Audio Royalty Issues

[slickeye]

well thanks to this place i have est a slick audio streaming fla with working playlist that loads content from xml. but ive only been in this business a short while and only been in the world for 17 years. what legal issues do i have if i say have one song of dave matthews on my list??? if i must, where do i go to pay royalties?? thanks and please only answer if you really know. cheers

[dropkick]

You'll have to go to whoever owns the rights to the song

[asphaltcowboy]

In theory, you could just stick it up and if someone finds out/has issues with it, they'll send you a letter saying "please take it down or pay royalties". Chances are, no one will care. Will the site be making money? They might have more issues with that - assuming they actually stumble across it in the first place. As I say, they'd always send you a letter to remove it as opposed to sending a letter from their lawyer with a court date ;)

EDIT: WipE-0uT, how about: just stop posting?

[nobody]

Yeah you need to talk to the record label or some other official representing him/them. A lot of sites just have a little disclaimer saying that the song is copyright so and so, 1997 or whatever, and people tend to get away with that pretty well. I don't know if that's legally acceptable, but it happens in a lot of places.
Good luck with it anyway, and to the kindergardener, no one likes a spammer.

[slickeye]

haha thanks 28. so if i just have a credit to the music like publisher and so forth i should be alright??

[nobody]

Yeah you should be fine, I anyone would find out anyway, and if they did they'd probably just email you telling you to take it down, at which point you do, and start your own band and use it's music. :P

[mdipi]

Contact DMB's record label. Tell them who you are and what you will be using it for.

i doubt they would care, i just think they dont want you to let others be able to download it.

[slickeye]

haha well i have my own band but my recording studio isnt quite up to professional standard. i still have many a few protools plugins i need for a really good sound. but thanks for the info. cheers

[asphaltcowboy]

Yeah you should be fine, I anyone would find out anyway, and if they did they'd probably just email you telling you to take it down, at which point you do, and start your own band and use it's music. :P
Copycat! ;)

Where are my royalties? :bad:

[Redrvltn]

You could prolly get away with it, but somehow some of these bigger companies just seem to find out. A friend of mine was in a not too popular local band called Cracker Jack Blues, and Frito-Lay ended up sending a cease and desist letter to 'em. No harm done, they just couldn't use the name anymore.

[brownie]

I dunno about the rest of the world but in Australia a non profit org called APRA (Australian Performing Rights Assc) takes care of things like this. I would imagine there would be a similar body in the US and UK/ Europe

[Hans Kilian]

I have a few points to make:

1) Copyright is important for people like 'us'. People who make - or want to make - a living creating stuff in digital form that can be easily copied. It's important because owning the copyright to something is what will put butter on your toast and pay the rent. When you want your own stuff to be protected by copyright, you also need to respect other peoples copyright. Otherwise you're a hypocrite.

2) Using other peoples copyrighted work as a part of your business without authorisation is just ... well, plain stupid. It'll open you up to all sorts of legal action, not to mention sending out a message to your clients that you don't really care about breaking the law. And betting that the copyright owner will just ask you to remove the song is a bit naive. He'll have every right to sue for up to $150,000 in statutory damages, since there's no way that you can claim that you thought it was fair use.

3) A 'cease and desist' letter - like the one Cracker Jack Blues got is just a letter. It may come from a lawyer but he has no special right to tell you what you can and can't do. He can threaten legal action and maybe he'll win a court case. But only a judge can tell you that you can't call your band that. You can say that your don't want the hassle and get a new name and that's fair enough. But a cease and desist letter isn't the final word.

So as for the song, I'd ask for permission or find another song to use. And I definitely wouldn't treat copyright issues with so little regard as the majority here seem to do.

And remember: Fight for the copyright of something you've made. Don't sign over the copyright if there's any way to avoid it. Give your client unlimited usage rights within their business, but don't give them the copyright. If you give them the copyright, at least make sure that you can use the work in your portfolio. Because if they have the copyright, they could actually deny you that use.

[RadioactveChimp]

About 4 months ago I made a stick animation *sigh so out of style now* and used the song "Song 2" by the band Blur. I was going to enter it in a contest and all this other crap so I simply went onto their site and e-mailed the webmaster who then fowarded my message straight to the band or the manager or w/e, it was someone high up. They watched the animation and said "Ok, use the song." There ya go, just do an e-mail and see what happens :) Good luck!


-Dean

[RadioactveChimp]

O and P.S.

My Dad makes a lot of documentaries and he tried to get a Jimi Hendrix song for one, and the cost was more than it was to make the whole show!

[kirupa]

Keep this thread on topic everyone ;) I went through and deleted the problematic posts.

[.Matt]

thx

[brooklyniteOne]

Well what you can also do is next to your link to play the song include a link where the user can purchase the album (a licenced retailer) something like Amazon. With that in place you should be ok. Then the streaming song will be no different than if you went in a music store and listened to it (since you cannot download it if its streaming) and the listener has the option to purchse it right then and there. [edit] oh yeah important point is that you should only try to do this for music that you know hs been promo released.

_ONE

[cybereaper]

At 2advanced studios they had a soundbite I noticed contained a line in it from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I contacted them about copyright issues and if they had to 'contact' any label. They seemed REALLY informed. Biggest issue: If you're not directly making profit from the reproduction of a byte, then you could. I'm sure they could give you more details.
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