Soundtracks and music

[ior=0]

How do people deal with music and soundtracks for their animations with their clients?

How does it work for big clients and more importantly small clients, who just need an animation of their product with nice tunes but don't expect, or haven't even thought, they might have to actually pay for it.
Because I don't have a "magic button" that says "MUSIC" next to the one marked "3D ANIMATION".

Do you suggest the client provides and pays for it?

Do you make a suggestion from a great online resource (please provide links) and say how much it costs to use and implement it?

Give them royalty free stuff and hope they like it building in a cost for the hassle of having to guess what they like and want.

Commission it specifically?

Get some tracing paper and a comb, huddle up to the VOIP mic and hum you heart out, tapping the base-line out on the side of your PC with your foot?

What do you do?

[AlexP]

We always include an additional charge for purchasing the music.
There are quite a few places you can get stuff. www.audionetwork.com is one. Its good because you can just send a selection for them to preview and choose.
Prices vary based on the usage.

[Pixelcon]

I've used http://www.premiumbeat.com/ before. It works, it's really cheap and they've got a big selection. They even do knock-offs of famous movie themes and whatnot. It's so cheap you can probably absorb the cost into the project, but you could of course make the client aware that there are fees attached to finding music. Maybe do an animatic, select a few tracks, do some different edits based on each track, then get the client to select which they think works best.

[Morne]

Locally we have "NORM" (National Organisation for Reproduction Rights in Music)
They're linked to to a gazzillion artists, composers and publishers worldwide

"What is a mechanical License? When it comes to music, there are several different rights that exist in any musical work or recording but here at NORM we are concerned with mechanical copyright – that is, the copyright that arises when music is transferred from one format to another (from a master tape to a CD for example). The nature of the music usage can be varied – when promotional CDs are pressed, when videos are put onto the correct format for broadcasting, or when music is attached to television programming are just some examples of mechanical copyright. On transference a mechanical copyright is raised and a license – or permission – from the copyright owner must be obtained before any transfer takes place."

We pay a set fee per 30 seconds of music depending on usage and volume. I take this into account in costing to the client.

I usually advice and give the client a few options to choose from so they can listen to what they like before a final run

[ior=0]

Thanks for the replies, useful stuff.