Don’t get me wrong here, I am not the one that will support piracy or the non-need to pay an artist for his art. Far from it. But there have to be limits, if not by law, at least by ethics, to what is allowed and what is not. Once I had to do a corporate video, which was not cheap. Being naive, I decided to use a beautiful piece, by a well-known new age artist. Before doing that, I called the people responsible for giving such licenses. They told me that in order to use the piece, I had to a)edit the video, b)send it to the artist to check if its quality is up to the standards (say what??) and c)arrange a price which would not be under 2500 Euros at least!! Excuse me! This just doesn’t sound right! So, I opted for royalty free music. It came out great, but not as great as the original piece.

Now, why would it be so extreme for the music companies to design a service where we should pay, say 50 Euros for use of a song on the Internet? Many royalty free sites do that and surely the make a profit out of it (and some of them offer great music). Will they lose money or will they gain? Because as I see it, nobody in their right minds will ever pay some thousands dollars, euros, pounds or whatever to include a piece in a wedding. It simply is over the wedding budget!

In my country (and I suppose others as well), those guys have gone off the hook. They have passed laws (because they pass the laws, and not the governments) so that every cafe, fast food, grocery store or whoever plays music outside home, should pay crazy amounts of money every year. Is this legal? Of course it is. Is it moral? By far, it is not. How many times were you in a cafe and heard of a song and then went to buy it? To me it happened many times and surely it happens to others as well. So, they reward promotion of their music by making people paying fees for it. It’s not their fault, it’s ours for letting them do it.

Back to the wedding video thing. The same happens here. Do wedding videos promote music? Yes! I’d dare to say that I have watched wedding videos that were far better than the musicians’ official videos. Under those circumstances, definitely the music makes a better impression. It helps the song spread, even if it is a mainstream one (not all people listen to mainstream until somebody points out a certain tune).

Of course the other side will support the fact that the videographer attracts clients, and as a result earns money because of the videos which include the copyrighted music. That’s a fact, so what do they do about it? Did they ever make a research at how much money are gained from a wedding video? Surely we are not talking about Holywood budgets here, still they insist on charging them with that in mind. That only proves that they really have no clue what they are doing. They are just sharks that want to earn as much as possible, showing indifference about how much they would earn if they had the right approach, and that is “proper charging”. Nobody ever said music should be used for free. But probably they think that every wedding videographer has the budget of Peter Jackson.

I really hope that musicians are against this kind of corporate behavior, although the situation is not in their hands anymore. Still, they can press things if they want to, and I think that everybody will earn from this. Them, their bosses, us. But I think that this is unlikely to happen. Somehow they have convinced the world that what passes as a law is the right thing to do, making us forget that laws exist even in totalitarian governments. If they want to get paid for their music, then they should let us pay them, and not ridicule themselves by showing they have no physical contact with the real world.

That’s all folks (for now).

You look beautiful Rhian….

James you don’t scrub up too bad either. So proud!

Ali x

Sue and I looked at this together this morning and it is beautiful with wonderful memories of a glorious day so pround of you both.
made us both cry with tears of joy

Love you both lots xx

Yeah this whole thing really sucks.
People are buying the songs more people are hearing the songs which leads to more people buying the songs.
I don’t know of any wedding videos that are popular because of the music in them. What I’m saying is that wedding videographers rant using the popularity of the un licensed songs to get more views on there videos. They use them because the Bride & Grooms love those songs.

Thank you so so much Rich x

Also Following the amazing highlights you did for us, that ONE song meant we immediately purchased the WHOLE Bruno Mars album!! -As did both our parents as FXFilms created a subconcious link between the music and our wedding. That’s 3 album purchases just from 1 single track use!

I am certain this would be the same for 90% of couples, buying the album/music that reminds them most of their special day… Especially as after watching these clips, buying and listening to these songs in the car/at home immediately reminds them of these special videos you create of their big day.

I hope you can keep up the exceptional work FXFilms and continue promoting these artists, some of whom are previously sadly unheard of to many because of the dog-eat-dog music industry.

http://daredreamermag.com/2011/12/07/the-music-licensing-chickens-have-come-home-to-roost-in-wedding-and-event-videography/