
Filmstro: Royalty-Free Music - rbanffy
https://filmstro.com/music
======
crazygringo
Wow, this is one of the cleverest ideas I've seen in a long time.

As far as I can tell, they've put together a wide-ranging set of fairly
generic-sounding movie music (generic = good, so it doesn't call attention to
itself)... but composed it in a way that the three parameters (momentum,
depth, power) simply map to different volume levels of the underlying
instrumental tracks -- but all perfectly tuned to always produce a pleasing
result.

As far as I can tell raising a slider often maps non-linearly to more volume,
but sometimes it reduces/removes instruments too.

So there doesn't appear to be any machine learning, nothing crazy fancy --
which is what makes it so clever and impressive in a "I-wish-I'd-thought-of-
that" way. I can only imagine the amount of product iteration it took to
arrive at what the 3 parameters should be (and why 3 instead of 2 or 10). It
reminds me a lot of Adobe's Multiple Masters technology for typefaces. [1]

If they keep putting out enough of these master tracks, I wonder if it will
reduce the market for film composers. After all, most films don't need
recognizable motifs, they just need music to tell us how to feel, and this
meets that need perfectly. Bad for music students, good for film students...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_master_fonts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_master_fonts)

~~~
vanderZwan
> _After all, most films don 't need recognizable motifs, they just need music
> to tell us how to feel_

Not trying to pick a fight with you - I agree with your comment overall, but
this is a culturally learned thing, very specific to Western movies and TV-
series, and it is actually mildly infuriating to me. It is one thing to
_complement_ the emotions present in a scene, but _being told_ what to feel is
basically a cheap way to try to patch up bad storytelling.

Worse, it can totally backfire: for the dub of _Castle in the Sky_ , the
original composer had to fill in a ton of quiet scenes with music because
(IIRC) Disney was worried about the audience feeling awkward about not being
told what to feel. They also added background chatter, and worst of all:
filled in scenes that were quiet on purpose with all of these things. While
the orchestral score sounds great in and of itself, in most scenes all that
added audio ruined the mood of the original.

However, I can't deny that what you state is what the audience expects, and
that it "works", so sadly you're still right.

~~~
crazygringo
I think music is just a tool -- it can be used badly or it can be used well.

Different media are able to show different things -- novels show interior
thoughts, plays need to focus mainly on dialog, and movies/TV are largely
driven by images.

Particularly, movies and TV have a huge challenge in communicating the
interior thoughts of characters -- this is one of the first things you learn
in screenwriting, when a particular story might be more appropriate as a novel
instead.

But one of the tools which _can_ communicate a character's state of mind is
through music. At best, I think it's what you mean when you say complementary
-- e.g. a character has to act confident but you need to know that inside
they're nervous. But of course it can be a crutch for bad acting too -- if the
actor is supposed to be communicating nervousness but isn't, so the music does
it for them.

~~~
vanderZwan
> _But of course it can be a crutch for bad acting too -- if the actor is
> supposed to be communicating nervousness but isn 't, so the music does it
> for them._

Ironically, animation seems to be a worse offender than regular movies. And
sometimes the story itself simply isn't good to begin with, and does not give
any decent justification for being emotionally invested in the main
characters.

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brudgers
Looking around the site, I was not able to find clear license terms that
related to copyright of the actual music tracks produced. I am not a lawyer,
but to me it is critical that copyright (and not royalties) is clearly spelled
out. The product lives in an uncanny valley between clear copyright interests
in musical compositions and software generated derivative works modified by
end user input. The only legal information is a mostly bog standard software
terms and conditions on a web page. Such pages often change.

Digging deeper in the site does not reduce the copyright ambiguity to me
because the example scenarios like a corporate entity picking up content
containing the music are dealt with vaguely rather than by pointing to clear
licensing terms around copyright. The example of "tracks for a friend" is met
with "we don't care." Right now, maybe not. But copyright interest can be sold
to someone who does care...and potentially someone who cares because pursuing
copyright interests is their business model.

None of which is to say I don't think the tech and music is cool. It just
seems that the messy details that can come back to bite an artist sit on the
hard work left to do list.

