Anyone looking to license music for use in user-generated content, such as online video, slideshow and games, or to add soundtracks to commercial projects like TV shows, movies and advertising, now has the largest variety of music possible. And, because the catalog is 100% pre-cleared, when a soundtrack is licensed it is available for immediate use. There is no waiting and no clearance time.

New content partnerships have helped grow the Rumblefish Music catalog from 35,000 songs, to more than 500,000 in 2011, and now to more than a million songs today. APM Music, CD Baby and Indaba were recently added to the Rumblefish catalog. The Rumblefish catalog now has more than 100,000 artists from over 30 countries. Millions of dollars in royalties have been paid to artists from the Rumblefish catalog.

There are a variety of licenses available for the one million songs, including consumer and commercial. While the list of rights varies per catalog and track, you are sure to find the right soundtrack, regardless of a YouTube video or a major motion picture, or anything between. This include Friendly Music, the Friendly Music mobile SDK and the Music Licensing Store. Additionally, companies looking to easily bring the complexity of music licensing for users of their apps, websites or products can access the one million songs via the Rumblefish API, as well. Some of our partnerships included Socialcam, Animoto, YouTube and Zooppa, and lots more on the way.

Also from the article about the addition of soundtracks: “The soundtracks are chosen with care and aren’t your typical stock music clips at all. They are soundtracks courtesy of a music partnership with Friendly Music, itself an offshoot of Rumblefish, a company that  provided soundtracks for over 5 million online videos. The licensing is 100% covered, so you can share your clip wherever you like including social networks and Dropbox. You can also mix the soundtrack in live on the fly.”

Congrats to the Socialcam team for a great product launch/update.

TNT, along with Rumblefish partner Warner Bros. Television, has tapped our indomitable catalogue for a hip-hop song from one of our artists, Illa. Illa’s song “Cranberry Vodka” was used in episode #10 of the hit show “Southland”, which is a fast paced criminal cop show that features a great cast, awesome stories, and obviously great music to go along with your listening experience!

If you need great music for your shows, indie films, and more, hit us up. Hollywood relies on us for their music needs, so rest assured we can get you the awesome music that your project requires!

Friendly Music makes finding the perfect soundtrack for online video easier than ever, and much more fun and social. And so, we at Rumblefish are proud to announce THE NEW FRIENDLY MUSIC!!!

Here’s an overview of new features:

• Pick a Video, Add a Soundtrack, Make a Mash  A Mash is a combination of a YouTube video and a Friendly Music soundtrack. No editing or downloading is required. Just pick a YouTube video, add a soundtrack and make a Mash. Each Mash gets its own unique URL, where others can watch, comment, like or share. Click here to see an example of a Mash. Users can even Remash the original video with a different soundtrack to create a new Mash.

• The World’s Largest Catalog for Online Video  The Rumblefish Music catalog has grown to over 750,000 songs. It is the largest song catalog in the world pre-cleared for soundtracks in social video. The catalog is made up of the same tracks that top Hollywood producers use for hit movies like Avatar and top TV shows, such as Mad Men and 30 Rock. Songs from every genre are available from artists, record labels and production music companies from all over the world.

• Live Video Auditioning with Soundtracks  The new audition feature allows users to preview any YouTube video against any Friendly Music soundtrack, instantly. Once loaded, users can play the video, adjust the offsets of the video and audio, move through the video timeline, or jump to any part of the audio or video track. Think of this as the world’s easiest audio/video editing software, without the editing part.

• MoodMap  MoodMap allows users to search for a soundtrack based on the feeling or mood of their video. The mood-based search tool is divided into four quadrants: happy, sad, angry and serene. The x-axis is an intensity scale that ranges from passive and subdued on the left, to assertive and intense on the right. The y-axis represents a range of temperament, or vibe. At the top, the mood is sunny, positive and optimistic, where the bottom is dark, gloomy and negative. Users can audition soundtrack results from the moods they select and make playlists of their favorites.

• What’s the Occasion?  Our Occasion search allows users to browse through occasion categories, including celebrations, themes, current events, moods, sports and holidays. Occasion categories and sub-categories help users to quickly navigate to playlists that match the video occasion or theme, such as a weddings, snowboarding or New Year’s Eve.

• Playlists: Editor’s Picks  Editor’s Picks allows users to browse playlists handpicked by the Rumblefish in-house editorial team. Expert Rumblefish music editors constantly create new playlists for users to browse. This search tool is great for quickly finding a soundtrack for current events, such as Halloween, Christmas or Valentine’s Day, or topical events such as memorial videos celebrating the life of Steve Jobs.

• Friendly Music Mobile SDK  In tandem with the new Friendly Music website, we have released a mobile SDK that allows any iOS app developer to easily integrate our new Friendly Music soundtrack search and recommendation tools into their app. This SDK allows for great new soundtrack features for any video or photo app that users will love AND the introduction of a new revenue stream for developers via our affiliate program. If you’d like to gain access to our SDK, email developers@rumblefish.com.

• New Licenses  We have gotten many request of small and medium businesses requested commercial soundtrack licenses for use in online promotional videos. In response to the demand, Friendly Music now offers two limited commercial licenses: Commercial and Commercial Premium. Additionally, there is now a license for users creating Mashes with YouTube videos and Friendly Music soundtracks. The following list shows all licenses currently available at Friendly Music.

Contact us if you have any questions about how to access any of the new search and recommendations tools or the mobile SDK and enjoy the new Friendly Music. Try it out and tell us what you think!

On Friday afternoon, February 24th, the YouTube Content ID system misidentified a video as having a song from a Rumblefish artist in it. The video uploader, “eeplox,” disputed the claim and it was sent to our Content ID review team. The Rumblefish Content ID team reviews a significant number of claim disputes every day (remember the millions of videos mentioned above). It is our goal to review every disputed claim every day, and handle each dispute with care and attention to detail. We hold ourselves to the highest standard, but are human and occasionally make mistakes. A mistake is exactly what happened with this claim. The video in question did not have our music in it and one of our content ID representatives reinstated the claim on the video in error.  The video uploader eeplox got very upset, understandably, and put a post up about it on Slashdot. We didn’t hear from him on Friday after we mistakenly reinstated the claim.

I was made aware of the error on Sunday afternoon and went to view the video myself. When I viewed the video, it was clear that we had made a mistake and we immediately released the claim of the video back to eeplox, this happened within a few hours. I then personally sent him an apology and set up an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit to answer questions from people who thought we were actually attempting to copyright the sound of birds singing, wholesale reinstating claims without reviewing them, etc.

As of this writing, my AMA has over 1,740 comments, so it seems people were interested in “discussing” the issue. Of course, some redditors we’re just being ridiculous and angry, but about 20-30% of the users were there to ask very valid questions, were genuinely curious about what happened and wanted to know what we planned to do about the situation. Also, many offered very interesting and compelling suggestions for us, which we’re considering.

Why isn’t Content ID perfect?

YouTube reviews an enormous amount of content. From what we understand, it’s over an hour of video every second. That’s not an easy task. The claims dispute process is designed to help video uploaders let content owners know that they believe a mistake has been made.

Many disputed claims fall into these categories:

1. Musicians performing a work so well that it sounds like another recording of the same work. Think classical piano recital.
2. Artists who have incorporated a sample of a song in a song that they have created as a soundtrack for their video.
3. Bands that we represent using their own music in their own videos that they prefer not to have monetized or are unfamiliar with the claim dispute process.
4. Any number of other miscellaneous reasons. Hence, having a claim dispute resolution team and process at Rumblefish.

What Rumblefish is going to do about this?

