Hey, all. I’m a vocal instructor, and I’ve got a blog on singing, performance, and voice training that I’m developing. One of the things I’d like to do is video lessons, in which I explain an aspect of voice technique, and then sing through either part of or all of a song to demonstrate the point.
What are the legalities of singing a copy-written song (obviously not public domain)? I won’t be using the artist’s recording at all, and I will be mentioning the bands/artists who originated the songs I’d be singing.
If I eventually decide to sell these videos of myself teaching, what I’d be selling is myself and my training methods. Is it legal for me to sing & play my version of someone else’s song in this sort of scenario?
Also…what are legalities of simply posting tracks of myself singing another person’s song on You Tube or something like that? I know people do it all the time, but as doing so may eventually work as a means of promotion for me (wow, listen to how he nailed that Led Zeppelin song on that You Tube! I want to buy his voice training video!), I wonder if there are potential legal snafus I should be aware of.
Any informed facts and advice would be greatly appreciated. (:
Your singing of the song is a derivative work of the copyrighted (not copywritten) song, and thus potentially a copyright violation. It may fall under fair use, but the boundaries for that are vague: Your usage being educational and not charging money for it would both be arguments for it being fair use, but not a guarantee. And if you started selling recordings of any sort, you almost certainly would not be fair use any more.
Notably, though, fair use may be a legal defence, but it’s not necessarily a practical one. If you put up a sample video on your blog showing how you’d handle a small excerpt of a song, hosted by an agency like Youtube, you could expect that they’ll get hit with a takedown notice and do it automatically rather than trying to judge it on its merits.
Close, but remember music is licensed. ASCAP (or BMI) does not let licensed work online without paying a fee. There is no such thing as fair use where music is concerned – if it’s performed, you owe a license fee.
Technically, you owe the feel when you put the music online, but that’s not enforced. But if you try to sell the videos, you can bet you’ll get a letter from ASCAP’s lawyers requiring you to pay up or see them in court.
And ASCAP and BMI enforce the rights of the songwriter, not the singer, so it doesn’t matter if you’re singing them yourself – you’re still using the songwriter’s song.
IIRC there’s an actual specific exception to copyright, fair use in the correct legal sense, when the exception is for classroom instruction commentary or analysis.
Whether online video lessons fall into this category is up to the judge and the persuasive power of lawyers to determine. Whenever someone asks a question like this that is close to the edge, the answer is a;ways “it depends”.
For example, are you making money on these? (Heck, technically the lawyer could argue it’s a form of advertising for you and hence a commercial endeavour.) How much of the video is you explaining vs. singing copyright material? Why was it necessary to pick that song, and how much? If you cover the latest hit and then say “wasn’t that a great song?”, you’ll lose. If you drone on for hours about chords and harmonies and all that vocal stuff, then do a few seconds of Rick Roll, nobody can argue you are piggybacking on someone else’s popularity.
Usually the situation boils down to lawsuit chill, the person self-censors since they cannot afford to pay the lawyers for even a well-justified defence. Or, you put up the videos and just take them down when you get a nasty letter, because odds are that’s as far as the other side will go… or they simply bypass you and serve youtube or whomever with a DCMA take-down notice.
In order to use music in a video legally, you need what are called “synchronization rights.” You have to obtain these from the owner of the music, which in most cases is a publishing company. Until about 10 years ago, the Harry Fox Agency used to be able to handle that for you (they still handle mechanical licenses – the right to make a sound recording of a song) but now you have to contact the publisher directly to get a license. (Most professional music writers sell their rights to publishers who administer the music and pay the writers royalties.)
If you are using a copyrighted recording of music in addition to getting sync rights from the song’s publisher you need to get a license from the owner of the master recording of the song you wish to use (generally the record company). This would not apply if you were going to perform the song yourself, of course.
ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc do not get involved in sync rights. Their job is performance rights. Performance royalties are usually paid by radio stations, music streaming sites, TV stations, theaters, and so on where the song is performed. However, these organizations do have data bases accessible from their web sites where you can look up the publisher of any song they administer.
Thanks so much, Folks! Most of this boils down to pretty much what I expected the answer to be – I just wanted to hear it from someone who knows the law for certain.
The consensus seems to be that I can probably safely sing the song and post it online, if it’s completely for educational purposes and there is no money involved at all. As of now, my blog is purely free; it’s not monetized at all. There’s no ad space being sold, no products for sale, and no affiliate programs in play. If I post these videos purely for education and there’s zero money changing hands, there shouldn’t be an issue. The worst thing that might happen is it might get taken down by You Tube (or I might be asked to take it down myself). If that happens, then no harm, no foul.
When and if the time comes to monetize the blog and/or sell my teaching videos, I’ll simply remove the copy-written song performances and re-shoot myself singing my own original songs that allow me to similarly illustrate my point, and include those updated videos in lieu of the older copy-written ones in videos I sell.
If anyone has any further thoughts or advice on this manner, please contribute! And again, I appreciate the info.
I actually got your other post emailed to me, even though you thought to delete it after. And yes, I realized my error after I posted the original question. Alas. (:
Actually, I used to have a web site for my band on which I had covers of 10 or so songs that weren’t written by me, all jazz standards, and ASCAP most certainly came after me for licensing fees. Ultimately we decided to take the site down (for a number of reasons one of which was the cost of the fees)
I wonder how MySpace gets away with it. Our MySpace page is still active with the same songs.
That’s wild that they came after you. I know a zillion musicians in a million different cover bands, tribute bands, you name it, and they all have audio and video of them performing their stuff on their websites. I’ve never heard of a single person being hassled by ASCAP or BMI.
Perhaps because there jazz standards, for which the emphasis is placed primarily on the writer, since the songs are covered by dozens, if not hundreds of people? Just conjecture, really. Interesting, though.
Of course there is fair use where music is concerned. The fair use provision applies to any medium of expression. In practice, music rights holders and their representatives may be particularly vociferous in challenging use which is claimed to be fair use, but that doesn’t mean that they’re always right, legally speaking.
Also, not all copyrighted music is licensed by ASCAP. There is plenty of copyrighted music out there where the rights holders licence the pieces themselves, often under very liberal terms. For example, Jonathon Coulton releases his music under the Coulton releases his songs under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. (This particular licence isn’t suitable for the OP’s purposes, though some other Creative Commons ones certainly are.)
Aargh… missed the edit window. That sentence should of course read “Jonathon Coulton releases his songs under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.” :rolleyes: