You’ve captured some beautiful images or maybe some video or you’ve gone down the fusion route and combined both but there’s something missing – the music! It’s like wine and cheese, salt & pepper or chips and dip, music brings it all together.

You’re listening to the radio or flicking through Spotify and you’re thinking, “I’ll just download the mp3”. No, stop right there. As a photographer you wouldn’t want your images stolen and used, so don’t do it to other artists, plus, it is illegal!

So what are your options?

BYO Music

Beat your own – make your own music or find a friend to make you some music.

License Music

It use to be difficult in the past to obtain affordable music legally, but the past couple of years websites have been popping up to give you easy access to music. Here are just a few websites to look at:

Popular Music

You can license popular music through APRA|AMCOS (http://www.apraamcos.com.au). Here is a pdf that explains licensing through APRA|AMCOS. To give you an idea on costs of licensing; $537.64 per year to use any music with a slideshow being sold to clients and an additional $550 if you then want to put that slideshow online (as of August, 2014). This does not give you access to ALL music, just the ones available through APRA|AMCOS licensing.