No process is perfect, but every process can be improved. We’re taking a hard look at how to further improve our claim dispute review process and potentially even introduce new tech tools to help achieve that goal. Although we have no control over the YouTube Content ID technology, I have to say that for most of the claim disputes, the YouTube technology and the processes work rather well. YouTube has been a great partner for several years and has helped Rumblefish, more importantly our artists, significantly. When you achieve scale in any process, cracks appear. It’s not about whether or not cracks will appear, it’s all about how swiftly and genuinely you attend to and fix them. We will continue to work closely with YouTube to make improvements to this process.

Eeplox, again my apologies to for our mistake. The last time I looked, your video had over 50,000 views, which I really hope helps to expand your audience and revenue.

It’s important at Rumblefish that we do right by all creators – the ones we represent and the ones we do not. You can always count on us to be innovative in our approach and responsive when we have missteps. We are, and will continue to be, on the cutting edge of what’s happening in the social video space and things are moving faster than ever. If there are ways that you think we can improve what we’re doing, a way that you can help us innovate, improve or move forward, hit us up and let us know. We’re all ears.

All the best,

Paul Anthony

Founder & CEO

Rumblefish

“As a lawyer, I have been battling an outdated and complicated system of copyrights for more than a decade,” Perreaux said. “With the launch of Rightsclear, my vision to establish a model that is transparent and free from chaos becomes a reality. By launching with Rumblefish, one of the leading platforms for social licensing, we look forward to further simplifying and radically democratizing the market for music licensing together.”

Check out a nice article on Restorm, the partnership and other news.

MTV has worked with pop superstar Demi Lovato to craft a documentary titled “Demi Lovato: Stay Strong” chronicling the young starlet’s battle with eating disorders, and they’ve turned to Rumblefish’s expansive catalog for some tunes to compliment those of Ms. Lovato’s.

Rumblefish artists featured in the revealing and emotionally charged project are Carly Comando and her song “Everyday”, which is a top Rumblefish selection, and also Drexler’s “Slow Gold”.

The documentary airs on March 6th on MTV at 10 PM EST! Tune in to hear these great tunes and be sure to keep your channel locked here on the Rumblefish blog for all the exciting announcements about our placements and partners!

Get a quick synopsis of the documentary after the jump!

In this one-hour documentary film, Demi will let the MTV audience inside to witness her most private moments, during her very public recovery from her eating disorder. With MTV’s cameras following, she’ll return for the very first time to the treatment facility she retreated to back in November 2010 to speak candidly to her recovering peers about her experiences, and to thank the counselors and staff who she says kept her alive. She’ll also let the MTV audience witness first-hand her on-going evolution as an artist – as she ditches her bubble-gum Disney past and tries on a new persona as confessional singer-songwriter, and performs an album full of deeply personal material in-front of sold-out crowds for the first time.

Warner Bros.-produced skein Person of Interest has tapped Rumblefish artist Roger Espinoza and his amazing track “Sacred Mountain” for inclusion into their CBS-aired show Person of Interest, which airs on Thursdays at 9/8c, and features Jim Caviezel (“Passion of the Christ”), Taraji P. Henson (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) and other stars. The show just won a 2012 People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Drama as well!

If you’re looking for great music for replacements for your TV shows, cues for scenes, or whatever your music needs may be, consider contacting us for the latest & greatest in pre-cleared music, cultivated from all over the world. Out of almost a million tracks, there’s sure to be something that fits your needs. Let us help you find it!

What does this mean?

1. CD Baby artists have access to a totally new revenue stream. They now will receive royalties through soundtracks licensed for use in online videos, slideshows, presentations and other UGC using the Rumblefish API, Friendly Music and the Music Licensing Store.
2. Consumers and professionals can add soundtracks from some of the top indie artists into their videos, slideshows, presentations, advertisements, films, games and much more.
3. Online destinations, like YouTube, that offer up Rumblefish’s songs from their website can now give users access to a larger variety of songs.

The CD Baby partnership is now fully live and we’re seeing the fruits of our labor!