What is Micro Licensing?
The definition is changing. Learn what that means for you.
Micro licensing is an industry term that refers to, obviously, the size of a license. A traditional license is generally obtained from a music publisher or representation that charges a high premium to large clients and corporations. Micro licenses refer to “smaller” licenses for personal projects, indie films, and smaller companies. In the past, micro licenses were relegated to production catalogs and royalty-free music. Now, companies like Musicbed are changing how micro licensing works and what creatives have access to for their projects.
Traditional Licenses vs. Micro Licensing
To understand micro licenses it helps to start by defining traditional licenses. In order to show that you have permission to use a copyrighted song in some way (whether it’s a performance, sync licenses for a media project, or others) you need a license. Traditional licenses are negotiated on an individual basis between a customer and some sort of artist representation, like a record label or music licensing agency. They’re called traditional because they are the original form of licensing. The prices are generally very high and are obtained for very well-known artists.
Alternatively, micro licenses are on the opposite end of the spectrum. They are lower price point sync licenses, which generally translates to lesser known artists (we’ll get to that in a bit), royalty-free music, and production catalogs. In short, micro licenses are defined by the size of the client, not the quality of music, but the price of traditional licenses tend to dictate the quality of music inherently. The most common types of micro sync licenses are wedding films, personal projects, indie films, YouTube films, church projects, and small non-profit films.
So What’s Changed?
As music licensing agencies emerged, brands like Musicbed have given micro licensors a new option for soundtracking their work. By pre-negotiating licensing terms with musicians, we’ve been able to scale the price to be appropriate for creatives at any level. Now creatives have access to pre-cleared licenses that they can acquire in just a few minutes.
In a sense this has changed the definition of micro licensing, or at least what micro licensing implies. It still refers to smaller clients with smaller budgets, but it no longer has to mean lower-quality, generic music. For the first time, both micro licensors and traditional licensors can come to the same place for their sync licenses.
How Micro Licensing Works
The advantage of micro licensing is its simplicity. Because it’s associated with smaller projects, most licensing agencies, including ours, have pre-cleared the licenses for immediate approval. This gives us the ability to create a platform similar to a production catalog, with a simple interface and music browsing, but with traditional recording artists and a highly curated catalog. We’ve negotiated with artists and their representation so micro licensors can simply add a license to their cart on Musicbed, give us some basic information about the type of project they’re working on, and the make the payment.