A couple of days ago I was listening to a podcast by Jeff Utecht, who is quite possibly the coolest guy in China. And I mean that seriously.

Anyway, he mentioned a website that I love to listen in on, Freeplaymusic.com. This is a site for music files that can be used in certain terms but not always. That doesn’t make any sense, but neither does their licensing information. So I sent Jeff this email…

Hey brother..
Listening to on deck podcast from Earcos…
Pretty sure Freeplaymusic’s licensing terms don’t allow podcast uses..
This is what their terms of use say…

3. Personal Non-Commercial Use (Non-revenue generating or associated) Personal use does not include any broadcast use – web, blog, podcast or other
4. Educational, Non-Commercial use (limited to student use on school grounds for in classroom projects- non broadcast)

Then Freeplay Music’s compositions and recordings may be used without a fee. For further clarification, please contact Freeplay Music at 212.974.0548

Which if I read that correctly, it means that since personal use does not include broadcasting like podcasting, then it is not free for use. I seem to recall Hall Davidson addressing this at one point at a DEN event as well…
Hope you’re well…

After sending Jeff this email, I went back and looked over Freeplay’s terms of use. It was tough to decipher, so I sent them an email asking for clarification. Here is what they sent back…

Bottom line: Even if you are podcasting for educational purposes, the second that you broadcast it (be it personally on a web site, or through gcast/odeo/podomatic/etc) you must pay for a license. Hear it from them:

Here is the email I sent them:

Could you please clarify your licensing terms? Is it ok to use your music in a podcast? It seems not but the terms are vague. Are there special considerations for educators? I would love to download a series of clips and offer them to my students to use in podcast projects, but it looks like I cannot.

And they responded:

Using Freeplay Music, as mentioned, requires a paid license to be secured with us. Our standard rates for one year of Podcast use are $25.00 for background use and $50.00 for opening/closing use, per music title, per 4 minutes of use.

So I sent back:

Clarify for me, is there any educational grace? If FPM is being used with students for academic purposes, do the licensing rates change? A lot of kids are recording podcasts and broadcasting them using gcast/odeo/podomatic etc.

And she responded:

We offer “free” use of our music for student educational use for in-classroom projects only, non-broadcast. If the projects are then broadcast or distributed, a paid license needs to be secured with us.

I should note that she was wonderfully nice, it looks clinical here, but she was very pleasant.

And there you have it, broadcast the music in any regard and you gotta pay.

I think I might download some clean tracks from Garageband.com and offer them to the kids. Boy that’s a lot of screening though.

Got any better ideas?

Update: I also want to note that I did have permission to publish the email conversation, and she said so in an email. Again, she was super nice! I do take issue with the desire for dollars, though. Seems like they could do better for students in k12 environments, since none of us teachers have any money. I am going to email her and ask FPM to read this post. Do you have anything you’d like to add by way of a comment? Maybe FPM will hear our voices?