Last night I was watching “The Weatherman” with Nicholas Cage and he mentioned a song and it’s author.
They eventually played the song later in the movie, but my question is, if they didn’t play the song and only mentioned it, are royalties still owed to the catalog owner?
But you still have to pay royalties on satire. The Capitol Steps, which writes song parodies all the time, pay royalties for the songs they use.
The issue with music is that the music without words is protected. So whatever words you use, you still have to pay royalties to use the music. As long as the song is recognizable, then royalties are owed, though the amount can be negotiated with the criteria Chez Guevara has outlined. If you can’t come to an agreement, then you can’t use the song.
Most satires are “sound-alikes” which are written to sound like a song you know, but aren’t actually that song. If you use the actual original song, even if you change the lyrics, you have to pay for it.
IIRC, in The Big Chill, when Kevin Kline’s character is about to charge up the stairs with a tennis racket to kill a bat, he sings the first musical notes of the theme from Raider of the Lost Ark- “dum da dum dum, dum da dum!” It was listed in the credits and I think they paid for it.
I’m often amazed to see all the music credits at the end of a movie.
Sometimes they will list dozens of songs that could not possibly have made the final cut, since there wasn’t any sense of a sound track at all.
Not so fast. This may be true of non-parody use, but its not true of parodies. The seminal Supreme Court case about Fair Use of music, Campbell v. Acuff Rose Music, cocerned 2 Live Crew’s sampling of the opening bars of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.”
The Supreme Court found that satire was a use particularly protected by federal copyright law – because it was a form of commentary. 2 Live Crew did NOT owe for infringement even though they used the most recognizable part of the song. The Court correctly reasoned that if the songs used weren’t recognizable to the listener, it wouldn’t be much of a parody. (BTW, 2 Live Crew had requested the sample through the usual channels and had been refused; they went ahead anyway).
Weird Al works with permission of artists, but he doesn’t have to. He chooses to do so because it is easier to stay on good terms with copyright holders than constantly defend lawsuits which he would always win. In Al’s own words (3rd Q down).
On the off-chance that I’m not being whooshed here: it was in fact used, although it was Rufus Wainwright’s cover of it. Fiona is preparing to get married to John Lithgow, and Shrek is back in his hovel in the swamp, and they’re all sad & wistful because they’re mad at each other but they still care about each and it’s not as eye-rolling as I’m making it sound, really.
It might have been less than that. Unfortunately we’ll have to rely on somebody’s memory because it’s been replaced with generic heavy metal, thus ruining the joke.
Sometimes you’ve gotta beg. In the DVD extras for School of Rock, we see Jack Black, on stage and in front of a huge audience, imploring Led Zeppelin to - uncharacteristically for them - consent to have a Zep song on the soundtrack. The short filmed segment was sent to the band, which finally agreed.