Four Mistakes to Avoid When Producing Music with Royalty-Free Loops
How Do Royalty Free Loops Work, and Where Can I Find Them?
Is it OK to make music with loops? Music producers, like all artists, stand on the shoulders of giants. As original as our ideas may be, we are each only one point along the trajectory of an art-form set in motion too long ago to comprehend. No one is an island in the world of music, as all creative works exist in dialogue with those around and before them. When a new generation of producers emerges, whether they transform our ideas or subvert them entirely, they will be carrying on a lineage that passes from you and I, through Stravinsky, and all the way back to the first caveperson to bang rocks together in a funky way. Everything’s connected, dialect of history, nothing new under the sun, etc, etc. But is it cool to use royalty free loops, or is that too interconnected?
To be clear, I’m not talking about lifting entire phrases of music from someone else’s record. That kind of sampling has its own sort of rules, both legal and cultural, about when and how you can do it. I’m talking about royalty-free loops of music that were explicitly recorded or rendered by their creators to be used by strangers in new projects. Newer producers often ask, “Do I need to clear royalty free samples?” or “Can you make money from royalty free samples?” The meaning of royalty-free here is that there are no legal barriers to using these ready-made loops. You are generally free to use them without paying paying royalties, in addition to collecting royalties on what you create with them. As long as they are obtained from a reputable source with confirmation from the original artist, there should be no copyright issues standing in the way. Yes, you can use loops commercially!
But you may still be wondering, “Can I use loops for my music and still be original? Is it OK to sample royalty free music from an artistic perspective?” On the one hand, they provide new inspiration. They’re super convenient, time-saving, and are fully intended to be used. On the other hand, don’t they creatively belong to someone else?
To me, a gift is a gift. If an artist wants to lend their ideas to other creatives, I’m all for it. After all, we’re already borrowing preexisting structures from the genre our music fits into, the language its lyrics are in, and even the social conception of music as a whole. I have most certainly benefitted from the generous contributions of other producers to the creative commons, and I anticipate giving back to it myself. The problem of artistic integrity only enters the picture when the borrowed material is not actually free to use, or not sufficiently transformed. The originality of a track with borrowed loops can fall short in a few ways:
1. Using Too Many Loops
Firstly, and most obviously, you can use too many loops. While researching this topic, I’ve found a lot of gripes on forums and comment sections about how annoying it can be to watch newcomers throw ready-made loops together, foregoing any authentic contribution to the track. Unless extraordinary originality is employed during editing and processing, merely stacking other people’s loops will just leave you with a stack of other people’s loops. It also tends to sound like reality show music! For general purposes, I recommend using only a few loops within a larger arrangement.
2. Relying Too Heavily On Loops
Secondly, the arrangement can rely too heavily on the borrowed loop, left as it was found. Yes, each component of an arrangement should serve a vital function to the finished song. But if a ready-made loop is left dry and featured as the keystone of the whole track, it makes the user’s contributions incidental at best. When using ready-made loops, it’s best to either put them to work as minor elements, or freak them into a new form that sounds significantly different from what you started with.
3. Using Loops Without Permission
Under US copyright law, all artists retain complete control over their creative works unless they sign it away or say otherwise. That’s why it’s important to make sure you’re getting loops from someone who says otherwise! This need not always take the form of a direct conversation between borrower and originator. Many platforms and communities for sharing loops provide contributors with convenient ways to show users what permissions come along with a download (like freesound.org). Other platforms and communities implicitly grant certain permissions to end users the moment the loops are uploaded, via the terms of service (like looperman.com). In fact, these are two of my favorite sources where you can get royalty free loops and samples.
4. Using Loops From Unverified Sources
What does permission to use a loop really mean if you can’t be sure it’s legit? Avoid pulling loops from seedy corners of the internet, and stick to platforms which show exactly who made the loops. And if someone directs you to a set of loops living in a cloud folder, do some sleuthing to find out who the loops really belong to.
It’s important to remember that the digital landscape increasingly forces artists to work in an uncomfortable gray area. Maybe you obtained permission to use a loop, but the loop turns out to have been created using unlicensed material. Now, despite having permission, your already-distributed works are implicated in a copyright-violation chain. What a nightmare! Now imagine that you’ve obtained permission to use a loop and verified its originality. But later on, the creator decides that they don’t want to license it for free commercial use anymore. They remove all evidence it was ever licensed that way from the internet, and demand that you either take your track down or pay up.
Situations like these are increasingly common as the internet continues to merge with art. So when producing with loops, remember these pitfalls and proactively avoid them. Do your due diligence to obtain permission and verify the origin of the loops. Transform the loops into something new, to distance them from their origins. Use them to save time on the minor elements of a track, rather than staking your whole arrangement on them. And above all, be ready to give credit or replace the element if the creator changes their mind! Maintain a spirit of originality and accountability, and ready-made loops can be a powerful tool in your production arsenal.
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