Online Film Score Licensing Service to Offer Music From 'The King’s Speech'

LONDON – U.K. and L.A. based film, television and advertising music provider Cutting Edge is rolling out an online digital film scores resource to offer a one-stop shop for producers to license soundtracks for secondary use in TV programming, advertising, games, trailers and other commercial contexts.

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CEFS catalog includes nearly 200 individual soundtracks spanning over 6,000 tracks, including Oscar winner The King’s Speech, Drive, Looper and Seven Psychopaths.

The service also offers what the company claims is a first for the U.K. – a "sonic search" function that allows producers or creatives to upload favorite score music from their own digital device and have it automatically matched against the CEFS' library.

With the CEFS catalogu set to expand at a rate of 60 movies per year – adding films such as Dead Man Down, starring Colin Farrell, Parker with Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez and Plush starring Emily Browning in 2013 – the service enables one-stop licensing of real soundtracks by award-winning composers.

It marks a breakthrough as traditionally secondary use of major film scores often tied up in complicated rights issues.

But because Cutting Edge controls both master and publishing rights, the company can offer people licenses.

Cutting Edge Group managing director Phil Hope, speaking from Mumbai, India where he is doing meet and greets with Bollywoood, told THR investing in soundtracks in exchange for rights has been a key move for his company.

"Until now, it has often been very hard to license film soundtracks for secondary usage in broadcasting or advertising," Hope said.

"The launch of Cutting Edge Film Scores is a real game-changer in that respect - it opens up our award-winning catalog of original repertoire for easy re-use giving users the chance to license real film music recorded at the highest quality by world class creative talent."

He noted that composers, copyright owners and producers would now expect to see a share of revenues from the music, "whether a film has been a hit or not."

Film composer Cliff Martinez, whose resume boasts music for Drive, Contagion, Solaris and Traffic, said: “Cutting Edge has finally come to my rescue. Here is a site that offers real film music by real film composers and gives these original scores an opportunity to be heard more broadly and have a life beyond that of the film itself."

Guy Farley, whose music has featured on Land of the Blind, Modigliani and True Justice, said: "I have worked with Cutting Edge on a number of feature films over the last 10 years and I am delighted to see such a proactive and well designed site offering access to use and license my music."