After I place an order,
how long does it take to get a download link?
There is no waiting time to receive your download. When
you have paid, click "Return to Lynne Publishing" and then
click "Proceed to your product download page". You are
then taken directly to the page where you can download your product and your
official Invoice and Music License Certificate.
Additionally, an email is automatically sent out to you. This email has the
subject: "Your Shockwave-Sound Order Is Ready" and it contains a
link to your product download page, so you can go back to that page later
to re-download your product any time you want. This email is sent out instantly
on payment completion. You should receive it within 30 seconds of having finished
your payment process online -- but please wait 30 minutes before asking for
help, because sometimes email can be delayed by high volumes of net traffic.
Will I
get a real Music License Certificate and Invoice with my purchase?
Yes. All our customers get real official Music License Certificate documents,
which is also an official tax invoice. This is available to download from
the same page where you download the music or sound-fx your purchased.
I made an order, but I didn't get a download
link!
Since we went online 8 years ago, we have processed over 100,000 orders,
and never once has the download information not
been sent out to the email address that the customer input on the order form.
The most common reason for customers thinking they have not received the
email with the download link(s) is that they have a spam filter
which has either deleted it, or put it in the junk email folder.
The email that gets sent out to you has the subject: "Your Shockwave-Sound.Com
Order Is Ready" and it contains some words like "Order",
which causes some spam filters to delete this important email.
The second most common reason for customers not to receive theemail
is that they misspelled their email address on the order form. It's important
to type your email address correctly on our order form.
If you have not received any download information email after you placed
your order, feel free to contact us either by email
or by telephone and we will do everything we can to help you out as fast as
we can.
For the record, you don't actually need to receive that email to download
your product. When you have paid online, click "Return to Merchant"
and then click "Proceed to product download". You are then taken
directly to your product download page, regardless of whether you have received
our email or not.
I added a product to
the shopping cart, but when I go to view cart or checkout, the cart is empty!
If products don’t make it into the shopping cart, it’s probably
because our site is blocked from placing a “cookie” on your system.
A "cookie" is a very small capsule of information that our site
needs to place on your hard disk, in order to recognize you and keep track
of what you have in your shopping cart. If our site is denied access to place
a cookie on your system, then it can’t keep track of products that are
added to the cart.
Please try the following:
Try a different web browser if you have one, or
Temporarily disable any third-party Firewall software you have running.
(Our site is okay with the normal Windows XP firewall; this does not
need to be disabled.)
Or, adjust your Firewall settings to allow shockwave-sound.com to place
a cookie on your system
Or, adjust your Internet Browser's privacy settings to allow shockwave-sound.com
to place a cookie on your system.
If all else fails, email us and tell us what you would like to purchase.
We will issue a payment link for you and then manually make the products available
to you after you've made payment.
Why can't I get a refund
or exchange of a product that I have downloaded?
Orders placed on our site can be cancelled and refunded before the
products are downloaded.
Like other shops that sell downloadable products, we do not refund or exchange
a product that has been downloaded. This is not only because of the obvious
reason, the fact that you now have the music file, and there’s nothing
we can do to “take it back” or “un-sell” it to you.
Besides this obvious reason, there are also other additional factors:
1) Once you've paid for your order, you actually have a
License Certificate for this piece of music. It is legally licensed to you
or your company for commercial use, and you actually have the documentation
to prove it. You still have this documentation after we have refunded the
payment. It’s not only that you have the product itself, you actually
have a Certificate of Use which there is no way for us to take back.
2) When the product is downloaded, the composer of this
piece of music gets paid his royalties for the sale. So if you paid us $30
and we paid $15 to the composer, and we then have to refund your $30 –-
we now actually have a loss of $15. It is possible to reverse
the royalty payment, i.e. subtract it from his future earnings, something
like that, but it’s a lot of extra work.
3) The sale has been finalized and counted into our weekly
sales. That means that we have to pay company tax for the sale. Whilst it
is possible to counter this in the tax accounts, it’s an awful lot of
work. We basically have to issue a “credit note” and file that
in our tax accounts, print it and file it, counter it up against the original
weekly sales report, etc. It represents the same amount of accounting and
filing work that we spend on the entire rest of the weekly sales.
