You need something nuanced yet epic, and with the quality of a symphonic Rachel Portman. Also, it needs to be licensed commercially. Oh, and did you mention you're on a super tight budget? Familiar with this quandary, filmmaker Ira Belsky co-founded Art-List, a new subscription-based music licensing platform for independent filmmakers, offering you all the music you want for a yearly flat fee.

Catering to the world of independent filmmakers constantly in need of music that's neither too MIDI nor too expensive, the subscription idea behind the Art-List sounds pretty enticing. Instead of a licensing fee per song, there is a yearly fee of $199 that gives get unlimited access to everything in the Art-List catalogue, which as of right now has around 1000 songs. Considering you can often pay $100 to license a single high quality song, this could be a great resource. And having a subscription based model with no restrictions on how (and how often) you can use the tracks is a winning proposition for video professionals who are regularly producing content that needs music.


Here’s Ira Belsky explaining why he's launching Art-List:

From Belsky:

There’s a lot of great music out there, but most filmmakers don’t have the budgets to license a lot of songs. So we decided to create a platform that would give filmmakers unlimited access to real, honest music that comes from working musicians, and making it available to everyone for an affordable price.

Unless you’re a one-man-band a la Robert Rodriguez (literally) who can compose and perform music yourself, you rely on the skills of musicians to bring your film to life. If filmmakers had the budget or time, it would be great to have music originally composed for every single project! But in lieu of that, it's nice to see a model that supports composers. It's worth noting that the other co-founder of Art-List, Asi Ayalon, is a musician and producer in the Israeli music industry. Here are a few profiles of some of the musicians who are creating tracks for Art-List.

If you want to check out Art-List for yourself, they are giving away 5 free songs between now and the official launch at the end of the month -- you get the free songs as WAV and MP3 files when you sign up for their newsletter. That's potentially five projects you won't have to scour the internet to find music for!

Art-list is set to launch at the end of February, so check out their site, get your free music, and keep an eye out on their model. If musicians who compose for film can earn a living, and filmmakers can get a constantly growing library of music all year long, it’s a win-win.

Source: Art-List