~~~
tefles
Yeah, it is something that is actively being looked at and worked on.

~~~
brudgers
For what it's worth, I think the license is much more critical than being
royalty free in terms of value creation. While royalty free is "cool" for
generic Youtubers. Professionals and corporations with real budgets have money
for royalties and it can be rounding error for the money they spend on lawyers
to keep them away from copyright problems. To put it another way, clear and
central copyright licensing has the potential to allow the project to move
well upmarket. Without it, even free wouldn't look like a bargain to someone
serious enough to have a lawyer.

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SnowingXIV
This and icons8 is getting pretty close to what I'd love to use on a regular
basis. Unsplash has been great for creating a wonderful platform for truly
free do what you want images. Now I'd like to see the same in audio/video. For
advertising on YouTube or even actual commercials it would be nice have really
affordable solution to use generic (but good!) sounding music that small
businesses could use to give their ads a more polished feel. It's a big help
because a lot of companies can't afford the licenses for big tracks or hire in
a studio. Heck, even paying for images typically is a hard pill to swallow.

As a consumer I always appreciate seeing higher quality production regardless
of the product.

~~~
jellyd0ts
> Now I'd like to see the same in audio/video.

Pixabay is a site that works similar to unsplash, but added a video section a
short while ago. Not entirely sure if Stocksnap and Pexels have done so too.

Another area where this seems to be happening is with fonts at places like
Fontsquirrel and Open Font Library.

------
tefles
Hi HN! I'm one of the devs at Filmstro (the company featured in the article).
You can check out our music library here
[https://filmstro.com/music](https://filmstro.com/music).

~~~
spuz
Hey, I love the idea of the being able to compose music that matches the
visuals of a film very easily with the app so I decided to download it and
test it. Unfortunately, it seems it is not able to import .mov files on my
macbook pro and when I import one of my 4k .mp4 source files, it plays very
slowly, in fact so slowly that the video and the timeline become out of synch.
My two questions are, are you aware of these two issues and are you planning
to fix them?

~~~
tefles
Yeah, thanks for the feedback! Yeah, we are aware of a some of the 4K video
issues. We're also working on allowing more file formats in the app. I don't
have an ETA for you, but it is in the works.

------
bartproost
Much less complete, but I post 5 royalty-free no copyright tracks every week
here: [https://no-lick.com](https://no-lick.com).

~~~
zacattack
Really cool to see you supporting the same cause too! :) We've got an
authoring tool for composers that we're working on - You should get in touch
with our Head of Audio (John) composer@filmstro.com - There could be an
interesting collaboration here.

~~~
bartproost
That does sound awesome. Sending an email now. Happy to collab!

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raesene9
I've used [https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-
free/](https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/) for this in the past,
which works relatively well.

~~~
solarkraft
I tend to recognize the better known tracks, which is sometimes distracting.
The fidelity of the music also doesn't seem all that high to me (although his
output is impressive).

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martin-adams
Royalty free music is a pain. I wanted to licence a music track for use for
YouTube and a podcast, but it's just unclear if that requires different
licences, and if it's a series, it may only cover a certain number of episodes
and expire after some time before you have to buy again.

I did discover icons8's free music selection which is actually very good:
[https://icons8.com/music/](https://icons8.com/music/)

~~~
zacattack
I totally understand your pain with licensing music (as a filmmaker myself).
That's why we've worked hard on removing those issues for content creators.
Filmstro music is worldwide and in perpetuity (so you don't have to keep re-
licensing any music you purchase/export). Also, we make it very clear what you
can use the music for - as a matter of fact, we wanted to make music more
accessible for content creators hence why we (1) released royalty free 100%
youtube cleared static tracks and (2) subscriptions that allow users to access
loads of music for one annual price.

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combatentropy
So if I understand the license, I pay $10 a month for access to the music. If
I cancel my subscription, I can keep using the music I already downloaded. For
example, I would not have to erase it from a Youtube video I published. The
video and its music can stay online forever. Is that right?

~~~
djsumdog
They mention that in the FAQ. You should keep the CUE sheet you used to
generate it. I suspect it contains a licensing hash of some kind.

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amelius
If only you could automatically transform these songs to be of a desired
length (naturally, without clipping/fading).

