Music copyright is so tightly controlled by the musicians' organisations that there are really only two ways to get royalty-free music: a) find a musician who'll create music for your movie or b) use one of the music creation programs which can build up a piece of music of the right length by combining small music samples. In the latter case you'll still have to pay for the sample library though.

just google royalty free music and listen to some of the samples. Horror music isn't hard to create and they generally all have some alright ones.

Try Myspace.com, myspace music is full of many young artists just starting out who wouldn't mind the publicity. Just remember to stroke their egos the right way. If they are a heavy metal band, act heavy and ... metal... if they are punk or gothic... act depressed. Remember to give them credit and offer to display the URL to their Myspace Music page in the closing credits with a "Special Thanks" to or "Original Music By".

I have done this before. Usually it takes explaining to say "Hey I like your music. I am doing a ?clip, short film, indie, feature length film? for a ?college project, community thing, nonprofit internet podcast, artpiece? and I would love to use your song ?name here?."

Myspace Music pages allow you to listen to several of the artists' favorite songs, even a download option (if they allow it).

I recently contacted an artist about using one of her songs for an art piece I was doing but unfortunately she said no (which is pretty unusual)- but only because the song was unreleased and coming out on CD next year and she didn't want to complicate legal matters any.

I'm working to gain credit as a composer. I've done a horror movie in the past called Whose Woods (I didn't come up with the title). Check out www.jonathanbrodmann.net for the soundtrack. Let me know if I can help. I'll do it for peanuts.

If you do get a band or songwriter (from MySpace or anywhere else) to agree to let you use their song, get everything in writing up front. If they agree to how you plan to use their song in your film, you're covered down the road. You will have to honor what you all agreed upon. If something new comes up down the road, you will have to contact them again and make sure they agree to that new usage.

Dominique Preyer
Music Supervisor - Music Publisher
Play Any Key Music (ASCAP) - ( http://www.playanykey.com)
Durgon Style Music (BMI)
Spin Cycle Films - ( http://www.spincyclefilms.com)
Bramsar Records - ( http://www.bramsarrecords.com)