The result of all this is that issuing a refund for a finalized order, for
a shop that sells downloadable products, is a highly problematic issue with
complications way beyond simply going over to Paypal and clicking the “refund”
button. Besides the obvious fact that you have the music file and there's
no way for us to "take it from you", there are other complications
as well.
As a point of interest, have you ever tried asking iTunes for a refund of
a music album that you downloaded from them? Good luck with that. :-)
In summary, we are happy to cancel and refund an order until such time as
it has been downloaded. After the product has been downloaded, we do not refund
the order.
A "music loop" is a short piece of music that can be played over
and over again in a "loop" so it sounds like a never ending music
track.
A music loop is typically 10-40 seconds long. When it reaches the end, it
instantly jumps back to the beginning and starts playing again. The start-
and end-points of the loop have been cleverly edited to make it sound like
it didn't "jump" back to the beginning at all, but simply continues
to play.
Let's listen to an example of a music loop. This is really only a 20 second
piece of music, but at the end it jumps back to the beginning. You can't hear
any "skip" or stop of any kind when it jumps back and starts again,
and the result is an endless music track. Click here
to listen.
Music loops are most commonly used for web sites or in Flash presentations
-- which is why they are sometimes called Flash loops or web site loops.
On a web site, you want visitors to be able to see and hear the site as quickly
as possible after they arrive. You don't want to have to send too much data
to the visitor before he/she can experience your site, because you don't want
your visitor to have to wait for large amounts of data to transfer to their
computer. Because the music loop contains only enough data for a few seconds
worth of music, there isn't a lot of data that has to be sent to your visitor
before he/she can hear it. You can just send a few seconds worth of music,
and that's enough for the visitor to be able to listen to music for as long
as he/she is on your site. That's why loops are often used on web sites.
If you are looking for music for media that's not going to be put on the
internet, you're probably better off using the "full length version"
of the music, rather than the loop. Although loops are great for web sites
because they are so small, it can become a little monotenous to listen to
the same 20 seconds of music over and over again. So if keeping the file sizes
to a minimum isn't a real issue for you, then go for the "full length
version" of the music, which will be more varied and have different sections
and variations throughout.
I bought a
music loop, but it doesn't loop seamlessly. It kind of "hiccups" at
the loop point. Why?
Firstly, we guarantee that all our loops play completely seamlessly, without
any stutter, jump, skip or hiccup at the loop point, if used correctly.
Listen to the previews on our site. They all loop completely seamlessly. Those
previews are made from the same loop files that you as a customer get to download.
There are two things that can "ruin" a seamless loop, and cause
it not to loop seamlessly during playback:
1) Converting the loop to MP3 format. A seamless loop cannot be stored in
MP3 file format, because of a limitation in the file format itself. The MP3
file format always includes a tiny bit of silence at the beginning and end
of a file. This is why we don't offer our customers to download loops in MP3
format, only in WAV format. As soon as you convert a loop to MP3 format, it
starts to hiccup at the loop point. This is not a weakness of our loops, but
of the actual nature of the MP3 file format. If you are using Flash, you should
always import the WAV file into Flash, and then use Flash's built-in compression
settings (File, Publish Settings) to compress the audio.
2) The other possible problem with a hiccuping loop is that the actual playback
program isn't jumping right back to the beginning after reaching the end,
without taking a little pause first. This is a well known problem with, for
example, RealPlayer, Quicktime Player and Windows Media Player. If you ask
these programs to play the sound in a loop, they do, but
only in the sense that a CD player does it -- i.e. there is a little pause
while the program "re-locates" back to the beginning of the file.
Again, this is not a weakness of the file, but of the playback method.
The best way to use a music loop is to import the WAV file (without converting
it to MP3 first) into Flash, and then use Flash's built-in compression settings
(found under File, Publish Settings) to compress the audio. That's what we
do when we make our completely seamless loop previews.
What's the difference between WAV files and MP3 files? Well, the WAV files
are uncompromised and uncompressed, original master recordings. They are in
true broadcast quality.
