LicenseQuote now has a Global Store Find Music page which offers a variety of powerful, dynamic music search features. This article provides an introduction with tips for our music publishing clients and their existing (and potential new) music licensing clients coming to LicenseQuote to find and source music to license for their various commercial projects.

Introduction to ‘Find Music’ search

On the far right of the LQ Global Store are the Login and Register links. These can be used to for music licensing buyers to register (only once) to access all active LicenseQuote powered music licensing stores. All stores and their respective content are managed and owned by the music publishers actively using the LicenseQuote publishing and licensing management subscription platform and powered stores.

Basic and advanced search options

The new Global Store (after September 2013) offers simplified, yet powerful, searching and filter options as follows.

1. The Keywords search (a google-like, freestyle text entry field) lets you enter one or more keywords to quickly find exactly what you’re looking for.  Try our “G. I. T.” formula to “Get” music. It stands for Genre, Instrument, Tag. For example: “jazz guitar solo” or “jazz guitar smooth”. In these examples, “Jazz” is the main genre, “guitar” is the instrument and “solo” or “smooth’ can be a song’s description or tag which describes some unique aspect of the music.

You can use less keywords, such as “guitar solo” or “jazz guitar”, or more keywords such as “smooth solo jazz guiatar”. But keep in mind that the more keywords you use, the narrower the search is (returning less results), and the less keywords you use, the broader the results are, returning more songs. So normally the best approach is to start with 2  or 3 keywords, and then adjust your search as needed. This is similar to using a powerful search engine like Google, which lets you start over to refine your search as you go along.

2. The Publishers filter lets you see the list of publishers that have opted-in to be listed on the Global Store. This filter is optional and does not need to be used, however, if you already know the publisher’s name, you can select it to narrow down your search for only the songs / tracks the specific publisher is offering.

3. The Types filter (combo box) lets you narrow down your search by selecting the type of music you are looking for, such as song with vocals, instrumental melody, instrumental bed, etc. This filter can be used before or after using the main “Keywords search” filter at the top of the store, above the preview player.

4. The Sources filter (combo box) lets you select one of these options: Original Composition, Cover or Public Domain. If you don’t select anything from this filter, your searches will return tracks which may be from any of these “sources”, so for example if you know you want a recording of a famous “cover” song, then select “Cover” from this filter, and you will then find tracks that are re-recordings of various standards and popular “hits” which you can compare and select from, though it helps to know the names of the songs.

A few more general search tips

Searching by Tags in the Publisher’s own (local) store
When you visit the publisher own (local) store, you can use the Tags (filter) to search for specific common elements. The advantage is that no “guessing” is required as you’ll be able to browse a list of available Tags. Since there’s about 4 tags per average track, it would be difficult to go down a list of thousands of tags for doing a Global Store search, but in many cases the most important “tags” are also listed in the track’s descriptions (yes, there is some overlap!), so doing a global “Keywords search” will provide most of the same results.

Keywords vs Tags search summary and chart

To summarize, please see the reference chart below for a quick overview and summary of the differences between the Search keywords vs the Tags searching mechanisms.