What can happen if you don’t play podsafe music on your podcast? That’s a conundrum podcasters who want to play music face: the cost of the license.
Or, failing that, the fear that if you DO NOT have the proper license, the RIAA or the Music Police or some Big Brother entity will catch you and spend the rest of your life in jail or paying huge fines.
Hmm. It’s not fun! So I was glad when GarageBand.com came out offering thousands of free podsafe songs!
In fact, the fun folks at GarageBand.com promote themselves as a place for podsafe music – some 40,000 tunes.
If you are a member of a band, you can join GarageBand.com and upload your own songs. There are a couple of ways: check out 30 songs and upload them for free, or pay a reasonable fee of around $ 20 to upload songs, which will then be reviewed by other GarageBand.com members.
However, as a podcaster, this is where the concept really works. You can choose a genre (acoustic, alternative, rock, world, etc.) and download it to your heart’s content. Every band that uploads music under one of these three arrangements: either they give it away to anyone so they can podcast under any circumstances, or they make it available once you contact them and ask for their permission, or they offer it only as an audio stream. Either way, you get podcast-safe music for your podcast, and lots of it.
And of course the band gets free publicity, and GarageBand.com gets a boost too because you’ll definitely want to mention them on your podcast.
I won’t go into all the great benefits that working musicians and bands get from GarageBand.com, but if you’re in a band and haven’t heard of this website, you’ll want to check it out in a hurry.
I’ve been looking to spice up my show with some music for a while now, and in addition to playing my OWN music, this seems to be a great source of safe music for pods.
The Chairman of the GarageBand.com Advisory Board is Sir George Martin, the man who signed with The Beatles and produced all of their records (except for ‘Let It Be’, produced by Phil-Spector). Jerry Harrison, ex-Talking Head and professional producer, is one of the co-founders.
Listen to GarageBand.com and you are sure to find some great ‘podsafe’ music for your podcast.