Kevin MacLeod is a name most people won’t know, but his work has been wide-reaching. The documentary Royalty Free: The Music of Kevin MacLeod looks at the man and his impact on the music industry.
MacLeod is a composer who has an extraordinary business model: he releases his music for free in exchange for credit, or a $30 licensing fee if uncredited. His work has become popular with indie filmmakers, video game designers, Youtubers, and has even been used in the film Hugo, commercials, and pornography. He has ended up being one of the most credited people on IMDB.
Royalty Free has two major themes, MacLeod’s personal story, and the wider cultural/industrial context. The personal side showed MacLeod being a man from Wisconsin who was interested in music and computers, and after years of financial struggle was able to make a living as a composer. MacLeod and his friends talked about his creative process, mainly that he has to be in a bad mood to be creative, that he was willing to help out a collaborator financially after being screwed by his commission, and MacLeod’s struggles with depression. MacLeod told some fun stories like hanging up on Martin Scorsese’s people and working on film thinking it was a comedy only to find out later it was meant to be an earnest horror film.
Royalty Free set out to show two of the great levellers in the music industry: the first being technology, the second was the internet. MacLeod was able to create orchestral-sounding music using just a keyboard, whilst the internet made access to royalty free music easier. The documentary establishes that Youtube’s crackdown on copyrighted materials was a Godsend for MacLeod because creators needed cheap music.
The documentary does tackle some wider issues. It established that there had been a movement towards synthesizers in the music industry, particularly in Broadway, which led to a backlash from actors and musicians. Royalty Free frame these people as Luddites who were trying to resist the inevitable. The documentary does acknowledge some of the darker consequences of MacLeod’s success. He is hated by the musical community because he is seen as a man who takes away jobs, and MacLeod’s music has been used by unsavoury people like David Duke and Milo Yiannopoulos. MacLeod ends up being defensive with his arguments being music can’t be political and he’s simply a musical version of Amazon or Walmart. He doesn’t come across well here.
Royalty Free uses talking heads, archive footage, animations, and oddly, puppets. This was done well enough, the talking heads being generally positive towards MacLeod – there were his friends, collaborators, and people who have used his music. They state MacLeod’s good nature like even when he was screwed over by a filmmaker, MacLeod would work with them again, and MacLeod’s reluctance to travel. The animation and puppets made the description of how MacLeod’s business model worked.
The documentary was narrated by its director Ryan Camarda. Sadly, Camarda was not a natural narrator because he had a dull speaking voice. He should have hired a voiceover artist.
Royalty Free was an interesting little documentary, especially for people interested in music, internet content, and how art and business collide.
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Rating
Summary
A heartfelt documentary, if a little flappy at times.
