# Royalty-free music: calling movie makers, copyright lawyers

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royalty-free-music-calling-movie-makers-copyright-lawyers/170933
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 24, 2003, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royalty-free-music-calling-movie-makers-copyright-lawyers/170933 "2003-04-24T19:41:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2003, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/royalty-free-music-calling-movie-makers-copyright-lawyers/170933/1 "2003-04-24T19:41:29Z")

</div>

I’m doing a short movie and wanted to use Donna E Mobile for the background music. The song itself is almost certainly past copyright, but I am sure particular perfomances are probably not. Now, for images I can go to various websites and buy royalty-free images for $300 or whatever and have that image to use however I like, or input info on how I plan to use the image and immediately get a royaties price. Is there something similar for music where I can select an item, tell them how I’m going to use it, and they give me the royalties price? Or an extensive archive of roylties free music? How can I, a small-time designer, get rights to use this song in a movie?