Sound woes, worries and wonders

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned I was making a short movie with the goal of visualizing China’s economic growth. I wanted to show people in the West and East how fast things are moving here, and at what expense.

While this short movie is done now, I still can’t release it after having one the least professional interactions of my life with a band called “Tortoise.” I made the movie with a song of theirs in hopes of them (a) having a thread of philanthropy in them or (b) a thread of capitalism and they would license the track at a reasonable price considering the medium … Or perhaps, they might be interested in some exposure in the world’s largest and fastest growing Internet market …

Over the course of a month we exchanged 24 emails, with varying responses ranging from “we’ll find a price on licensing” to “we are going to pass.” Had the band said ‘no’ to begin with, I wouldn’t have wasted a month trying to communicate with them. While the person who manages the bands intellectual property ignored emails, and strung me along for a month before giving the finite answer of no, along with no explanation, I had a lot of time to think about the Chinese newspaper industry in regards to intellectual property.

While I’ve worked in newsroom’s in Africa completely built on bootlegged software, China seems to be way ahead of other parts of the developing world when it comes to software legitimacy. However, it is still very much a wild west of intellectual property, and in terms of images and sounds — its pretty much a free-for-all. Had one of my Chinese colleagues wanted to use the song mentioned above, there’s a pretty good chance there would have been no conversation with the band, no disappointment from their lack of cooperation and you’d be watching a neat video now instead of reading this diatribe. To make things more complicated for Westerners, there’s seemingly very little you can do to stop this. In the case of state media (all media in China), your law suit against Uncle Hu and China wouldn’t get you so far. This makes things very frustrating when trying to respect people’s property and to set a good example, to be denied by the band without an explanation.

I’m sure from Tortoise’s point of view, they see no value in creating public awareness and would not consider the usage to have a philanthropic purpose.

So while back at the drawing board, I thought I would share with you some useful resources for when this happens. Here are some useful stock sound, loop and music sites I use for multimedia purposes, that don’t include dealing with a record company called Thrill Jockey Records or any band named Tortoise:

• “Soundsnap is a community driven online sound library. It features 100,000 high quality sound effects and music loops from Hollywood sound designers and cutting edge music producers. Last year, more than 3 million people visited Soundsnap from all over the world!” I’ve been using this service for years now and have found them to be very useful, especially for sound effects and finding appropriate ambient noises.
• Royaltyfreemusic.com “has 12,000 royalty-free music tracks and over 12,000 sound effects that can be previewed without a subscription and can be purchased as a single or album CD format. You can also download royalty-free music and background music right from the site in MP3 or WAV format.” This site certainly has more junk you have to sort though but it is relatively expansive. Be ware of their horribly annoying audio watermark on sample tracks.
• Neosounds has a large variety of sounds including some useful commercial sounds ranging from 1930’s music to filmscores. Best off, the service allows you to download Lo-Fi versions for testing purposes and to show clients.
• Partners in rhyme “started out as a group of composers working with former Devo leader Mark Mothersbaugh’s Mutato Muzika in Hollywood” that designed sound for commercials, games, cartoons and TV series. Although they also have some horribly annoying audio watermarks, the site is useful.
• Audio Micro has a “database of over 300,000 stock music and sound effects tracks” including a library of free sound effects, free sound clips and ringtones. This site seems to be doing better in the social media realm of a community as well as giving users an easy outlet to sell sounds and tracks.
• Shockwave Sound has some impressive collections of sound, plus some options of customized tracks. Check out their testimonial page and their blog as well.
• Premium Beat uses “musicians [that] come from eclectic backgrounds but all have been dedicated to their art for many years. Their work has been featured on television, radio, films and on the Internet for hundreds of clients, including General Motors, Volkswagen, Bell Canada, Ford, Molson, Sony, Gatorade, The National Film Board, Nagano Olympic Games.” There site is professional with a great search engine, searchable by category, keyword, artist or collection.
• One of the more expensive collections of stock Pond Five also includes stock video. There collection includes 382,293 Video Clips (5540 fresh this week), 6,018 Music Tracks (135 fresh this week) and 28,132 Sound Effects (68 fresh this week). A very nice interface and site, this is certainly a good resource.
• Stockmusic.net “represents the music of world class composers from all over the planet for licensing in everything from television, film, advertising and new media applications to on-hold messaging and background music.”
• Perhaps the most unique site on this list, American DJ, singer-songwriter, and musician Moby actual has a ‘gratis‘ page with lots of free music available for non commercial uses. Moby says:
  

  “this portion of moby.com, ‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short … the music is free as long as it’s being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short. if you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that’s generated being given to the humane society.”

  Huge props to Moby for his music, his genoristy to film makers, students and even commercial peoples, donating the money to the humane society. If only Tortoise had his attitude …

Hopefully I’ll have the new movie (sans Tortoise) done in the next couple days. Stay tuned …