Finding The Perfect “On-Hold” Music

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Finding The Perfect “On-Hold” Music

Whether you have a large company or a small business on Main Street expanding your customer service call-in line, you’re likely either thinking of just having repeated messages, or better yet, looking for the best on-hold music for people to listen to.

But looking for music to play is a bit dicey these days, especially with artists and the copyright offices coming down hard on people who replay music over the air illegally. So, while it might be tempting to pull out your phones or MP3 players and play the stuff you have on those devices, that’s considered “rebroadcasting,” and it’s illegal.

Replaying Music & The ‘Copyright Police’

“How is it illegal?” you may be asking. Good question. Sure, you might have purchased the music, but replaying the music over your on-hold service without asking permission, etc, means that the artists won’t get royalties for their work, and to be fair, they are professional musicians. Music is what they do for a living, and if they’re not super-popular, Top-40 artists, they may not get as much money as you might think they do, even if their music is truly amazing.

Plus, if you replay music without permission, you can easily be slapped with a hefty lawsuit, and don’t think that just because you’re a small business that the “copyright police” won’t find you at all. They will, eventually, especially since they’ve been trying to crack down on smaller businesses as well as the large ones. Your business, as well as your reputation, will be in jeopardy, and we don’t think you want that. So it pays to get, and stay, legal with any music you use, from on-hold tunes to marketing videos.

Your Options

“So, what are my options for properly licensed music?”

One option might be playing an FM radio station aimed at your demographic but guess what? You are obligated to pay royalties for that music too. ASCAP and BMI, the 2 agencies tasked with tracking that stuff can fine you for using “their” music without permission.

Another option might be the best of all, to you and your customers: Royalty-free, legally licensed music. “Wait, how does that work?” Glad you asked!

There are two types of royalty-free licenses: Standard, and Creative Commons. The Creative Commons license, which is free of charge, is something of an “open-source” or “fair use” license aimed at amateur video or film makers, or other audiovisual artists not seeking to make money just yet, if at all.

The Standard License for royalty-free music, however, is for businesses, and usually it tends to be a reasonable price. FreeMusicPublicDomain has this particular license on offer for about $25. Also, they have lots of great tunes on their site that could be used as “on-hold music,” but they do, however, have a particular selection of works that might just have your customers thinking they don’t mind being put on hold.

Most of the tracks on their “On-hold music” page are down-tempo, chill or jazzy, and certain to lower anyone’s blood pressure and help them calm down, but one song is fairly up-tempo and will put listeners in a happy, silly mood.

How the process works: Select the song you want, complete the license purchase via Paypal, and then return to the license page to download the license agreement. It’s just that simple, and since it’s only $25 per song, you can get quite a bit of music for all your needs, whether it’s any kind of “telephone-wait” situation, or even your marketing video efforts. If you’re a relatively new company, you can even get a jump on the holiday “on-hold” music, as FreeMusicPublicDomain.com has a Christmas category.

With a standard license and royalty-free music, you’ll have the best of both worlds: Great music for customers to listen to, and no legal worries on your end.

 

 

 

The Top 5 Mike Oldfield Albums

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The Top 5 Mike Oldfield Albums

 

Mike Oldfield is a brilliant musician and composer whose career has spanned over 40 years.  His most famous work ‘Tubular Bells’ was his very first album and sold millions of copies and launched his career at the young age of 19. This is a list of the top 5 Mike Oldfield albums.

There are a lot of list out there that attempt to rate his albums. Most of them are compiled purely on individual taste, as music is an art form and not science. I wanted to create a list to put things in perspective based on the ‘essence’ of what a Mike Oldfield album embodies.

Oldfield’s earliest influences and childhood training were in folk music.  Oldfield himself states that his conceptual intent for Tubular Bells was to try and create a mix of rock and classical music. The piece was written as one continuous song consisting of a number of movements, similar to a symphony. It had to fit the format of the industry standard of the day, which was the LP or ‘long playing’ record. This limited the artist to about 25 minutes per side.

If you break that down to a simple summary, the essential Oldfield album should be a single musical piece, based on folk roots and consisting of rock in a classical format.

the top 5 Mike Oldfield albums

Mike Oldfield

  1. Tubular Bells

The simple fact that every list compares all of Oldfield’s works to Tubular Bells is pretty convincing evidence that this is the gold standard of Oldfield albums. It set the format for his style, sound, musicianship and originality.

  1. Ommadawn

Ommadawn is pretty much the exact same format as Tubular Bells, down to the final track that features a short little ending or ‘dessert’ for the ears of the listener. What makes this album so powerful is the strong melody or theme that continuously runs throughout.

  1. Songs of Distant Earth

Oldfield had a subject on which to base his music- Arthur C Clarke’s science fiction work ‘Songs of Distant Earth’. Although this album is subdivided into ‘songs’ similar in a way to Tchaikovky’s ‘the Nutcracker’, the entire work itself runs seamlessly so it still fits within the framework of a textbook Oldfield album. What sets this album apart is the incredible moods, melodies and overall vibe of the music. It is mainly based on spacy sounding synthesizers but still has plenty of great guitar parts as well.  This album is definitely a concept piece and not a bunch of individual songs compiled together.

