Royalty-Free, Layered Music -- A Review of Digital Juice's StackTraxx Line

When it comes to royalty-free music for video projects, there are literally thousands of choices available, ranging from inexpensive low-quality synthesized music, to expensive but fully customized soundtracks. The problem arises, however, when one seeks to combine the best aspects of those two extremes, desiring a customizable and unique piece of music at a cheap price. At the moment, Digital Juice's StackTraxx line is unquestionably the best bet at accomplishing just that.

WHAT YOU GET

There are presently over twenty volumes available, with genres ranging from the rock music sounds of "Power Stacks" to the more subdued and lighter "Corporate Stacks". Each volume, in turn, contains between twenty and forty music pieces. Finally, each piece is presented in five different lengths: full, 1:00, :30, :15, and :10.

Each volume contains a DVD with all the songs and layers (more on that later), as well as CD versions of each song and length version. In addition, each order arrives with the proprietary software "Juicer", which lets you extract the songs off the DVD in a variety of formats and settings.

Perhaps most importantly, you are buying the non-exclusive license to use the song in your productions. You get a royalty-free agreement, and can use the songs as many times as you want in as many different productions as you need-the price doesn't change. (This is similar to a buy-out license, with the exception that you cannot sell or transfer it to another party.)

At a list price of $250 a volume, that comes out to be about $8 per song, which alone would be a very good deal. The operating word in the last sentence, however, is "would". The real beauty of StackTraxx isn't the song-to-dollar ratio, but the unique ability to layer each song.

LAYERING

Every piece (and every length of that piece) is layered into 4-7 instrument tracks. Depending on the genre, these might be "percussion", "bass", "acoustic guitar", "piano", or a number of other sound producers. They work wonderfully together, but the real possibilities unfold when you begin to explore separating them.