Everyone you know is a music junkie. They've packed their iPods with the entire discographies of their favorite bands, and at least a dozen overplayed radio singles that they're ashamed to like. The mix-tape became the mix-CD became the mix-Terabyte Harddrive.
So look at your iPod. Yeah, all that music you listen to?
You can't use it in your movie.
The C Word
There's a lot of noise about copyright, fair use, evil pirate-zombies stealing music, and the radical push for everything to be free and come with a pony.
But once you skip past the legal advice written by 14-year-old boys fighting the good fight from their parents' basement, things get pretty black and white. If you want to use someone else's work in yours, you have to ask them.
Lot's of new filmmakers are scared to do this. They shouldn't be. The truth is, local musicians are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet: they just want to jam.
The Myth of Royalty Free Music
Granted, it's 2010, so everyone wants to just find everything on the Internet. As a result, lot's of people try to sift through giant libraries of music made explicitly for the world to use.
The problem is, it's bad. It's generic. It has no personality. It's usually made synthetically, and has a sterile, hollow feel that you'll never hear at a live show.
Most editors think they need more choices than one band they found that plays in a dive bar on Tuesdays. They're wrong. If you find the right bands, who match the personality of the film, you can almost always make it work.
The Non-Conclusion
One of the most frequent requests we hear is a soundtrack listing. So we'd like to ackowledge some of the people who've let us use their stuff, not just because they've helped us out, but because these guys are pretty damn good, and they'll make a great addition to your overstuff iPod.
