Can we pick our own music for our Wedding Film?
A common question regarding professional wedding videos is whether we can pick our own music. There may be certain advantages to picking out music you like – mainly that you are guaranteed to love the song choice. However, I think it’s much more advantageous to let your wedding videographer pick out the songs for the video. So, in answer to the question “Can we pick our own music for our Wedding Film?” the answer is yes…kind of. Let me explain further.
Picture by Emma Gladman via Emma Spring Photography
An important consideration when picking music to be in a wedding film, or really any film for that matter, is copyright protection laws. When I did my first wedding package, which included an 18-minute highlight reel, I did all the work for free for a friend. I was admittedly very naive, and I didn’t understand the difference between using licensed music and unlicensed music. When you use a popular song in your video, but don’t pay the licensing fee for this song, the label companies that own this song can sue you for potentially thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, some wedding cinematographers have made this mistake in the past and have paid dearly.
Using popular, unlicensed music in your wedding films is the equivalent of stealing the songs and using them for commercial gain. These popular songs can cost upwards of $25,000 to license for a film. So, the question remains – how do we get around this? Obviously, no wedding videographer will spend $25,000 just to license a song for his couple’s highlight reel. The answer, then, is to use any variety of sites that allow you to license songs for a much lower fee. These songs, however, are usually not well known by the public. It can be easy to look at this as a negative – because you won’t be able to get your favorite song in your video. I, however, see this as a positive with at least a couple of advantages.
Here are the main two:
1. Popular music is exactly that.
It’s popular for a moment, but then it’s often forgotten and replaced by newer music. Can you see where I am going with this? You would like your wedding video to be timeless in that you want to be able to look back on it in 20 years and still enjoy it. If, however, your wedding video was filled with whatever song was popular at the time, it might be difficult to fully appreciate it. You may simply have grown tired of the song in the video by hearing it far too many times. Or the song just does not have that same meaning to you any more than it did when you were younger, and so a lot of the emotional investment that you had put into it is now sadly lost. The advantage of using a song you may not know so well is that others probably will not know it either! It’ll be your song. It won’t be a song you and everyone else have heard a thousand times on the radio before; it will be unique to you and your video.
2. You are hiring a professional to do the work for you.
If you’re spending all that money on hiring a wedding videographer, in my opinion, you should let them do the work that you’re paying them for. They may have a specific direction that they would like to go with your video, and by giving them the song you want them to use, you are essentially backing them into a corner and not letting their creativity hit its full potential. It would be like hiring Adele to sing at your anniversary party but telling her she can only sing songs by AC-DC. It wouldn’t quite let her whole potential show, would it?
Let me rewind back to the beginning of the article for just a second. I did say that a couple could pick their music should they wish. Well, that is true. If a couple would really like to pick their own songs, this can absolutely be accommodated. However, one caveat would be that it must be from a music licensing site. There are several options for this, but my pick would be Musicbed. They have a great selection, and it’s easy to filter and find exactly what you are looking for. However, if you’re having difficulty finding that perfect song on Musicbed, feel free to ask me, and I will happily recommend a few other websites that you can browse through.
Hopefully, this article has cleared up an area that is very confusing for many people – music licensing. Yes – you can pick your own wedding music, but if you do, there are a few important factors that you should consider. We discussed how most popular music is protected under harsh copyright laws, so any music you choose must be from a designated music licensing site such as Musicbed. While it may seem like a negative, that the song that you will have to choose is likely not well known, it can really be a positive. It’s a song that is specifically chosen for you and will be your song; very few, if anyone else, will know it, and therefore, the odds of you getting sick of it are much lower. The last consideration would be that you are hiring someone to do your wedding video, so by letting them be creative, you will get their best work. The music contained in your wedding film is very important. It can give it that cinematic feel, with peaks and valleys that emphasize the most important moments of your day. It can move you and bring you back to what it felt like on the day of your wedding. Yes, you can choose your own music to be in your wedding film, but ultimately, the better choice may be to let your wedding videographer choose the music and allow them to make you something truly special.
Photo by Emma Gladman via Emma Spring Photography