MP3 files have been compressed to make the files smaller, thus faster to
download. MP3 compression uses a clever technology which discards some information
from the audio file - audio which is deemed to be inaudible to the human ear.
So in making the file much smaller, some audio signal has been discarded,
but we will say this: Our MP3 files are made to a very high standard, and
we have yet to hear from anybody who has ever been able to actually hear
the difference between our MP3 files and the original master WAV file.
To sum up: WAV files are very large files that offer the very best
sound quality, and can easily be converted to AIFF format. MP3 files are much
smaller files, and still sound great.
We price all WAV files $2 higher than the MP3 version because of the large
amounts of server space and bandwidth used by the WAV files.
The "music loops" are only available in WAV format, not MP3. This
is because of the very nature of the MP3 file format. When a sound is stored
in MP3 format, there is always a tiny bit of silence at the beginning and
end of the sound, and this causes the sound not to loop seamlessly. If you
try to loop a sound file that has been saved in MP3 format, you'll hear a
short "hiccup" at the loop point. This is why we offer the music
loops in WAV format only. The WAV music loops will sound completely
seamless at the loop point, without any "skip" or pause at all.
To learn more about music loops, please read "What
are music loops and how do they work?"
Put very simply, "royalty free music" is a term used to describe
music that you can use as much as you want, after having paid one single license
fee.
Traditionally, before "royalty-free" music came on the scene, a
film- or media producer either had to "hire" music library per-month
or per-year, and/or pay a fee for every minute, second, or every cue that
the music was used in a production. Typically, a producer would pay an annual
fee to have access to a music library on CDs, and whenever he/she made a programme
or a project of some sort, he/she would then keep track of exactly how many
seconds the music was used in the project, and then pay an additional fee
(a "needle-drop" fee) in addition to the annual fee. If he/she used
the same music more than one place in the programme, he/she would have to
pay a needle-drop fee for each one. Additionally, he/she might then have to
go and obtain a synchronization license as well, for the right to combine
the music with the visuals. And on top of that, or as an alternative, he/she
might also have to pay a royalty to the music library, based on the amount
earned, or copies sold, of the product in which the music was used. Administratively,
it could be a bit of a headache.
"Royalty-Free music" was first introduced in the 1980's, and the
concept is that a producer pays a one-time license fee for the rights to use
the music, and that's it.
He/she is then free to use the music as much as needed, drop it into a production
in several places without having to keep track of that, and without paying
any further fees. The same music could even be used for several different
programmes (say, for the intro-sequence of a 10-part series), without any
extra payments. This would normally work out both cheaper and a lot easier
to administer than the traditional music licensing system.
When you license a piece of music from us, it typically costs you US$ 29.95
for a full-length track, or less for shorter versions. This gives you a license
to use the music in whatever kind of project you want.
Whenever music is used in a broadcast or public performance (such as a TV
documentary, TV show, radio show, advertisement, etc.), or exported for the
purpose of being broadcast abroad, the producer needs to fill in cue-sheets
detailing the music used in the program. This ensures proper distribution
of so-called Performance Royalties which is not an extra
cost, but is paid by broadcasting corporations as a set monthly or annual
fee. The cue-sheets simply ensures the right distribution of money already
paid, and causes neither the producer nor the broadcaster any additional cost.
If I buy a music track from you,
can I use it for anything I want?
As with any other music library, there are limits to what you can and cannot
do with our music. Most importantly, you can't trade in the music itself.
You can't put the track on a music CD and sell it as a music product, even
if you add vocals or instruments to it.
For more detailed information about what exactly you can do with our royalty-free
music tracks and music loops, please see the Acceptable
Use (License) page.
Can I use your music
on YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe and other similar video hosting sites?
YES, and you only need our Standard License for this. However, it's important
that you include information about the music used (track title, name of comoser,
name of publisher) when you upload your video to YouTube and enter the information
into YouTube's system. Assuming correct information is given to YouTube, the
music composer will earn a "micro payment" from YouTube when the
video is watched. This micro-payment is paid by YouTube -
not by you. YouTube, in turn, gathers money from advertisers on their site.