~~~
tefles
You can do this using our desktop software, or using the plugin for Premier
Pro. [https://filmstro.com/products](https://filmstro.com/products)

------
chrisbuc
Sad music -> Turin

What film have I watched with that in?!!!! It's going to be on my mind all
night now... (aargh!)

~~~
chrisbuc
Ok - found it... but now I'm confused.

This music Gnossienne No. 1
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUAF3abGY2M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUAF3abGY2M)

is the same as the royalty free one called 'Turin'.

So is it that the Turin version is a royalty free 'recording' (dynamically
created), rather than one by a specific performer?

~~~
tefles
This is an Erik Satie piece. He died in 1925, and so is out of copyright. We
do have a few classic tracks in the library, but the majority are Filmstro
Original tracks.

~~~
chrisbuc
Fair enough (y)

------
weef
This looks cool but the first one I listened to (Music Genres\Rock\Wallula) is
almost identical to Bohemian Like You by The Dandy Warhols
([https://youtu.be/CU3mc0yvRNk?t=15s](https://youtu.be/CU3mc0yvRNk?t=15s)).

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onion2k
Moby did something similar a few years ago -
[http://www.mobygratis.com/](http://www.mobygratis.com/) \- although it
doesn't seem to be working at the moment, and there's a lot of spam in the
videos section.

------
matchagaucho
I couldn't find any samples with key changes. This approach seems to require
drone tones or a fixed root tonic.

Not bad for consumer mixing... adding music to YouTube wedding videos. Well
executed.

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philwelch
I bet this is gonna be used for temp tracks, and we’re going to see actual
film composers make unacknowledged knockoffs of this music.

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Animats
Was this stuff machine-generated?

~~~
djsumdog
I'm guessing the sliders probably aren't sliders, but fall into ranges, and
the peeps who write their music select different tracks to add/subtract for a
given slider. They probably have some custom scripting languages around their
music.

That's the way it seems to me as a user anyway, and the way I'd write it as a
developer.

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marksomnian
Lede totally buried on this one.

Filmstro ([https://filmstro.com/music](https://filmstro.com/music)) is the
company it's talking about with some _seriously cool_ tech - for every music
track, you can control three sliders (momentum, depth, and power) to change
the mood of the song in real time - or in Premiere with a plugin.

Of course, this costs money, but it's one of the coolest things I've seen in
this field in the last quite a while.

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jasonjayr
Is YouTube themselves working with to clear this music? Is it marked in
YouTube's ContentID system somehow? Some artists have had copyright strikes
placed against _THEM_ for one of their original songs because someone else
used their song (with permission) and then had YT's ContentID mark the other
publisher as the owner.

It has got to be a slap in the face to generously offer your art for this use,
only to be punished for doing so. Especially with the only way to deal with it
is with a tone-deaf automated system.

~~~
jchw
I think what irritates me the worst is that as far as I have been able to
tell, there's no way to inform YouTube that you have written permission or a
license. Some people just have privilege to not be Content ID stricken, and
other people have to appeal when they inevitably do get hit.

~~~
degenerate
Correct, it's guilty until proven innocent, and bad actors can initiate the
content strike seemingly without much effort (at least it was this way a few
months ago; not sure if YT fixed this).

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JepZ
This is the link which is missing in the post ;-) Pretty cool stuff,
especially with the sliders on the right side.

[https://filmstro.com/music](https://filmstro.com/music)

~~~
martin-adams
Thank you for linking this. I'm playing with it and I'm very impressed. The
article completely missed the value of it being dynamic music where you can
keyframe the momentum, depth and power with plugins for video editors.

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anc84
Press release disguised as article.

> If you do a quick Google search for ‘Royalty free music’ or ‘YouTube cleared
> music’

Yeah, try "creative commons music" instead.

> 100% free for anyone to use – The Filmstro Free Music offering

vs.

> The only limitation is that commercial use of the music is not covered with
> these free tracks.

That's not 100% free.

Also, no download without account.

