What is Royalty Free Content?
You may have heard the term “royalty-free” before but what does it really mean? Despite the name, this term has no relation to the British royal family. Normally, any form intellectual property is protected by copyright law and cannot be used without permission and payment of royalties to the content owner. Royalty free content refers to certain types of intellectual property that you are able to use commercially without having to pay royalties. In this case, the content owner must specifically label their content for reuse or as royalty free in order for anyone to legally use their content.
Why should you and your business be using Royalty Free content?
Most likely you and your business want to post some form of multimedia online. This could be anything from photos to videos to even audio - something such as an image to accompany your website or a song in the background your next video. If you do end up using copyrighted content that isn’t explicitly labeled as royalty-free you may either be forced to pay royalties to the creator or even face potential legal action. Remembering to use the royalty free labeled content can save your company a lot of money, stress, and save you from violating copyright and intellectual property law.
Where and how do you get Royalty Free content?
As you scour the internet, you will definitely run into way more copyrighted content than royalty free. For images, Hybridge recommends trusted sites such as Shutterstock or Getty Images which have very large libraries of stock photos, illustrations, and art. Some of these will cost a one-time fee to use the image while others will only ask to be credited. For audio, YouTube has a royalty-free audio library that you can browse through to find something that fits what you’re looking for. Wherever you may search, you should make sure you are filtering by royalty free items specifically, and to also double check on the page itself to look for the copyright notice. If you are a Hybridge client and are having trouble finding royalty-free content or want to make sure that what you are using is labeled for reuse, do not hesitate to contact us at info@hybridge.com or call in at 888-353-1763.