Therefore, it is a requirement of our license terms that track title, composer
name and publisher name are correctly entered when you submit a video that
contains our music to YouTube and similar video hosting services. You can
find the composer- and publisher-info on page 2 of the Invoice/License document
that is made available to you after you make a purchase on our site. If in
doubt, feel free to ask us.
I
would like to make a CD that I can give away to customers or business contacts.
Can I use your music for that?
Yes, but you have to get a special license for it.
If you simply buy a track from this web site, for the price listed next to
each track, you get the Standard License. The Standard License is a license
for the music to be used with other media, as part of a production
such as video, dvd, web site, etc. (For details of exactly what is covered
by the standard license, please see the license page.)
We do however offer a giveaway promotion
license. This is a special license that allows you to create a CD with
our music on it for the purpose of giving away as a promotional item. The
license costs US$ 0.09 per music track, per CD created. For more details,
please see the giveaway promotion license
page.
Please give
me the pricing policy for up to 15,000 copies of a give-away product
The license type required for that depends on whether you (A) want to use
our music WITH some other media, like film/visual, and give away that product,
or (B) if you wish to just give away our ACTUAL music, without mixing it with
any other audio/visual media.
Example 1: You create a DVD-video of your company presentation.
Our music is playing in the background. Here, you are using our music WITH
other media. For this, you only need to buy our “Mass Market License”
for the track(s) that you want to use. This license costs about $45-$75, depending
on the track length. You can buy this license simply by finding the track
on our site and clicking "add to cart".
Example 2: You wish to make a music-CD and give to your
clients and contacts. You put our music tracks on this CD, without mixing
the music with any video, voiceover or anything else. Here, you are giving
away our music ITSELF. For this, you need our Giveaway
Promotions License. This is priced at US$ 0.09 per track, per CD created.
So if you include one of our tracks on the CD and create 15,000 CD’s,
then your price is 1 * $0.09 * 15,000 = $1,350. If you include 5 of our tracks
and create only 500 CD’s, then the price is 5 * $0.09 * 500 = $225.
I'm a music
producer and I'd like to use your loops within my own music productions. Can
I do that?
No. Our music tracks and music loops are not meant for music
producers to use within their own compositions.
What you need is a Sample Library, ACID loops, Sample CD, or drum loops that
are made for music producers.
That’s not what we sell. At Shockwave-Sound.com we sell music that
is already finished, complete. It’s not for musicians at all. Our products
are for television producers, film makers, web site designers and multimedia
designers who need finished music to use within their TV
programs, films, web sites and multimedia displays.
In fact, it is illegal to use our music or music loops within any kind of
music creation / composition. Ref. License, "You may not create derivative
works".
What is the difference between the full-length
versions, 60/30-seconds versions, and loops? Can the 30-second version loop?
We present most of our music in different cuts/lengths: Full length version,
60-secs version, 30-secs version, and "loops".
The full-length version: Typically plays for 2-8 minutes, and is quite simply
the "whole" music piece. It begins, plays for a few minutes, and
ends. If you play it with the loop setting ON, it will begin, play for a few
minutes, end, wait a few seconds, and then begin again.
The 60-secs and 30-secs versions: These begin, play for 60/30 seconds, and
end. If you play them with the loop setting ON, they will begin, play for
60/30 seconds, end, then wait a couple of seconds, and begin again.
The "loops" are typically 10-30 seconds long each. The beginning
and end of the file is cut/trimmed in a clever way to make the end jump right
back to the beginning in such a way that it sounds like it just keeps playing.
If you play it with the loop setting ON, it will play for however long you
want, or forever, until the viewer exits the page. Every time it reaches the
end, it jumps immediately back to the beginning, and it does this without
any skip or jump, it sounds like a never ending piece of music that just keeps
playing.
The loops are practical for use on web sites, because you are only actually
dealing with a few seconds worth of music, there isn't that much data that
has to be transferred to the viewer's web browser, and this helps to keep
your site loading fast.
How big are your files? I need
to know before I can put them on my web site
Typically, a full music track in MP3 format is about 3-7 MB, and in WAV format
maybe 30-70 MB, depending on the length of the music track. A "music
loop" WAV file is maybe 1-3 MB, again, depending on the length.
However, we don't expect people to put it on their web site in full CD-quality.