  1. Islands

Islands diverges from the standard Oldfield album in that the second side consists of a few standard format pop tunes instead of a long musical work. Oldfield had previously diverted from his standard format with his 5th album ‘Platinum’ and continued with this new format for a number of albums.

However, Islands took this new format to a higher level with some great songwriting. In particular, ‘North Point’ , ‘The time Has Come’ and ‘Islands’ are brilliant and catchy songs while the long instrumental ‘the Wind Chimes’ takes up the entire 1st side and is up there with his best stuff.

  1. Voyager

Voyager is a group of Celtic style folk songs played on acoustic and classical guitar. Although it does not fit the standard Oldfield formula, there is a cohesiveness of the songs that make it seems like an entire work and not just a grouping of songs. The musicianship is top notch and the melodies are beautiful. This is Oldfield getting back to his deepest folk roots and showing his incredible talent as an accomplished guitarist.

 

Honorable Mentions and why they come up short.

Crises

Crises has a very strong melody and has the classic Oldfield format with the first part taking up the entire side. Side two is a series of individual songs with the hit ‘Moonlight Shadow’ as the featured song. The other songs are definitely weaker melodies even with guest singers like Jon Anderson from Yes and Maggie O’Reilly which knock this album down a few notches. Of exception is the instrumental ‘Taurus 3 which is a particularly impressive classical guitar piece.

Hergest Ridge

This was Oldfield’s follow up to Tubular Bells. It has many merits and fits the Oldfield format beautifully, however it is lacking in 1 thing- the main theme or melody is just not very strong and kind of slow to build. It sold a ton of records but was riding on the coat tails of Tubular Bells’ success.

Amarok

Oldfield says this is probably his favorite album but if you read his autobiography, it’s pretty clear there’s a very thin line between madman and genius. Although the genius can produce great works of music, the madman is not a very good judge of his own music.

This album is a burden to listen to because it constantly borders on the psychotic. It’s hard to listen to for the same reason no one listens to the theme music for Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ for pleasure, even though it’s a brilliant piece of music.

Return to Ommadawn

Return to Ommadawn is Oldfield’s newest release and a throwback to the earlier Oldfield albums. It could have been titled ‘Return to Hergest Ridge’ because there are a number of similarities to that as well. The melodies are a bit more subtle but the guitar playing is some of his best.

The downside is the arrangement. It’s pretty obvious that Oldfield played every instrument himself because it’s more of a series of solos bouncing back and forth as opposed to a group of musicians gelling together. Tubular Bells, Ommadawn and earlier albums have the feeling of a group effort even though Oldfield played almost every instrument himself.

 

About the writer

Rick Costello is a songwriter and musician who currently owns the Royalty Free Music website ‘FreeMusicPublicDomain.com’
He is the primary songwriter and guitarist for the bands Angelwing, Lost European and The Lemming Shepherds. He has written and performed on a number of albums which are heavily influenced by Mike Oldfield as well as other artists such as Renaissance, Pink Floyd and the classical composers.

If you like the music of Oldfield, I suggest you have a listen to Angelwing and the Lemming Shepherds in particular. All the songs are available for free download on https://www.freemusicpublicdomain.com/royalty-free-music/

If you are ‘old school’ and prefer the actual CD, there are few still available which offer the music is the original sequence and context. I highly recommend you check it out.

https://www.freemusicpublicdomain.com/product/angelwing-the-nymphaeum/

 

The New & Improved Look

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Free Public Domain Music: The New & Improved Look

by Kat

 

If you have been to our website before in any capacity, whether you’re a frequent visitor, or you only come here once in a while, you’ll notice something a bit different once you land on the main page:

Our website has changed a bit. The changes aren’t entirely obvious to the infrequent visitor, but those who are here quite often will see new categories and new songs.

About the Categories 

For starters, country and blues got their own categories, as the styles are just different enough that, logically, each deserves its own “slot,” as it were, on our list. Male vocals is another new category we added, as there are many new songs we’ve received that feature this aspect. Some songs in the “Male vocals” category might also be familiar as you’ve seen them in, say, the “Alternative Rock” category, or a category for a specific genre.

The third new category is for Anime Cartoon and Animation. Like the category for kids, this features a lot of fun music that any animator, from amateur to pro, can use.

About the Songs

 We have quite a bit of new music to show off, and as we said before, much of it features male vocals, so you’ll see a lot of that not just in the “Male vocals” category but in other places.

 Some of the songs, such as those submitted by artist Geoff Hurley, have a sound similar to that of either the Beatles or the Eagles, so if you like the sound those two bands produced, and either vibe fits your project, this is the artist whose work you’ll want to use.

 If you like trance, and your project requires this kind of upbeat tempo, the song “No Sense” and “Fallin'” by Sunrise Blvd will likely fit the bill. Artists Bill Shostak and Steve Blakeley round out the new song/artist roster, and they have quite a few good tracks that can fit a range of needs and tastes.

 So come by freemusicpublicdomain.com and check out the new categories and songs, plus maybe listen to some old favorites.

 

Check out a sample Youtube video featuring Royalty Free Music-