensing fee. Stock photography, on the other hand, is licensed one image at a time. The client pays only for the usage that they need.