Most people will downgrade the sound quality and make the file much smaller
before they put it on a web site.
Our clients use our music for a wide variety of purposes, from national advertising
broadcasts (full CD/broadcast quality required), to looping background music
on web sites (small files required). We give out the files in the highest
possible sound quality, so that the customer can then downgrade the sound
quality as required, and make the file smaller if he/she wants to.
The process is comparable with images. If we had sold royalty-free photos,
we would have given the photos to our customers in full-size, maybe uncompressed
4000 x 3000 pixels, and the file would be very large. But we would not expect
people to put it on their web site at this size. Instead, for customers who
wanted to use the photo on a web site, we would expect them to reduce the
picture down to maybe 320 x 200 pixels, thus massively reducing the file size.
But they might still want to keep a copy of the full high-resolution version
of the image, if they want to use it for something else (magazine print, etc.)
later.
This is exactly what happens with our music as well. We give you the music
in very high fidelity audio files, and they are large. If you want to use
the music on a web site, it is likely that you will want to downgrade the
fidelity, and thus the file size, first. (See below).
The most common way for people to put music on web sites is to use the program
Flash
from Macromedia. This
is a tool for making active, animated web sites with audio etc. If you use
Flash, just import the music from the File menu, and then go to File, Publish
Settings, and set the compression level you want on the audio. The lower bit-rate
you set, the smaller the music file will get, but the lower sound quality
("clarity") the audio will have.
If you don't use Flash, you can also just embed the audio onto the web site
in a more straightforward way. Please check the documentation for your particular
web site building tool for how to embed audio onto a web page. But first,
you might want to reduce the audio file size / sound quality. You can do this
by using a simple, free audio editing tool such as Audacity
or similar. Open the file, Save As, choose WAV or MP3 and set your compression
settings (lower bit rate = smaller file = lower sound quality). MP3 gives
much smaller files than WAV with the same quality, which is why it's a popular
format for using audio on the internet.
After you have made a purchase from our site, we we are happy to help you
and deliver the sound files to you in a reduced file size / reduced sound
quality. However, we ask for your understanding that we cannot offer training
in using Flash, putting music on web sites, etc. Our job is to give you the
music and a license to use it. It's then up to your web designer / webmaster
to put the music on your web site.
I heard a music track on the radio.
Do you have it?
No. We don't sell music tracks by "popular" artists such as John
Mellencamp, Dollie Parton, 50 Cent or any other artist or song you may have
heard on the radio. All our music was composed by our on-staff composers and
producers.
To buy a license to use a music track from a mainstream popular artist is
usually a lot more complicated, and a lot more expensive, than to license
music from a music library such as ours.
The world of music copyrights and licensing laws is a complex one, and if
you wanted to use a track by, say, Justin Timberlake on your video or your
web site, you would first have to obtain a Synchronization License. Then a
Master Use license. Then you would need to sort out the Mechanical License
and probably also a Performance License. All these different licenses would
have to be obtained from different places, all would involve negotiations,
probably lawyers, and a considerable cost. We're talking thousands of dollars.
This is why people come to places like ours, "royalty-free" music
libraries where they just pay a one-time simple license fee, and come away
with all they need in order to use the music track. On our site, directly
after you've placed an order, you automatically get a music download link
sent to you by email, so you can literally have the music in your project
-- fully legal -- in less than 5 minutes.
If you want to try to license the use of a popular music track, one good
place to start your quest would probably be at the Harry
Fox Agency, where they at least should be able to get you started.
Why
do I have to pay to use classical music - if the composer is dead, isn't the
music copyright free?
There are always two copyrights in a music recording: One
in the composition, and one in the recording.
When a composer has been dead for 75 years, the copyright in the composition
goes away. After that, anybody can make their own arrangement and recording
of that music, without paying anybody any royalties.
If you hire an orchestra and record your own recording of a piece of music
by Beethoven, then you get the copyright in that recording.
Other people cannot take your recording and use it without your permission.
In our case, we have contracts with two different companies that have invested
a large amount of time and money to arrange their own versions of the classical
music pieces. They have paid hundreds of musicians to play, and hundreds of
hours in professional recording studios and recording halls. Now, they own
the copyright in the recordings that they have created. We have a contract
with these companies, allowing us to sell the music on our site, and pay them
half of the money when their recordings are sold on our site.
