It’s a miracle that Nina Paley’s feature length animation, “Sita Sings the Blues,”

escaped a life sentence. Sadly many films never do. Great music enhances film

and video. Digital video editing tools make it easy to add popular music and

remixes to a film. Unfortunately, permission to use commercial music in an

independent film is not easy to acquire. Filmmakers, who sync commercial music

to their films planning to seek permission later when the film attracts investors, are

often devastated to learn that the music is unavailable or prohibitively expensive.