What is Royalty Free Music?

If you're looking for popular chart music - you won't find it here. That's not what stock music is about.
The term "Royalty Free Music " can be confusing but essentially it is music which is licensed for a single fee, without the need to pay any subsequent royalties. This type of music is also known as "Stock Music", "Library Music" or "Buyout Music".

Alternative licensing arrangements usually require you to pay a "royalty" each time the piece is used. "Royalty Free" means that you can use the music as many times as you like, usually for an indefinite period.

Why Use SMARTassMusic?

Our music library differs from many others because we're passionate about good music and we're only interested in including the best, professional content. We reject approximately 95% of submitted material! We pride ourselves on the high quality of composition and production and to keep our standards high we have absolutely no user-generated content and never will.

SMARTassMusic has been arranging music for live musicians and studio sessions for years now and our credits include the No1 UK Chart group Sugababes, Dance producer Michael Gray and Sky TV. We're also experienced professional performers so we know what we want to hear and our standards are high.

At SMARTassMusic you are buying a license to use the tracks within a production (or "on hold" and "in store" music). Our simple licenses cover you for just about any media use within a production.
Much of the music is exclusive to us and you won't find it in any other library.
You can easily search and preview each royalty free music track online and download immediately. Many tracks include edits/ cuts of 60s,30s,15s, stings and loops.

After purchase you have immediate access to your music, which you can download as CD quality Wav files as well as AIFF, FLAC and 3 types of MP3.
Your music stays in your account for you to revisit and download whenever you like.

This high quality stock music is suitable for professional broadcast use in TV, radio, film and multimedia projects, websites, podcasts, DVD, Games, Video, Corporate, Commercial and personal videos with no need to worry about copyright protection and complex licensing issues.

Background:

With the explosion of multimedia products, and indeed companies, over the last decade, royalty free music is now a vital source of legal music for use in corporate videos, internet video, radio, TV, film, animations, podcasts, websites and many more multimedia applications

In the past, a producer would have chosen music by searching through records, cassettes or CDs and would have had to pay a fee upon each usage of the music-known as a "needle-drop" fee. The cost of each "play" would also depend upon the usage e.g. Film, TV, radio, etc.

When royalty free music libraries or stock music first began to appear, it was an excellent "off the shelf" solution for many producers as right to use the music (not the music itself) was bought for a single fee and could be used as many times as the producer liked. Because of the huge cost of recording in the early days some royalty free music gained a reputation for sounding cheap. Now that virtual recording technology has made professional quality recording available to all it does mean that high quality music can be recorded for a much smaller cost. It does also mean that it's even easier for some people to produce poor quality music - so watch out! :-)


Royalty free music companies offer an alternative to the time consuming methods of licensing music by offering music that can be purchased for a one time fee and then used as many times as needed. For a time strapped, budget conscious producer, the obvious solution is to purchase music "off the shelf" and download the audio files immediately .

The composers derive income, not only from the initial purchase price but also, confusingly, from additional payments (or royalties!) if the music is broadcast.
These fees are paid from organisations such as PRS (UK) and ASCAP (US) and are collected from broadcaster licence fees and are not paid by the producer.

Particular attention should be applied to the individual license offered by the royalty free music library as each company tends to have specific terms. You can found our license details here.