If you sit down with a piano and play “Für Elise” by Beethoven,
and you record the sound into a tape recorder, then you own
the copyright in that recording. Even though the actual composition is copyright
free.
Yes, we do. Please see this page for further information,
or if you already know how to use RSS, just insert this
link into your RSS news reader program.
Can I buy your entire
library?
Why, yes. That's what we call our Mammooth collection. Click
here to read all about it.
A few example questions
and answers
Question:
If I find some music on your site for my live theatrical performance
and I buy it....does that mean I can use this music for my show? What if
I decided to use it for Audio once I finish the show? Do I pay your company
for every audio cd that is sold? Let me know how this works.
Answer:
To use our music in a Theatrical performance, or film that will be shown
in a cinema, you need to buy our "Mass Market License". Our Standard
License does not include Theatrical Release, but our Mass Market License
does include a Theatrical Release. To buy a Mass Market License, simply
click "Add to cart" on the music track you want to buy, and then
choose the Mass Market License option.
About music CD: Our music cannot be released as a music product by anybody
other than us. You can't license music from our web site and sell that as
a music-CD.
However, if the music was only used in the background on the CD, then it
would be allowed. For example, if your CD contained audio dialog from your
theater play with the music in the background, that would be okay. You could
make up to 5,000 CDs under our Standard License and if you make more CDs
than 5,000, you would have to buy the Mass Market License.
Question:
I'm hoping you can help clear something up for me about PRS?
My concern as a Music On Hold producer is that after buying a licence from
you guys to use a track royalty-free, my client then won't have to also
pay an annual PRS licence as well... as the royalties would already have
been paid to you.
For example i've noticed that, in your case as a producer, you're royalty
collection scheme is PRS. Officially, according to PRS, they now control
the collection of royalty money for your music, and a licence MUST be obtained
to do this.
So if you're saying that if I have bought a licence direct from you to use
the track you've composed 'royalty-free', and therefore you don't want extra
royalty money from PRS, then I think I would need something in writing from
you.
Answer:
Ah, the complications of music use, broadcasting/performance and performance
royalties.
Basically, there are two separate “channels” through which
royalties and fees travel from a commercial music user to the composer.
The first channel is the “sync fee”, or the direct payment
that a music user pays to license music. This license gives the customer
the right to use the music on physical media, such as CD’s and DVD’s.
The other channel is the “performance” or “broadcast”
fees. These fees are not paid by the producer (i.e. you), but by whoever
ends up broadcasting or performing the music to an audience.
Example 1: You license a music track from us and use it on a DVD. No problem.
All you pay us is the simple one-time fee on the web site. A year later,
a TV channel broadcasts your DVD. In order to be allowed to do this, the
broadcaster (not you) needs to own a license to broadcast that music. This
is the license that PRS provides.
Example 2: You license a music track from us and use it on a music-on-hold
machine. All you pay us is the simple one-time fee on our web site. Next
week, somebody buys that machine from you and starts to use it as on-hold
music in their company. That company now becomes a broadcaster of the music,
and they (not you) need a PRS license for this.
As it happens, most companies who regularly broadcast music already have
an annual license from the PRS. So whether you have included some tracks
on your DVD that is registered with PRS doesn’t make any difference
to them. They have an annual license and pay an annual fee. It doesn’t
cost them any less or more whether your programme contains some music that's
registered and some that isn't.
But for a small company that buys an on-hold machine, it gets trickier.
They may not already have a PRS license. And if they don’t, they aren’t
allowed to broadcast any music that’s registered with any
performance affiliation. (PRS, ASCAP, GEMA, BMI, SOCAN, etc. etc.). They
have two choices: They can buy an annual PRS license (it’s not that
expensive), or they can seek out music that is not affiliated to any kind
of performance affiliation. Unless they have a PRS license, they cannot
broadcast music that’s registered with PRS or any similar affiliation.
Either way you look at it, you as a producer of the on-hold machine, don’t
need a PRS license. You only need the license you can buy on our site.
